Oliver Heritage Issue #108

Oliver Heritage Issue #108 - Apr/May 2022

• Featuring: Mist Green Oliver 880s. What the sales or marketing department thought would be a good idea was in reality... not. Decades later, what remains are a few dozen pastel-colored 880s that are often mistaken for a bad paint job. Feature tractor owner: Schachtner Farms – Deer Park, WI; Folie Farms – Somerset, WI; Engelmann Family – Green Isle, MN.

• Oliver Experimental Engineering: Did you know that in 1958, Oliver was considering putting a diesel engine in the 440? Apparently, a Perkins engine was in consideration. And, did you know three different engines were being tested for the 990 series of tractors in 1958? None of these ideas, or a few others, went into fruition, but it’s interesting to dream about “what might have been.”

• White 2-70: While some might have thought the 2-70 was an all-new tractor, it was just an update to a model introduced fourteen years earlier.

• Oliver Artist: Charles Freitag, a well-known agricultural artist who grew up on a family farm in the Hawkeye State. 

• The 43 Cotton Harvester: Oliver introduced the 43 Cotton Harvester in 1965. While this wasn’t Oliver’s first attempt at a cotton stripper, it was the company’s only overhead basket machine. In production for just two years, the venture was costly and sales did not warrant the expense. 

• Cletrac Facts: Ray B. Davis, Pt 2.  Sometime in the mid-1930s, Ray Davis got a call that two Cletrac 35 tractors needed to be unloaded from railroad boxcars. Now how much of a job could that be?

• Ask the Oliver Mechanic: Question and answer with Larry Harsin.

• Another Oliver User: Doug Duske. The memories and what you learned by tilling the soil and tending to the livestock during your formative years follow you through life.

• Scale Model Olivers: Like most kids growing up on a farm, toy tractors and equipment were used for their make-believe sandbox farming. Ron Grosjean was no different, “As a kid, I was excited to be with Dad, regardless of what he was doing on the farm.”