![Oliver80TractorParade](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e4/Oliver80TractorParade.jpg)
The Oliver Farm Equipment Company was an American farm equipment manufacturer from the 20th century. It was formed as a result of a 1929 merger of four companies:
the
American Seeding Machine Company
American(s) may refer to:
* American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America"
** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America
** American ancestry, pe ...
of
Richmond, Indiana;
Oliver Chilled Plow Works of
South Bend, Indiana
South Bend is a city in and the county seat of St. Joseph County, Indiana, on the St. Joseph River near its southernmost bend, from which it derives its name. As of the 2020 census, the city had a total of 103,453 residents and is the fourt ...
;
Hart-Parr Tractor Company of
Charles City, Iowa; and
Nichols and Shepard Company of
Battle Creek, Michigan.
On November 1, 1960, the
White Motor Corporation
The White Motor Company was an American automobile, truck, bus and agricultural tractor manufacturer from 1900 until 1980. The company also produced bicycles, roller skates, automatic lathes, and sewing machines. Before World War II, the compa ...
of
Cleveland, Ohio, purchased the Oliver Farm Equipment Company.
Merger
Four companies merged on April 1, 1929, to form the Oliver Farm Equipment Company: The Oliver Chilled Plow Company, dating from 1855; the Hart-Parr Tractor Company from 1897, and the American Seeding Machine Company and Nichols and Shepard Company, both dating from 1848.
By 1929, each of these companies had reached a point where continuing operations independently would not be feasible. For most of them, the market had some time earlier reached a saturation point, and in some instances, their machines were dated and rapidly approaching
obsolescence
Obsolescence is the state of being which occurs when an object, service, or practice is no longer maintained or required even though it may still be in good working order. It usually happens when something that is more efficient or less risky r ...
. By uniting their various and somewhat diverse product lines into a single company, Oliver Farm Equipment immediately became a full-line manufacturer.
Merged companies
American Seeding Machine Company
![PikiWiki Israel 6719 Kfar Szold](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b6/PikiWiki_Israel_6719_Kfar_Szold.JPG)
The American Seeding Machine Company was organized in 1903 from the a merger of seven different manufacturers of
grain drills, corn planters and other "seeding machines." The leading corporate component among the seven merged companies was the
Superior Drill Company
Superior Drilling Company was a manufacturer of Planter (farm implement), farming implements that formed in the 1880s to 1903 in Springfield, Ohio, United States.Edward Lyon Buchwalter was one of the organizers of the ''Superior Drill Company'' an ...
of
Springfield, Ohio.
Accordingly, the American Seeding Machine Company established its corporate headquarters at Springfield in the facilities formerly operated by the Superior Drill Company.
Other companies which formed the 1903 merger include
P. P. Mast and Company P. is an abbreviation or acronym that may refer to:
* Page (paper), where the abbreviation comes from Latin ''pagina''
* Paris Herbarium, at the '' Muséum national d'histoire naturelle''
* ''Pani'' (Polish), translating as Mrs.
Mrs. (American ...
(est. 1856),
Hoosier Drill Company (est. 1857), the
Empire Drill Company
An empire is a "political unit" made up of several territories and peoples, "usually created by conquest, and divided between a dominant center and subordinate peripheries". The center of the empire (sometimes referred to as the metropole) ex ...
, and
Bickford & Huffman. The Superior Drill Company name lived on for many years following the merger that created Oliver, in the "Oliver Superior" line of seeding drills and related equipment.
Oliver Chilled Plow Works
James Oliver started the Oliver Chilled Plow Works in 1853
In
Mishawaka, Indiana
Mishawaka is a city on the St. Joseph River, in Penn Township, St. Joseph County, in the U.S. state of Indiana. The population was 51,063 as of the 2020 census. Its nickname is "the Princess City". Mishawaka is a principal city of the South ...
where he worked in a
foundry
A foundry is a factory that produces metal castings. Metals are cast into shapes by melting them into a liquid, pouring the metal into a mold, and removing the mold material after the metal has solidified as it cools. The most common metals pr ...
