i saw a rubber tracked oc-3 fork lift at the oliver wharehouse in waukesha wisconsin about 1947-48. it was the first oc-3 i had ever seen and never saw or heard of a rubber tracked oliver again. what happened to them?
from what I understand a common problem with them was slippage on the pullies. There were no sprockets on those models as far as I could tell.
There was one on ebay about 6 or 8 weeks ago, Tracks were in fair shape. Some chunking on the cleats. The rest of the machine looked like it had undergone a fresh restoration/refurbish. I think it had a $10,000.00
starting bid or something like that.
Well for the time period you mentioned it would have been a model HGR, the R being for the rubber tracks. A friend of mine has a HGR also that was used by Oliver in the old Columbus Ohio branch. The only way they sold it to his father was they had to remove the rubber tracks which they did. It has a boom on the front. At that ime the crawler was used on some wooden floors in the branch house. The OC-3 was introduced in 1951.
I have a picture somewhere showing King White's son kneeling next to a rubber tracked HG with one of the tracks off in some pretty deep mud.
Blake
I bought a book about Olivers from Mr. Zimmerman in PA. last summer when I was there. the book indicated that the rubber tracks did not hold up and were subject to high numbers breaking. Apparently, Oliver replaced any and all rubber tracks (broken or not) with steel to save face. This would be similar to a recall by todays automotive standards. The book indicated that a few still exist but there numbers are very limited and we are lucky to ever see one.