The Oliver company can be traced back to Charles Hart and Charles Parr,
who started the Hart Parr company in Madison, Wisconsin, in 1897 to
manufacture small gasoline engines. With financial backing from Charles
Ellis, Hart Parr moved to Charles City, Iowa, in 1901, and built a new
factory. By this time, they were mounting their gasoline engines on
frames with wheels. They called their contraptions gasoline traction
engines. Their marketing department found that this was too hard to
describe, so they coined the term ‘tractor’.
Hart Parr went through a number of reorganizations, mergers, and buy-outs
over the years. Notable are the 1929 purchase by James Oliver to become
the Oliver Farm Equipment Company, Oliver's purchase of Cletrac (makers
of farm crawlers), 1960 purchase by White Farm Equipment, merger with
Cockshutt and Minneapolis Moline, and the White bankruptcy which lead
to a series of inept owners including Allied and New Idea. Oliver is
now part of AGCO. The last tractor bearing the Oliver logo rolled off
of the production line in 1976.
Oliver did not make the biggest, most powerful, or largest number of tractors.
They did, however, have cutting edge engineering that pioneered many
of the features of modern tractors. They also were the best looking
of any tractor line ever produced. As a result, classic Oliver tractors
are highly collectible, and Oliver collector shows are held across the
nation. Farmers are very loyal to their equipment suppliers. I grew
up in an Oliver family, so am very particular about the colors of the
tractors that I like. They have to be Olive Green and Fleetline Yellow
for the older tractors, and Meadow Green and Clover White for the newer
tractors.
Collected below are pages/photos of various Oliver tractors and their
cousins taken at farm power and collector shows. Also included is
a series of pages/photos of a large Oliver farm toy collection. Some of
these pages/photos were taken by my older brother, Loren Weeks, and are
used with permission.
