Rock Island Knows Tractors Part 4 -- The Oliver tractor

Oliver tractors

   Although not native to the Quad Cities, the agricultural and farm implement communities certainly knew well the presence of the Oliver tractor, which some historians have called “one of the most beautiful pieces of machinery ever built.”
   This afternoon’s series of videos cover the gamut from the very beginning, when the Scottish immigrant, James Oliver, invented the self-scouring plow through the history and ultimate demise of the Oliver tractor, with the last tractor rolling off the assembly line in February 1976. The end of the Oliver company may well be a cautionary tale of corporate greed, catastrophic engineering failures, mismanagement, and economic disaster.