Version three of the Merredin-built, big horsepower, four-wheel-drive articulated Phillips Acremaster tractor with a minimum of electronics remains a potential goer despite recent setbacks.
According to its 84-year-old designer, engineer and builder, Laurie Phillips, he is "almost ready to turn the switch on" to start production.
Post-COVID supply problems made sourcing some components he wanted difficult and a shortage of staff earlier this year had temporarily bogged the Acremaster tractor project down, but not finished it off, Mr Phillips confirmed recently when Farm Weekly called in.
"I was going to start producing this year, but I had five people leave me in December and February (Mr Phillips trades as Phillbourne Manufacturing producing harvesting equipment) and I just didn't have the staff to do anything," Mr Phillips said.
"Early on, the whole commercial world was recovering from COVID, then we lost staff.
"One man retired, another man took 12 months off to go around Australia and two workers in the same week had to leave at short notice to go overseas for family reasons.
"One bloke was lured away - offered a squillion dollars to work underground in a mine.
"He lasted three months and then came back again.
"(Because of that) I've been in negative territory since about February."
He spent of lot of money getting ready and had major parts arrive in February.
Mr Phillips said farmer interest in the project remained strong and the first tractor he can complete was already potentially sold.
"I've got plenty of people in the farming community waiting for us to have something to drive around in," Mr Phillips said.
"I have a sale at Trangie (north east of Dubbo in central New South Wales) and I've got a verbal order for 20 800-horsepower (597kW) tractors for a mining operation - pulling scrapers for surface mining in northern WA.
"I'm in the process of nailing down the last component that I need for those."
Mr Phillips said the tractors, which will use turbocharged V6 and V8 DEUTZ diesel engines, powershift transmissions and China-sourced heavy-duty axle and differential assemblies already proved in big wheel loaders, would likely end up costing close to $1 million each.
"We'll be doing them for about $1000 a horsepower," he said.
He confirmed his big tractor would use a "minimum" of electronics - some electronics are required to link engine and transmission management - but a smaller "farm size" tractor might not require any electronics.
Mr Phillips' plan is to employ younger managers to oversee tractor production and to build a dedicated tractor assembly facility on the outskirts of Merredin, near his current business location, as production ramps up.
"I've got feelers out for some key people that I need," he said.
"I've bought some land, I've got 10 acres (four hectares).
"We can build something a lot more efficient than we've got here (Mr Phillips works from a domed-roof former Royal Australian Air Force depot store, one of two built in Merredin in 1943 after the bombing of Darwin forced relocation of much of Australia's World War II military support infrastructure inland, away from the coast, once the realisation dawned it was vulnerable to attack by sea and air).
"We're almost ready to turn the switch on."
As previously reported in Farm Weekly, Mr Phillips jumped from a one-man Central Wheatbelt engineering business visiting farms to service and repair machinery to tractor manufacturer in the early 1970s when an agricultural contractor asked him to connect two tractors together in tandem so they could pull bigger implements.
He custom built a number of tandem tractors, but in 1975 saw the first big 4x4 articulated Versatile tractor to arrive in Merredin and decided he could do better.
He took his first Phillips Acremaster tractor to Bryan Davies' farm east of Merredin to pull Mr Davies' pair of Chamberlain 354 tandem tractors with dual sets of ploughs behind them out of a bog and it did not come back.
Mr Davies bought it on the spot and used it as his main tractor for more than 40 years before donating it in 2020 to the Merredin Community Men's Shed.
Between 1975 and 1984 Mr Phillips built and sold 160 first versions of the Phillips Acremaster tractor around Australia.
Unfortunately expansion plans involving the then State government and a business association went wrong and Mr Phillips lost control of the business and rights to the Acremaster name.
His next batch of about 24 tractors were appropriately called Phoenix and were basically version two of the Acremaster, built with local support by Farmers Tractors Australia Pty Ltd from 1987 to 1991.
Since then Mr Phillips has regained right to use the Acremaster name.
For some years he has been planning a return to tractor manufacturing with a design focused on robust mechanical simplicity and using the chassis articulation he designed for his first unit and has used on each tractor he has built.
In December 2021 he placed a small advertisement in Farm Weekly for three consecutive weeks outlining his plan to build version three of the Acremaster and calling for expressions of interest from potential customers.
The response from across Australia to those advertisements is what has fueled the Acremaster tractor project since then.
