The invention discloses a crawler follower mechanism for a thin steel material quenching and leveling process. The crawler follower mechanism comprises chain-plate crawler units, an oil tank assembly and a motor transmission system, wherein the chain-plate crawler units are arranged surrounding tank bodies, each chain-plate crawler unit comprises chain wheels, a chain wheel shaft and a closed-ring crawler which is formed through connecting a plurality of chain-plate assemblies in series, and thus, the closed-ring crawlers cyclically revolve around the face of an oil tank under the drive of the chain wheels; each chain-plate assembly comprises a chain plate, chain plate pin shafts, rollers, embedded shafts and rolling bearings; the motor transmission system is connected with the chain wheel shafts and is used for transferring motor power, so that the closed-ring crawlers are driven to cyclically revolve, and meanwhile, relative-sliding-free follow-up with a quenched thin material is realized. Through the crawler follower mechanism, the phenomena that folds appear after the thin material is quenched, the thin material is stuck due to the fact that the rolling bearings are burnt out due to too high temperature of the thin material, and the like can be effectively avoided; meanwhile, the surface quality of the quenched thin material is remarkably improved, and the leveling efficiency of the quenched thin material is remarkably increased.