. He later bought into an already existing small foundry in
South Bend, Ind. Plows with
cast iron
Cast iron is a class of iron– carbon alloys with a carbon content more than 2%. Its usefulness derives from its relatively low melting temperature. The alloy constituents affect its color when fractured: white cast iron has carbide impur ...
bottoms and
moldboard
A plough or plow (Differences between American and British spellings, US; both ) is a farm tool for loosening or turning the soil before sowing seed or planting. Ploughs were traditionally drawn by oxen and horses, but in modern farms are draw ...
s had been successfully used by
farmer
A farmer is a person engaged in agriculture, raising living organisms for food or raw materials. The term usually applies to people who do some combination of raising field crops, orchards, vineyards, poultry, or other livestock. A farmer m ...
s and
planters in the eastern states of the United States since the time of
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson (April 13, 1743 – July 4, 1826) was an American statesman, diplomat, lawyer, architect, philosopher, and Founding Father who served as the third president of the United States from 1801 to 1809. He was previously the natio ...
.
However, in the sticky
soil
Soil, also commonly referred to as earth or dirt
Dirt is an unclean matter, especially when in contact with a person's clothes, skin, or possessions. In such cases, they are said to become dirty.
Common types of dirt include:
* Debri ...
s of
North Dakota
North Dakota () is a U.S. state in the Upper Midwest, named after the indigenous Dakota Sioux. North Dakota is bordered by the Canadian provinces of Saskatchewan and Manitoba to the north and by the U.S. states of Minnesota to the east, So ...
and various other portions of the
Midwest, the
cast iron
Cast iron is a class of iron– carbon alloys with a carbon content more than 2%. Its usefulness derives from its relatively low melting temperature. The alloy constituents affect its color when fractured: white cast iron has carbide impur ...
plows would not "scour"; that is, the sticky soil would cling to the plow, disrupting the flow of soil over the plow's surface, making plowing impossible. Thus, when settlement of North America moved over the
Allegheny Mountains
The Allegheny Mountain Range (; also spelled Alleghany or Allegany), informally the Alleghenies, is part of the vast Appalachian Mountain Range of the Eastern United States and Canada and posed a significant barrier to land travel in less devel ...
into the Midwest, there was a need for a new plow that would be able to scour in the soils of the Midwest. To allow a cast iron bottom to scour in sticky soil, various methods of
heat treating
Heat treating (or heat treatment) is a group of industrial, thermal and metalworking processes used to alter the physical, and sometimes chemical, properties of a material. The most common application is metallurgical. Heat treatments are als ...
for creating a
hardened surface on the metal plow bottom had been attempted. All of these processes failed because the hard surface created was very thin and would soon wear through to the soft iron under the heat-treated surface. James Oliver developed his
sand casting
Sand casting, also known as sand molded casting, is a metal casting process characterized by using sand as the mold material. The term "sand casting" can also refer to an object produced via the sand casting process. Sand castings are produced i ...
process to include rapid chilling of the molten iron near the outside surface of the casting, which resulted in a bottom that had a thick hardened surface with far greater wearability than competing plow bottoms.
![Oliver factory mainoffice](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/37/Oliver_factory_mainoffice.jpg)
Another problem common to cast iron plow bottoms was the lack of soundness and uniformity in the metal's molecular structure, which meant that some cast iron bottoms would have soft spots in the hardened surface, reducing the wearability of the plow bottom. Improvements made by James Oliver to his casting process also overcame this problem.
Consequently, on June 30, 1857, James Oliver obtained his first
patent
A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an enabling disclosure of the invention."A ...
from the United States government for his chilled plow shares and in February 1869, he obtained another patent for his process. What Oliver accomplished by this invention is sometimes referred to as chill hardening, or simply chilling. The purpose of chilling is to produce an extremely hard and durable exterior of the object. This is done by including "chills", pieces of metal, into the sand mold, such that when the molten iron is poured into the mould, the portion next to the chill cools rapidly, hardening in a way akin to
quenching
In materials science, quenching is the rapid cooling of a workpiece in water, oil, polymer, air, or other fluids to obtain certain material properties. A type of heat treating, quenching prevents undesired low-temperature processes, such as pha ...
