Jack Olding of Hatfield, Hertfordshire,

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

had a company (Jack Olding & Co. Ltd), which specialised in the import and modification of tanks and tractors during the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...

(notably being the sole importer into the UK of

Caterpillars Caterpillars ( ) are the larval stage of members of the order Lepidoptera (the insect order comprising butterflies and moths). As with most common names, the application of the word is arbitrary, since the larvae of sawflies (suborder Symp ...

). He had a factory on the A1 just to the north of Hatfield, at a site now known as Oldings Corner. After the war, partly because of government pressure caused by a shortage of dollars, he made an ultimately unsuccessful gamble by relinquishing the Caterpillar agency for what proved to be the less than successful Vickers Vigor tractor. Indeed, the company is recognized as the only Caterpillar dealer to voluntarily give up the franchise. They were also distributors for the

Opperman Motocart : ''There are also several persons called Opperman, listed at Opperman (disambiguation)'' S E Opperman was a tractor manufacturer in England. After he saw the Bond Minicar he decided to build his own four-wheel microcar at a factory in Elstree, ...

. W. A. Robotham of

Rolls-Royce Rolls-Royce (always hyphenated) may refer to: * Rolls-Royce Limited, a British manufacturer of cars and later aero engines, founded in 1906, now defunct Automobiles * Rolls-Royce Motor Cars, the current car manufacturing company incorporated in ...

recalls him as a ''"great sportsman, a charming host and an able administrator"'' with his main hobbies ''"racing"'' (he ran horses in the Grand National), ''"shooting and playing games of chance"''; but he was an unlucky punter, and Robotham learned not to follow his racing tips. The Vickers tractor used a Rolls-Royce engine, and Oldings set up a worldwide service organisation for the tractor. But

Vickers-Armstrongs Vickers-Armstrongs Limited was a British engineering conglomerate formed by the merger of the assets of Vickers Limited and Sir W G Armstrong Whitworth & Company in 1927. The majority of the company was nationalised in the 1960s and 1970s, w ...

had to fly urgently-needed tractor parts around the world at great expense, and stopped production after making about a thousand tractors. On his death the company passed to Scottish Land Development and became known as SLD Olding. Jack Olding's real name was Henry John Douglas Olding.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Olding, Jack English businesspeople 20th-century British businesspeople

See also

References