http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKZZnLqPsp4This is a short video clip I took of the Oliver X-12 Experimental dozer taken at the Williams Grove Historical Steam Engine Association show on September 5, 2009. The tractor uses a direct-injection 6 cylinder Hercules engine with a power shift transmission. It can counter-rotate like an Oliver OC-9.
Way ahead of their time, and ahead of every other manufacturer, only a few of these tractors were ever made - some dozers and some loaders - and they were never put into production as Oliver closed the Cleveland plant soon after they were made.
My uncle Howard van Driest, Jr. ran one of these loaders and dozers (most likely this same one), as well as the OC-12 I now have, while building the Chagrin River Horseshoe Glen cut in Willoughby Hills, Ohio in 1959 and 1960. The cut was a flood aversion project conducted by the home owner's association, with the tractors supplied by Oliver as a test project.
If produced, this model would most likely have been called the OC-14.
This tractor is owned by Landis Zimmerman of Ephrata, PA. Operated by Ray Zimmerman.
Blake