. This chilled area forms the exterior of the plowpoint. This metal cools more quickly than the metal which forms the other portion of the plowshare, and effectively becomes
case hardened
Case-hardening or surface hardening is the process of hardening the surface of a metal object while allowing the metal deeper underneath to remain soft, thus forming a thin layer of harder metal at the surface. For iron or steel with low carbon ...
. Also, the vapors which arise as the molten metal comes in contract with the mould are expelled through a spout. Had these vapors been trapped in the mould, they would have caused impurities and would have weakened the plowpoint at the place where it should have been the hardest. To harden the plowpoints, Oliver arranged his moulding apparatus in such manner that the surface of the chill was in a position so that the melted metal first came into contact with the chill at the edge of the plowshare. This insured a hard plow cutting point.
![Oliver Chilled Plow Works](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f9/Oliver_Chilled_Plow_Works.jpg)
Thus, James Oliver's chilled plow bottom became a practical success and on July 22, 1868, the Oliver's business was incorporated as the South Bend Iron Works. In 1871, the company sold 1,500 plows per year. By 1874 this figure had increased to 17,000 plows a year.
At the time of death of James Oliver in 1908, the company had again changed names to the Oliver Chilled Plow Works. and their factory site in
South Bend, Indiana
South Bend is a city in and the county seat of St. Joseph County, Indiana, on the St. Joseph River near its southernmost bend, from which it derives its name. As of the 2020 census, the city had a total of 103,453 residents and is the fourt ...
covered with 25 of those acres under roof.
In January 1885, the plant's mostly Polish workers went on strike in protest of cuts to wages and hours in response to a glut of stock. Veterans of the Civil War with fixed bayonets finally ejected the strikers from the premises. The ownership considered leaving South Bend in the wake of the destruction of parts of the plant, with newspapers stating that they feared "the Socialistic influences operating among the foreign elements at South Bend...probably emanating from Chicago." Many workers employed in plow factories died from grindstone consumption. This is the result of the dust from emery wheels and grindstone in the grinding and polishing rooms. “In South Bend, the ‘grinder’ is either a Pole or a Belgian; so when he dies, society knows nothing about it.” Upon the death of his father in 1908, Joseph D. Oliver, the only son of James and Susan (Doty) Oliver took over the management of the Oliver Chilled Plow Works. By 1910, the company was manufacturing a wide variety of farm tillage implements in addition to the chilled plow. Production had reached the point that, in 1910, the company purchased over 40,000 tons of
pig iron alone.
Hart-Parr Gasoline Engine Company
Charles Walter Hart was born at
Charles City, Iowa in 1872. At the age of twenty, he transferred from
Iowa State College of Agriculture and Mechanical Arts, to the
University of Wisconsin–Madison
A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United Stat ...
.
It was here that he met Charles H. Parr, and the two young men quickly became friends. Together they worked on their Special Honours Thesis and from that thesis they built three working
internal combustion engine
An internal combustion engine (ICE or IC engine) is a heat engine in which the combustion of a fuel occurs with an oxidizer (usually air) in a combustion chamber that is an integral part of the working fluid flow circuit. In an internal c ...
s right there on the campus at Madison.
Following their graduation from the University of Wisconsin in 1897, Hart and Parr gathered $3000 in capital and formed the Hart-Parr Gasoline Engine Company.
Towards the end of 1899, Charles Hart paid a visit to his parents in Charles City, Iowa. He complained to his father that development funds could not be found for his tractor project. "There's money around here that might be interested," replied the elder Hart, admitting for the first time that his son's ambition was not folly. They then found another investor in Charles D. Ellis, a local attorney, who invested $50,000 in additional capital.
In 1900, as the engine business expanded, Hart and Parr decided to move their company from Madison to Charles City. Hart-Parr Company was organized on June 12, 1901, at Charles City, Iowa. Ground was broken for the new factory on July 5 that year. By the following December, the Hart-Parr Company was now ready to do business, and had an authorized capitalization of $100,000.
Hart-Parr number 1 was completed in 1902. Customers did not immediately beat the proverbial path. However, Hart-Parr was able to field one salesman to run demonstrations at
county fair
An agricultural show is a public event exhibiting the equipment, animals, sports and recreation associated with agriculture and animal husbandry. The largest comprise a livestock show (a judged event or display in which breeding stock is exhibit ...
s and other events. Hart was patient. "We can't force it," he said. "We have to let it simmer into the market."
