The 1939 Oliver 70 Row Crop Tractor, with steel wheels all around, NO BATTERY needed, because the crank works beautifully, as one spin can bring this beast bearing 30 HORSEPOWER into your farms’ soil and make your rows sing from the delight of having six inch cast lugs all around your 48” back wheels, and the best steel steering wheels ever made!
The absolute best air-ride suspended seat and sweet little arm powered engine operation and the broadcast light will have you working your fields from before daylight til long after dark.
The tip-toed wheels of the front essentially made this a row crop tractor, allowing it to operate in rows of corn, or soy bean, or basically whatever crop a farmer may of had to deal with. This being the last year for many of these options, because tractors had gone from 200,000 to 19,000 in sales through the depression. Each and every tractor took on the wear and hard work marks of every owner.
The steel wheels, all four, would run well in the field, but would tear up and fully damage a road that was flattened, graveled or covered with brittle asphalt. “Bitulithic” aggregate poured and placed, made operating one of these tractors outside of a field, virtually impossible.
The farmers of the day were spared the heft and problems of live animal plowing and tending, but were replaced with them being the live animals who were required to working the fields on these tractors, the seats hard as ancient old stones, the constant tear of cambered fields, small hills, wasps nests, low speeds, cables that would break and be hung again with bailing string or wire.
The only sun shade was the straw hats on their heads, their sleeves pulled down and buttoned tight at the wrists, and long trousers of duck cloth or denim.
A couple hundred men were hurt or killed, turning the tractor over, through driving or falling into a ditch, but most of those that drove them, knew of these ill fated flaws.
Pent-up now as lawn-art, or decorative pieces of days gone by, or literally crumpled into time forgotten working farmers life, these tractors that time has eclipsed their worthiness are still here, to show their stuff.
Ralph E Peck
Photo by Ralph E Peck
Chouteau, Oklahoma
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