A visit to the Keystone Truck & Tractor Museum in Virginia

There’s something for everyone at the sprawling Keystone Truck & Tractor Museum in Colonial Heights, Virginia. Despite its name, in addition to the 185 tractors and 100 trucks, there are about two dozen classic cars along with 10 fire engines and a handful of motorcycles, scooters, and bicycles.

The collection is rounded out with 2,000 toy trucks, plus petroliana and Americana that includes antique gas pumps, vintage tools, tobacco farming memorabilia, and a treeful of chainsaws.

When the museum acquired this car-hauling trailer, with four Chevys, it had been sitting outside for 40 years.

The museum is the result of the collecting passion of Keith Jones, who started out with his four brothers in the no-stoplight town of Abilene, Virginia. Their dad operated a sawmill, so by Keith’s teen years he was hauling lumber and also working at the family’s filling station. The Jones siblings went on to found trucking company Abilene Motor Express, which they sold a few years ago.

I’ve visited the Keystone Truck & Tractor Museum several times over the past few years and am amazed to see that each time the museum has grown larger, and sure enough, at 120,000 square feet in 2021, it’s even bigger still. Keith’s first tractor, which he later restored, was a 1950 John Deere M, purchased in 1997 from his late uncle’s estate. He says that’s when he got the “collecting fever.” He’s still running hot as he keeps acquiring new vehicles and sharing them with the public.

The 1917 International Harvester Titan 10-20 was an important and versatile early tractor. It could be run on kerosene without voiding the warranty.

Keith opened the museum in 2010. Until then his collection was stored in trailers. He recalls, “We thought we’d need about half the space we have here. The collection is growing, so we might have to do some rearranging.”

A visit to the Keystone Truck & Tractor Museum in Virginia. One of the most popular acquisitions is a veritable time capsule that sits out front attracting traffic whizzing by on Interstate 95: a vintage 1951 car hauler with four 1956 Chevys perched on top. When Keith found it, the trailer had been sitting outside for 40 years.

A 1938 Minneapolis-Moline UDLX is on display with its standard clock, radio, heater, horn, cigarette lighter, and ashtray. It was designed to be both a tractor and an automobile, but the concept never took off and only 125 were produced.

Greeting visitors as they venture inside the museum is row upon row of tractors in various shades of green (John Deere, Waterloo, Oliver, Case, Massey-Harris), amber (Minneapolis-Moline, Allis-Chalmers), and red (McCormick, Moline, Farmall, Cockshutt, International Harvester, Graham-Bradley, Thieman) making a bird’s-eye view of the display floor look like a colossal traffic signal wrought in farming equipment. The passel of Fordson tractors in battleship gray, set off to the side, look out of place in this polychromatic array.

The 1932 Massey-Harris GP with a 25-horsepower L-head Hercules engine boasted a revolutionary feature for the time—four-wheel drive. But, despite this technological advance, it still had a hand-cranked starter.

A 1957 Nash Metropolitan sits alongside vintage gasoline pumps.

With its hump on the body, a 1959 Massey-Ferguson 65 looks a bit like a camel. The hump hides the LPG tank that was more popular on tractors down south. The 1949 McCormick O-4 has a streamlined appearance due to its role as an orchard tractor—in order to prevent getting clogged in fruit tree branches there are metal skirts over the wheels and cowlings over the fuel caps.

One of the most popular tractors is the 1938 Minneapolis-Moline UDLX. It boasts a car-like appearance, with an enclosed cab and amenities, including a radio, heater, and clock. The slogan was “farm during the day, drive to town at night.” Hard to believe with all that bling it wasn’t a sales success. But the Great Depression was still going on and according to museum guide Logan, “It was too expensive, and farmers thought you were a wuss if you had a cab on your tractor.”

Just a portion of the 185 tractors at the Keystone Truck & Tractor Museum in Virginia.

Another 1938 is a Graham-Bradley Standard Model 104 built by Graham-Paige. With its swept-back nose and stylish side louvred panels, it looked ready to race. It became known as a “rich man’s” tractor and enjoyed an all-too-brief history. They were sold exclusively through Sears, Roebuck and Company, but were removed from the catalog by 1940.

The 1918 Moline Universal Tractor is referred to as the first row-crop tractor. The standard equipment of electric lights, rheostat throttle, and electric starter were quite advanced for that period. The museum purchased a container of tractors from Europe that included a few marques more known for sports cars, including a 1957 Porsche P111, which was licensed by Mannesmann AG, and a 1962 Lamborghini Model 1R.

A 1950 Freightliner Model 800 Bubble Nose heads up a row of big rig trucks.

The mammoth German-built 1939 Lanz Bulldog single-cylinder hot-bulb semi-diesel engine has one of the more archaic starting systems. It’s a 20-minute process that involves a blowtorch, along with the driver taking the steering wheel and shaft out of the cabin and inserting it into the side of the engine to crank it up. It’s not exactly conducive to quick startups.

Although Keith’s first love was tractors, he is a trucking guy, so there’s a wide variety of trucks to choose from including a 1936 International C-30 4x2, 1939 Mack BM in Yellow Transit Co. livery hauling a 25,000-pound payload 1935 Fruehauf trailer, a 1945 Dodge WH 47 tanker, a 1954 Autocar DC 75, and a 1973 Chevrolet 90 6x4.

A 1952 Diamond T 950RS 6x4, with its 300-hp Cummins engine, hauls a 1948 Oliver HG-60 Crawler tractor and a 1958 Oliver OC-4 Crawler tractor.

One of the great independent truckmakers out of Detroit was the Federal Motor Truck Company. It produced the 1941 Federal Model 24 4x2 on display at Keystone that was operated by the American Thermos Bottle Company of Norwich, Connecticut.

A real rarity is the 1957 Diamond T “Pig Nose Truck,” so named because the owner wanted more power and added an extra engine to the front, giving it the appearance of a snout.

The handful of campers include perhaps the coolest camper of all, a 1969 Diamond REO HD275 Trend chassis with a cab made out of Royalex fiberglass hauling a 22-foot Country Wagon camper. Since the camper is on the elevated flatbed of a truck, you’ll need a stepladder to climb inside, but you’ll be the king of any KOA campground in this behemoth.

Classic cars are not left out, with the focus mainly on 1950s brands and 1960s muscle cars, including a stable of 1955-’57 Ford Thunderbirds and a customized 1967 Chevrolet.

Museum curator Alan “Bones” Stone demonstrated the arduous process of starting the German-built 1939 Lanz one cylinder hot-bulb tractor. The Bulldog is a behemoth and takes giant amounts of courage to crank over.

There is also a popular casual restaurant on site for down home southern diner food.

From Washington, DC, the museum is a 2½-hour straight shot south on I-95 (about 20 minutes south of Richmond, Virginia) and is open seven days a week. For more information, go to keystonetractorworks.com.

This 1959 Massey-Ferguson Model 65 is fueled by LPG. The original price was $3,935.

A 1949 McCormick O-4 Orchard tractor featured an engine air intake below the body and wheel fenders for navigating rows of fruit trees.