Little by little, the Hart-Parrs began to gather defenders. Some of the first tractors delivered were gaining a reputation of usefulness that far surpassed that of the steamers.
W.H. Williams, Sales Manager in 1907, decided the words "traction engine" were vague and too long to be used in press releases, so he coined the word "
Tractor
A tractor is an engineering vehicle specifically designed to deliver a high tractive effort (or torque) at slow speeds, for the purposes of hauling a trailer or machinery such as that used in agriculture, mining or construction. Most commo ...
", a combination of the words "traction" and "power", instead. For this reason, and because the Charles City plant was the first to be continuously and exclusively used for tractor production, Hart-Parr often used the slogan "Founders of the Tractor Industry" in their advertising.
Nichols and Shepard Company
In 1848, John Nichols opened a
blacksmith
A blacksmith is a metalsmith who creates objects primarily from wrought iron or steel, but sometimes from other metals, by forging the metal, using tools to hammer, bend, and cut (cf. tinsmith). Blacksmiths produce objects such as gates, gr ...
shop in
Battle Creek, Michigan.
In the blacksmith shop, John Nichols began making various farm tools for local farmers. He built his first
thresher/separator in 1852.
The business was successful from the start, so successful that some time in the 1850s he took on a partner by the name of David Shepard.
Together they formed a partnership known as Nichols, Shepard and Company which manufactured farm machinery,
steam engines and mill machinery.
The first thresher/separator of small
grains (largely
wheat
Wheat is a grass widely cultivated for its seed, a cereal grain that is a worldwide staple food. The many species of wheat together make up the genus ''Triticum'' ; the most widely grown is common wheat (''T. aestivum''). The archaeologi ...
and
oats
The oat (''Avena sativa''), sometimes called the common oat, is a species of cereal grain grown for its seed, which is known by the same name (usually in the plural, unlike other cereals and pseudocereals). While oats are suitable for human co ...
) was developed in about 1831 by the Pitts brothers—Hiram and John Pitts of
Buffalo, New York
Buffalo is the second-largest city in the U.S. state of New York (behind only New York City) and the seat of Erie County. It is at the eastern end of Lake Erie, at the head of the Niagara River, and is across the Canadian border from Sou ...
.
However, this early thresher, called the "ground hog," was quite unlike the conventional thresher/separators that developed since that time. For instance, the ground hog's separating unit was largely a slatted apron which pulled the grain across a screen.
John Nichols and David Shepard realized that the apron style separator was not a technology that was going to work. Consequently, in 1857, the Nichols and Shepard Company developed the first "vibrator" separating unit for the small grain thresher.
This vibrator-style of separator soon became universally adopted by all other thresher/separator manufacturers. The Nichols and Shepard Company received a patent from the United States government for their "Vibrator" grain separator on January 7, 1862.
The company also obtained a number of other patents for other advances in the thresher/separator technology, for original improvements in steam engine traction technology.
During the 1920s, the Nichols and Shepard Company developed a successfully functioning corn picker. Following the acquisition of the Nichols and Shepard Company by the Oliver company. This corn picker became the direct ancestor of the famous Oliver cornpicker.
Later acquisitions
For the first couple of years, the tractors carried the Oliver-Hart-Parr designation, but the Hart-Parr essence soon disappeared, just as an entirely new line of purely Oliver tractors made their appearance.
McKenzie Manufacturing Company
Following the 1929 merger of the four companies into the Oliver Farm Equipment Company, several other corporate acquisitions were made by the new company over a period of years. The first of these post-merger acquisitions occurred a mere year later, in 1930, when the Oliver Farm Equipment Company purchased the McKenzie Manufacturing Company of
La Crosse, Wisconsin.
The McKenzie Manufacturing Company was a leading maker of
potato
The potato is a starchy food, a tuber of the plant ''Solanum tuberosum'' and is a root vegetable native to the Americas. The plant is a perennial in the nightshade family Solanaceae.
