CRAWLING OLLIE

The new OC crawlers began using the Oliver Highway Yellow color rather than Cletrac Orange and by 1951 even the legacy Cletracs still in production were rolling off the line in Highway Yellow. The older Cletrac designs crawled on (pun intended) into the late ’50s before finally being replaced by the new or updated Olivers. The BD hung on into 1956, even though its replacement, the OC-12, was already in production. The OC-12 was updated in many ways but still a BD at its core. Zimmerman estimates about 5,500 BDS were built from ’36-56.

By the advent of the 1960s Oliver was being battered by larger ag machinery companies, so when the White Motor Company came around looking for a foothold into the ag business Oliver provided that step and became a wholly owned subsidiary. Ironically, as it relates to Cletrac, the White Motor company was founded by members of the same White family that had started Cletrac way back when.

Strangely, White didn’t buy the Cletrac line with Oliver so the company went back on its own and became Cletrac Corporation. They were to sell crawlers exclusively to Oliver dealers as a side brand but that didn’t work out. With the crawler market dominated by bigger manufacturers, Cletrac didn’t really even make it to the “also-ran” category at that point. Later, White would buy bits and pieces of Cletrac, including the best-selling and newest crawler models and a couple of new designs that hadn’t quite made it to production. They would then move crawler production to Charles City, Iowa, and the old Cletrac plant in Cleveland would be idled in 1962. Oliver Crawler production would stop in 1965 and that would end the Cletrac DNA once and for all.

 The Hercules DJX series diesels debuted in 1935 and were built in three main variants that all shared a 4.5-inch stroke and general characteristics. The DJXB had a 3.5-inch bore, making 260 cubic inches. The DJXC had a 3.75-inch bore, making 298 cubic inches, and the DJXD (which was not used in Cletracs) had a 4-inch bore making 339 cubic inches. All were 7-main engines. They were indirect injected with a replaceable prechamber in the block. The early engines used a Bosch PE pump followed by an APE pump in the late ’30s. A Roosa Master pump appeared in about 1955 and a retrofit kit was available to update earlier engines. The DJX series engines lived a long life, morphing into the D298 and D339 engines that were built into the 1980s. Hercules went out of business in 1999.

 “Oliver Cletrac!” The so called “split shield” logo was used from 1945 to 1950, when a simple “Oliver” logo was used. This marked the time when the line began transitioning to Oliver Highway Yellow from this Cletrac Orange.