More 72 Ollie pics

rrlund

Well-known Member
I'll post todays a little early. I posted a dozen pictures from a 1972 Oliver full line catalog last night,here's some more.
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I give. In reading the ads posted on Oliver it appears to me they did their homework and offered a lot of desirable variants to suit your situation.

Sooooo, why did they go under? Was it maybe like Studebaker and Packard, and Tucker, and ......the list goes on, the little guy couldn't compete with the big 3 because the latter had deep pockets?

What a shame.

Mark
 
Long story. They were doing well in the mid 50s. White Motors was in hurting and needed a loan. Oliver loaned them money. They didn't pay it back. Then in 59 or 60,two brothers by the name of Mailman,what we would call corporate raiders today,bought enough stock to have controlling interest in Oliver. They almost immediately sold it to White,so for all intent and purposes,White bought Oliver with Olivers own money.
Then White bought Moline and Cockshutt. They didn't put a lot of money in to research and development over the next decade and a half,just milked them for a cash cow to prop up their ailing truck business.
They finally merged all three companies in to one,the White Farm Equipment Company,in order to save money.
The last straw came when White Consolidated Industries tried to buy them. They assumed it was a done deal and went in and stripped everything out in a plan to modernize. Then the Justice Department said the deal violated anti trust laws because WCI already owned too much of Allis Chalmers. So the company was stripped of management with empty factories and it was down hill from there.

That's the readers digest version anyway.
 
thanks for the history I never knew what had happened, I always felt they had a good solid useable product, we ran a well used 69 2150 for 5 years or so, other than the cab of the day on it it was a nice riding and running tractor
 
Studebaker was making a profit when it shut down, management in New York decided it would be more profitable to shut down the company and steal the pension fund than renovating the factory.
 
I was talking to a guy in Taylor Texas who told me that back at that time Oliver had the only harvester that would pick the cotton they grew down there. He was telling about one old Oliver dealer who had sold something like 70 new harvesters one year.
He said everything is Deere now,but that the new Deeres use the old Oliver design.
 
It was still being offered anyway. Something that was missing though was the 550 tractor. They sold those through 75,but didn't have them in the catalog. Same thing with the 7300 combine.
 
Randy, thanks for posting. I still own and use a lot of stuff from that era and it'sneat to see the ads for it.
 
Randy - what about the Over-Under Hydraulic Shift? Was that a pretty reliable setup? Was it troublesome after it aged? There was a sharp looking gas 1650 or 1655? for sale about forty miles from me, but that Over/Under worried me. Had a neighbor with a perpetually busted TA on an International, and I figured my pockets might not be deep enough, based on his experience. Probably a totally different setup, but it made me scared of it. I was only around one Oliver in my life - an old timer that I made hay for when I was a kid had a diesel, seems like an 88 mebbe. I remember it being a nice old tractor, but there must not have been a real good dealer close enough to see a lot of Olivers in this area. They sure look like they had their act together!

Thanks for posting the pictures!
 
The over/under and hydrapower units were just about bulletproof. No comaprison to the Torque Amplifier. You'll hear stories of them going out now and then,sure,but it wasn't a habitual problem. Pretty simple unit. I've got 3 with the hyrdapower two speed and one with the 3 speed over/under. Can't say that I've ever put a dime in any of them.
 
Not much in the 1555 and 1655. The others went to closed center hydraulics. The real big difference turned out to be a huge black eye for Oliver when they changed the 1855 to a turboed 310 engine instead of the 354 Perkins that the 1850 had.
 
Also heard that MM management came in and stopped the warranty on the 1855 engine. They didn't like Oliver and ran it down the drain. The 1955 engine Oliver was using for the 1855 warranty program would have saved Oliver if the level heads had been in the top management. Sharp pencil pushers don't always make good company decisions.
 
I wouldn't object to any of that good ol' Oliver equipment, but would love to have a 1655 or 1755 to replace the 1650 I regetably sold a few years ago. Thanks for posting the pics!
 

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