Wild potato species can be found from the southern Unit ...
planting and potato harvesting equipment.
Acquisition of the ''McKenzie Company'' broadened the line of farm equipment offered by Oliver to include potato diggers which were then sold under the "Oliver" name. However, following the 1930 merger production of the "Oliver" potato diggers moved out of La Crosse, Wisconsin to
Chicago, Illinois
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
, image_map =
, map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago
, coordinates =
, coordinates_footnotes =
, subdivision_type = Country
, subdivision_name ...
.
Ann Arbor Agricultural Machine Company
In 1943, the Oliver Farm Equipment Company purchased the Ann Arbor Agricultural Machine Company of
Ann Arbor, Michigan. Founded in 1885, the Ann Arbor Agricultural Machine Company became the leading manufacturer of "hay presses" or stationary
balers.
Cletrac
The Cleveland Tractor Company was created by Rollin H. White in 1916.
In 1918 the name was switched to Cletrac.
Later they became a part of the Oliver family in 1944. At the October 3, 1944 stockholders meeting, with approval of the stockholders, the corporate name was changed to "The Oliver Corporation".
In 1962 White Motors bought Oliver, thus bringing Cletrac back to the White Family.
Unfortunately, they didn't seem to miss Cletrac at all, and only three years later, crawler tractor production ended at Charles City in 1965.
A.B. Farquhar Company
In 1952 the A.B. Farquhar Company was sold to the Oliver Corporation. Founded in
York, Pennsylvania
York (Pennsylvania Dutch: ''Yarrick''), known as the White Rose City (after the symbol of the House of York), is the county seat of York County, Pennsylvania, United States. It is located in the south-central region of the state. The populatio ...
, in the 1850s as W.W. Dingee & Co, in 1861 young businessman
Arthur Briggs Farquhar
Arthur Briggs Farquhar (September 28, 1838 – March 5, 1925) was an American businessman, multi-millionaire and writer. He was the founder of A.B. Farquhar Company in York, Pennsylvania.
Early life
Arthur Briggs Farquhar was born at ''The Ceda ...
bought the business and enlarged it during the Civil War as the Pennsylvania Agricultural Works. In 1889, the A. B. Farquhar Company began building threshing machines and other farm machinery. Later, the company started the production of cultivators for farm use (especially potato harvesting equipment). Farquhar produced some steam engines early then moved onto the production of traction engines.
Product development
Crawlers
![Oliver OC-3 and Cletrac HG tractors at Antique Powerland in 2016](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/84/Oliver_OC-3_and_Cletrac_HG_tractors_at_Antique_Powerland_in_2016.jpg)
In 1944 Oliver acquired the Cleveland Tractor Company (Cletrac). They continued production of the existing Cletrac HG model until 1951, and based on the experience with
M2 High Speed Tractor
The M2 High-Speed Tractor (or colloquially M2 Cletrac) was an aircraft tug used by the United States Army Air Forces from 1942.
Construction
The M2 is a fully tracked vehicle designed to tow aircraft on primitive airfields. It was equipped with a ...
modified it to run on
rubber tracks in 1945, but the result turned out to be ahead of its time, and its small-scale production was discontinued in 1948. The agricultural Cletrac HG gradually evolved into the more industrial Oliver OC-3 which was produced from 1951 through 1957.
In 1956 Oliver announced the slightly larger OC-4 with a four-cylinder
Hercules
Hercules (, ) is the Roman equivalent of the Greek divine hero Heracles, son of Jupiter and the mortal Alcmena. In classical mythology, Hercules is famous for his strength and for his numerous far-ranging adventures.
The Romans adapted the ...
IXB3 engine. In late 1957 (diesel) and early 1958 (gas) OC-4's came equipped with 3 cylinder Hercules 130 engines. Most noticeable was the change to a 'beefier' more industrial front grill. In 1962 at the new Charles City, Iowa crawler production line, the last incarnation of the OC-4 was produced. It was a sturdier industrial model named the Series B. They were powered with the same 3 cylinder Hercules GO-130 and DD-130 engines of the mid-series models. The OC-4 product line was discontinued in 1965.
