T&D Custom Lawn & Garden Tractors is the hobby of father/son-in-law team, Dale Daigger and Todd Carter. Several years ago Dale purchased a John Deere garden tractor to help with some chores around the farm. The little tractor needed some new paint so Dale turned to his son-in-law to do the repaint. The renewed tractor and the fun of working together on a project made Dale and Todd consider taking this new found hobby a little further.
They repainted several garden tractors and then started making modifications to them. After attending some tractor shows, both thought it would be fun to try their hand at customizing a lawn and garden tractor into a small scale replica of a real tractor.
In early projects, Todd and Dale had great help from outside sources, but now Todd and Dale do the fabrication, welding, body work and painting with very limited outsourcing. The majority of the metal fabrication is still done by hand by cutting with a 4 ½ inch grinder with a cut-off wheel as well as using a homemade brake for bending metal.
When building tractors Dale and Todd consider how to make them fit the scale of the lawn tractor base they use, along with the more important part of keeping them as close as possible in details to its full sized counterpart. Dale and Todd are often asked if these miniature tractors are ½ scale reproductions. They prefer to call them lawn mower/garden tractor scale. Since real tractors vary greatly in size as well as the various lawn and garden tractors Dale and Todd use to replicate them, they do not claim the tractors are exact half scale. There are amazing exact half scale tractors out there, but Dale and Todd prefer to have the fun of riding them and no one at T&D has a half scale behind!
At this point we do not take orders or do custom work for others, but we will occasionally have a completed tractor or various items for sale. We attend various tractor and lawn and garden shows throughout the year. We look forward to seeing you there.
Our goals at T&D are to have fun doing what we enjoy and to continue to build one of a kind miniature tractors.
