This series of articles will have excepts from my interview with former Oliver President - Sam White, Jr. Rather than put it in story form, these are his words just as they were told to me.

About Fox....
I didn't arrange any of the mergers that took place but the biggest loss I had was when I went after the forage harvester in Wisconsin built by Fox. Shelbyville was building a forage harvester but it had no reputation at all. It wasn't very good. The most popular one in the industry was built by Fox. So I went to Fox and I didn't tell anyone in the company what I was doing. I arranged that we would take over Fox and trade White shares for it. I talked to the three brothers and I had them all sold. I had all the shares lined up to be voted on, on a particular Friday. One of the partners had been in Florida during this time and he called on Friday and said he was not voting his shares in favor of this merger. He said White was Ohio and he wanted a Wisconsin company to own them. So he picked a Wisconsin based construction company to buy them. And these guys all ended up losing their jobs.

I found out later that the deal fell through because of a lawyer. I didn't think lawyers were necessary. I was a handshake fellow. White Motor said “OK, you're going to acquire this company in Wisconsin.” He gave me 24 pages of things that company had to do for us. I said “You can't do that to a little company like Fox.” They said “I'm from the White law firm and this is what you've got to get them to sign.” I gave it to them because I couldn't do anything else. And that's when I didn't get the vote on Friday. I was so disgusted. I had laid everything out and it would have been such a perfect arrangement.

(Editor's Note: The question has been asked before it Fox built the forage harvester for Oliver because they are very similar. I asked Sam and he said Fox never built a chopper for anyone else.)

About the 44/440....
The 44/440 was a tractor that I was never proud of. We didn't sell that many of them and it was only this area (North Carolina) that said we had to have it. And it was all because of International Harvester. They had the only tractor that was open to see down the row with cotton and tobacco. It was not going to have a big market so I don't believe we put much claim to fame on it. It did fill a need though.

About the Super 55....
When the 55 came along, Alva Phelps was Chairman of the Board. Alva said to Charles City, “the only tractor that sells in this horsepower range is the Ford 8N and the Ferguson 25. Don't give me all this stuff about how we know better. Just make a copy of the best selling Ford tractor. If you want to add something like a 3-point hitch, then go ahead. But don't tell me you're going to have something better than what's selling now.” He turned out to be right and the 55 was one of the best things we ever brought out. The dealers were so happy with it because it was a good tractor and it was stronger than an 8N. But during the war when King McCord was asked to go down to the war production board meeting, Ford said to Congress, ”Why don't we just build one model of tractor and we'll let all the manufacturers get the material and give it to the farmers.” King McCord said “Yeh, lots of luck.” Who's going to have all the tractors out there? It's going to be Ford. So he beat that and there weren't many tractors built at that time.

Check out Oliver Heritage Issue # 9 for more details on the interview with Sam White!!!