Oliver also produced larger crawlers:
the OC-6 from 1953 to 1960;
the OC-9 from 1959 to 1965;
the OC-12 from 1954 to 1961;
and the OC-15 and the large OC-18.
All crawler production was halted in 1965.
Tractors
![Oliver 1550 tractor PA3](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/01/Oliver_1550_tractor_PA3.jpg)
In 1948, Oliver was ready with an entirely new line of tractors. These were built over the successes of the past, including the
Oliver 60
The Oliver 60 series of row-crop tractors was a product line of agricultural tractors produced from 1940 to 1964 by the Oliver Farm Equipment Company. The 60 series was a four-cylinder follow-on to the six-cylinder Oliver 70. As the 70 was outsol ...
,
70, and
80 tractors.
The latter was even built with a
diesel engine
The diesel engine, named after Rudolf Diesel, is an internal combustion engine in which ignition of the fuel is caused by the elevated temperature of the air in the cylinder due to mechanical compression; thus, the diesel engine is a so-ca ...
, although very few were sold. However, in the 1950s, Oliver was an industry leader through their promotion of diesel power. Oliver led the industry in the sale of diesel tractors for several years.
The
Oliver 66
The Oliver 60 series of row-crop tractors was a product line of agricultural tractors produced from 1940 to 1964 by the Oliver Farm Equipment Company. The 60 series was a four-cylinder follow-on to the six-cylinder Oliver 70. As the 70 was outsol ...
,
77 and
88 tractors of the 1948 to 1954 period, marked an entirely new series of Fleetline models. The 77 and 88 could be bought with either
gasoline
Gasoline (; ) or petrol (; ) (see ) is a transparent, petroleum-derived flammable liquid that is used primarily as a fuel in most spark-ignited internal combustion engines (also known as petrol engines). It consists mostly of organi ...
or diesel engines. During 1954, the company upgraded these tractors with the new "Super" series models, and added the
Oliver Super 55
The Oliver Super 55 series of utility tractors was developed and produced from 1954 to 1975 by the Oliver Farm Equipment Company to complement the Oliver line of heavy row-crop and standard agricultural tracts. Like row-crop tractors, the wheel t ...
. It was the company's first compact utility tractor.
In 1958, Oliver began marketing the new
660
__NOTOC__
Year 660 ( DCLX) was a leap year starting on Wednesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. The denomination 660 for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era b ...
,
770
__NOTOC__
Year 770 ( DCCLXX) was a common year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. The denomination 770 for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era ...
,
880
__NOTOC__
Year 880 (Roman numerals, DCCCLXXX) was a leap year starting on Friday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar.
Events
By place
Byzantine Empire
* Battle of Cephalonia: A Byzantine Empire, Byzantine flee ...
,
990, and other new models.
Non-agricultural products
During the war years of the 1940s Oliver Corporation expanded rapidly into non-agricultural production, most notably in the defense sector. By 1947, the Oliver Corporation employed 9,000 with 37% of Oliver's production for defense contracts. Product lines included graders, forklifts, road rollers, crawlers, and power units incorporated into products by other companies.
Oliver also built airplane fuselages for
Boeing RB-47
The Boeing B-47 Stratojet (Boeing company designation Model 450) is a retired American long-range, six-engined, turbojet-powered strategic bomber designed to fly at high subsonic speed and at high altitude to avoid enemy interceptor aircraft. ...
E Reconnaissance planes at a Battle Creek, Michigan aviation division set up exclusively for defense contracts. The Charles City, Iowa plant assembled transmissions for the 25-ton crane carriers and built and assembled 106 mm
recoilless rifle gun mounts for the Army. The Cleveland, Ohio plant built the MG-1 crawler for the Army as well as tank parts. The Gilroy, California plant produced the 76 mm guns for the
Walker Bulldog tank. The Shelbyville, Ohio plant built 155 mm Howitzer gun parts.
Acquisition by White Motor Corporation
Oliver Corporation
White Motor Corporation
The White Motor Company was an American automobile, truck, bus and agricultural tractor manufacturer from 1900 until 1980. The company also produced bicycles, roller skates, automatic lathes, and sewing machines. Before World War II, the compa ...
of
Cleveland, Ohio had a long history of truck manufacturing. On November 1, 1960, White Motor acquired Oliver, changed the name to Oliver Corporation, and made it a wholly owned, separately operating subsidiary of the White Motor Corporation.
