From Maydha Devarajan, Chatham News + Record
Earl Daniel Jr. is a natural problem-solver.
Whether being on call for his loyal base of clients at Clapp Tractor — an agricultural equipment dealer located in downtown Siler City — or waking up in the middle of the night because he’s finally cracked the answer to a nagging issue on an engine, the veteran mechanic has an paralleled commitment to his craft.
And amid a rapidly changing era of agricultural advancements and machinery, Daniel has managed to build a laudable career at the same place of business he started as a teenager. The 70-year-old is ringing in half a century of employment as a Clapp Tractor technician.
Coworkers and customers alike are quick to assert that Daniel is patient, precise and has a wealth of knowledge on mechanics unlike any other. But most important of all: he’s got a golden touch.
And tractors are his forte.
Beginnings
Daniel began his career at Clapp Tractor in August 1972 at the age of 19. Recently, sharing his memories on bench at the business, he recalled just how much the war-time era building has changed from the time he was a teenager, with long windows that once acted as a skylight in the mechanical room now replaced by wooden beams. The tractor dealership, at 202 North 2nd Ave., is a treasure trove of history, opening in 1937, and once sat underneath the National Guard Armory during the end of World War II.
“He definitely is our mentor on not just knowledge about equipment because he knows all that, but he does know all of the quirks of this old building, the comings and goings,” business owner Al Clapp said of Daniel.
Daniel’s interest in tractors started from a young age. As a child, his grandparents would take him and his brother to the airport and different tractor dealerships in Greensboro, where they’d spend countless Sunday afternoons admiring airplanes and tractor equipment (he said his favorites were always the red tractors). His father also worked as a mechanic for Dixie Sales, an independent garage that repaired various makes of automobiles in Greensboro.
And once, his grandfather traveled from Summerfield, where the family lived, to Siler City just to buy a tractor — from the very same Clapp Tractor, then called Clapp Brothers Tractor & Implement.
“I think that [those trips] probably had an influence of why instead of [focusing on] the automotive part, I went to tractors,” Daniel said. “I just enjoyed doing the work on them.”
Clapp and Daniel say Clapp Tractor is now visited on occasion by the next generation of mechanics in the making, children who eagerly accompany their parents or grandparents on trips to look at the tractors that sit in a line in the lot next door.
Daniel jokes that he was educated at the “school of hard knocks,” often figuring out what works and what doesn’t for a piece of equipment the hard way. His advice, gleaned from years of getting frustrated by failed attempts to fix a part, is to walk away and then return to the problem.
“Best thing do is walk off a minute, regroup, go back and try it again,” he said.
These days, Daniel is frequently posed with questions by other mechanics in the shop when they get stumped on equipment issues, serving as a reliable second opinion.
Customers will also specifically reach out to Clapp Tractor, knowing Daniel has expertise on more vintage pieces of equipment.
“So imagine there’s tractors that he may have worked out 45, 50 years ago, that he’s still working on, that they come back and he works on today,” Clapp said.
Joe Welborn, 58, is one of Daniel’s longtime clients and owns Welborn Farms in Randleman. He’s purchased at least six tractors from Clapp Tractor, after buying his first from the business in 1996, and said he prefers Daniel to service all his equipment at the shop.
“I mean, if Earl don’t know it, nobody else does,” Welborn said.
Welborn appreciates Daniel for his technical skills, he said, but also because he’s a good listener, and does what he can to give his customers the agency to walk through and solve issues on their own.
“All these tractor dealers and stuff [have] got a book to tell you what to look for, whatever, and Earl’s good at figuring out stuff that the book don’t tell you,” he said. ‘So it’s just part of his genetics, is what I’d say.”
Similarly, Clapp said being a good mechanic is something that’s “like a gene,” noting the natural problem-solving instincts and constant perseverance he sees in Daniel when tackling repairs.
“It’s just something you have or you don’t,” Clapp said.
Methodical and meticulous
Daniel is reserved. He answers questions methodically and seriously, similar to the way in which his fellow coworkers describe how he approaches his craft.
