Soon after the end of World War 1, three Andersen brothers arrived in the United States from their native Risor, Norway. These three brothers, Tengel, Thomas, and Arthur Andersen came to the US to seek their fortune. They were to play an important part in developing earthmoving attachments for the Oliver-Cletrac crawler and wheel tractors.

There are few people in the state of Illinois who haven’t heard of the Rees Plow Match. This event is said to have been the start of the Farm Progress Shows of the modern era.

Written by: Carl L. Anderson

In 1956, when my Grandmother sold the family farm to my father Ivan Lee Andersen, I was two-years-old. It was not a big farm by any means, just 80 acres. At its peak we had 40-50 head of beef cattle that we had custom butchered for people. We also had 700 laying chickens and a door-to-door egg route in two local towns and 20-30 head of hogs at any given time. Add to that a very large, productive garden, and we were very well fed!

While Oliver was well-known as an exporter, it really came to life in 1953 under the guidance of Les Dyke. Many of Oliver’s products were built exclusively for export and not even offered in the US.
The Oliver rubber-tired payloaders were items brought into the product line for export. To this day many Oliver collectors don’t even know about these machines.

Using Olivers For What They Are Designed For!

Prior to WWII, the only method of weed control was cultivation or even walking through the fields with a bean hook or physically pulling the weeds. This was a process repeated many times during the summer. Some farmers chose the check-row planter as their tool of choice to have the “picture perfect” fields. This method permitted cultivation from all directions – north, south, east and west. Herbicide was unheard of.