New lawn sucker from old pear tree.

I have a 70yr old Pear tree in my lawn, after the dry summer it had very little fruit but it did send up a nice healthy looking shoot in the lawn about 2ft from the trunk. I am wondering if this new shoot could grow into a viable fruiting tree? or do suckers just have leaves and never fruit?
I'm considering cutting down the old trunk and letting this shoot take over, or should I just go buy a nice disease resistant modern young tree?

 

Hi
the sucker may be from a root stock that the pear tree was grafted on so I would say no plus it may not be a pear it may be a Quince which was used many moons ago as the root stock.

Time to to invest in a a new tree but it wont grow well in the space as the old tree was growing
the saying "You plant a pear for your heirs" shows you how long lived they are

Spruce

 

Ahh yes, thank you Spruce for refreshing my very old brain, I knew there was something about it not bearing fruit and yes root stock was it. I remember also now that I had a Victoria plumb that had a rotten trunk, so with at the time young kids in the garden I had to cut it down before it fell on them. It produced a shoot which grew up through a privet hedge. It became a tree in its own right but never ever bore fruit.
So even though the Pear tree is very old I may after a good pruning get fruit again next year.

 

have a look at grafting pears as you can add new branches to a old tree, thats how you get a family tree with many different varieties all on the one tree ... give your old tree some TLC and a a rose fertiliser end on February beginning of March ....

 

Or, you could graft a bit of the old tree onto the sucker, once it's growing away well, in a couple of years, you could get rid of the old tree.