He maintains books of notes, stemming from a request from Clapp’s sister-in-law, who worked at the company, to start compiling records for reference around eight years ago.
Dressed in a gray mechanic’s shirt, with the tips of his fingers stained with grease — evidence of his trade — he flipped through one of the legal pads he keeps. Rows and rows of neat handwriting lined the page, marking the day’s work with the model of a specific tractor and the time he took to repair a particular piece of equipment.
“Because it makes it easier, if they ask me something,” he said. “It’s like a lot of times, I can go back and I may make notes, write wires, color-code for a plug-in that I’m taking apart.”
His fellow employees describe Daniel as meticulous, citing his careful note-taking and his expansive backlog of knowledge on tractor repair.
Ivey Morgan, the company’s service manager and the daughter of Al Clapp, also called Daniel “humble,” saying she only discovered this year marked his 50th at the company because she noticed the words “43 years” near Daniel’s name — etched into the sidewalk next to the building, where concrete was poured seven years ago.
“He comes in, he is so quiet and he just sits back there and works,” she said. “And sometimes it goes ‘til lunchtime, I haven’t seen him — he’s just back there working.”
When asked if he chose to do anything to mark his 50 years of employment at Clapp Tractor, Daniel laughed.
“Not really,” he said. “Just being able to work the next day.”
Keeping up with changing times
Daniel, who grew up in Summerfield and Silk Hope and graduated from Jordan-Matthews High School, has lived in town in Siler City for the past couple of decades. From the corner of downtown Siler City where the dealership is located, he’s watched as the town has shifted and stretched, and as landmarks have come and gone.
He’s been through different management at Clapp Tractor, starting in his position back when Al Clapp’s grandfather’s cousin, Sam Clapp, was the original owner.
John Winslow, who owned Clapp Tractor from 1994 to 2006 and worked as a former representative for agricultural machinery manufacturer New Holland, has worked closely with Daniel over the years.
Winslow, 79, said when Daniel retires, a great deal of knowledge will leave with him. Daniel takes his time when repairing a tractor, Winslow said, but when he’s touched a piece of equipment, customers know they won’t have to go back in and fix it.
“He’s concentrated on what he does… he wants to do it right, and he doesn’t get in a hurry,” Winslow said.
Aside from being a witness to the changing face of Siler City and Clapp Tractor, Daniel noted the incredible growth of the tractor industry, which he has had to keep up with.
His tools of the trade have gone from a screwdriver and an adjustable wrench to a laptop and more sophisticated technology, he said. Today, tractor manufacturer John Deere is even building driverless vehicles.
At Clapp Tractor, all the tractors sold now come from foreign markets overseas. Clapp said the major lines that the business carries include Mahindra, New Holland and Bad Boys tractors, but the pieces that Daniel grew up on and knows best are from International Harvester — once a dominant manufacturer of farm equipment that went bankrupt in the 1980s.
Now, most of the issues Daniel deals with when making repairs are user-error related, often because a customer forgets to change out a filter, he said. In addition, mechanics in the shop are now increasingly running into delays in getting parts, which extends the time that farmers won’t be able to use their equipment.
As the agricultural sector has changed, so have the clients he serves, Daniel said.
“I think a lot of farmers that were here when I started here — they’re gone now,” he said. “And so the equipment’s been sold and then you get in the thing of, ‘Well, I remember this tractor, but the original owner’s not here.’”
Just two weeks ago, for example, Daniel found himself getting started on repairs on a 1984 International 5088 Harvester — a tractor he first worked on decades ago.
Clapp said the shop is planning a small celebration for Daniel in December. After 50 years of working in the same job, Daniel said the best part has been genuinely liking what he does for a living.
As for retirement, Daniel said he anticipates slowing down, but not for a couple of years. It’s a job that’s kept him on his toes, and one that he expects will only continue to do so.
“Things have gotten a whole lot more complicated,” Daniel said. “And the thing that you may say, ‘Well, I’ve seen it all now’ — you never see it all, you won’t never see it all.”
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