Further mergers, acquisitions, and branding
White also acquired
Cockshutt Farm Equipment Cockshutt was a large agricultural machinery manufacturer, known as Cockshutt Farm Equipment Limited (1957–1962), based in Brantford, Ontario, Canada.
Founded as the Brantford Plow Works by James G. Cockshutt in 1877, the name was changed to the ...
of Canada in February 1962, and it was made a subsidiary of Oliver Corporation. Cockshutt had also previously, in 1928, marketed tractors made by Hart-Parr, and again from 1934 through the late 1940s it marketed tractors made by Oliver, only changing the paint color to red, and changing the name tags to Cockshutt.
Minneapolis-Moline
Motec Industries was a large tractor and farm and industrial machinery producer based in Hopkins, Minnesota known for its Minneapolis-Moline tractor line. It was the product of a merger of three companies in 1929: Minneapolis Steel & Machinery (M ...
became a wholly owned subsidiary of White Motor Corporation in 1963. The Cockshutt production line was dropped and went back to using Olivers painted red. The Minneapolis-Moline and Oliver lines were blended until there was virtually no difference between them.
In 1960, the new four-digit tractor models appeared. Among them were the 1600,
1800
As of March 1 ( O.S. February 18), when the Julian calendar acknowledged a leap day and the Gregorian calendar did not, the Julian calendar fell one day further behind, bringing the difference to 12 days until February 28 ( O.S. February 16 ...
and
1900
As of March 1 ( O.S. February 17), when the Julian calendar acknowledged a leap day and the Gregorian calendar did not, the Julian calendar fell one day further behind, bringing the difference to 13 days until February 28 ( O.S. February 15), 2 ...
models. In 1969 White Motor Corporation formed
White Farm Equipment
White Farm Equipment is a manufacturer of agricultural machinery, now discontinued except for planters, and owned by AGCO.
History
In 1960, the White Motor Company entered the agriculture market with the purchase of the Oliver Farm Equipment ...
Company, almost immediately after a transitional period when virtually identical tractors and combines were marketed under different trade names. A few models were sold as Oliver, Minneapolis, or Cockshutt, the major difference being the paint colour. As the transaction continued, the White name was more and more applied to the tractor line, with the Oliver 2255, also known as the White 2255, being the last purely "Oliver" tractor. With the introduction of the White 4-150 Field Boss in 1974, the White name would be used, henceforth to the exclusion of all others.
White Motor Corporation shut down the original Oliver Chilled Plow Works factory (factory no. 1) in 1985. The Oliver buildings remained vacant until 2002 when most were demolished to make way for an industrial park. The Oliver powerhouse is now restored and occupied by Rose Brick & Material.
FIAT tractors were marketed under the Oliver name in the mid 1970s, such as the Oliver 1465 tractor. Oliver tractors with FIAT gages were available in 1970.
Today White is an
AGCO brand. AGCO was formed in 1990 by former
Deutz-Allis
Deutz-Allis was formed when Deutz-Fahr of Germany, part of KHD, purchased the agricultural assets of the Allis-Chalmers corporation in 1985.
Deutz-Allis was eventually sold to the Allis-Gleaner Corporation, or AGCO), in 1990. Deutz-Allis tract ...
executives. The executives took over Deutz-Allis and then purchased the White tractor line in 1991. The White tractor line was produced by AGCO from 1991 through 2001 when the White line was merged with AGCO-Allis to create the AGCO brand. The White name continues on under AGCO with the White Planter division.
Legacy
More information about Oliver Tractors can be found in
Oliver Heritage Magazine.
References
Further reading
* ''Oliver Tractor Data Book'', Motorbooks International,
* ''Classic Oliver Tractors: History, Models, Variations & Specifications 1855-1976'', Motorbooks International,
{{Authority control
*
Agriculture companies of the United States
Tractor manufacturers of the United States
Companies based in St. Joseph County, Indiana
South Bend, Indiana
Vehicle manufacturing companies established in 1924