One of my earliest memories of encountering Taiwan’s farm equipment was one day riding up a bit of a long stretch of mountain.

With the sun shining down, the pace steady but slow and nothing around me but the gentle breeze of the wind I was in cycling heaven. About halfway up the slope though I began to hear the familiar rumble of a truck coming up behind me.

Pulling over to the side I waited for the truck to go roaring past as they do. A couple of minutes later and nothing. A few minutes after that and still nothing.

Meanwhile the roar of the truck continued to grow louder but still nothing appeared in sight. Finally, after what must have been a good ten minutes and the engine roar so crushingly loud that I honestly thought an aircraft carrier on wheels was going to come up behind me – this tiny truck, no bigger then a pickup roars past at a moderate pace.

It looked like something out of an Indiana Jones movie that had been stripped down further to include nothing but the bare essentials of a chassis. The engine was freakishly massive and did I mention it was loud?

Looking more like a conveyor belt driven relic of the industrial revolution than truck… I watched as it struggled to make it up the peak of the mountain and then disappear over.

Unfortunately I didn’t have my phone with me but since then I’ve run into all sorts of wonderful antique argricultural vehicles in Taiwan. All of which are somehow amazingly still active and being put to work across farms all over Taiwan.

One recent example was this nifty little red tractor truck thing I came across whilst out and about.

Not quite a tractor and not quite a go-kart, this red tray on wheels vehicle seems to be quite common here.

This particular one was in decent nick too which was a bonus. Some of the ones I’ve seen here look like they’re being held together with nothing more then some wire and duct tape! Unfortunately these little karts appear to be locally made (or Chinese made?), and don’t feature any English on them for me to identify them with.

From the front of kart you’ve got the ignition there just underneath the seat and then what I presume is a choke lever off to the right. Not too sure what the black button thingy is but I’m pretty sure that’s a brake pedal just south of it. Come to think of it, apart from the choke cable I was at a bit of a loss as to what all the other knobbly bits were.

As for driving it? Well that had me a bit stumped too. I’m by no means an agricultural vehicular expert so maybe someone who’s a bit more experienced in this area can chime in.

This appears to be the accelerator and gear mechanism, with one lever for high and low gear and the other presumably for acceleration… but then you also had this second gear stick, the purpose for which I was a bit stumped.

I’m not too sure how fast this thing goes but it appears to have an additional five gears on top of high and low.

Whilst knowing virtually nothing about them I’m always fascinated by old vehicles still on the road today. I guess this sort of stems from my love of the original Mini car and having worked on them quite a bit during the time I’ve owned one.

So far I’m loving the old vehicles I see out and about on the roads, they really make a nice contrast to the bling bling racer boy scooters and cars all the young people drive around.

They also challenge the notion that all Chinese made stuff is inherently designed to break down outside of the warranty period. I’m pretty sure most of these vehicles are well overdue for a breakdown!


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