I appreciate the fact that you let the man talk and remember things at his own pace and didn’t muck up interview with a barrage of questions or by constantly interrupting him while he was speaking, very respectful and well done by you….. enjoyed the photo explanation at the beginning to give us an insight as to the layout of the plant to go along with the interview.
You could see in Al's face and hear it in his voice as the memories came flooding back. The Plant had to be something back in the day. Thanks for this Ethan. Take care. Fred.
Actually E Street runs north and south. I was born and raised in Charles City, and worked at the plant when I graduated from high school. My Mom, Dad, and several aunts and uncles worked there. Mom was a traffic clerk, Dad worked in production, holding full assembly classification and iron pouring classifications. I held a final assembly class and material handler class (forklift operator) when I left in 1976. I'm gonna try and make it to your get together in July. I think everyone that worked there has stories about it. Good times.
Thank you so much for doing this. Making sure that there's at least some record of an agricultural icon is so important. And I honestly hope that maybe the local historical society saves at least part of the area in rememberence of the factory.
Thanks for sharing the story and documenting this. The younger generation dosen't care. I'm 32 and think it's neat to see where we came from. I think Oliver and Allis changed alot for the future. I'm a AC guy but enjoy your channel. It's sad to see a town disappear when a factory closes.
its sad seeing the end of an era IN The late 60s our VoAg class made a trip to the Oliver plant at StCharlies but l didnt go had to work it was aSaturday. l have seen videos of the AC plant and its end and what they saved and what was torn down. One thing they did at the AC plant was kept a building and turned it into a restaurant with lots of pictures of the old plant! l will be watchin!!!!!
Wow! Just how the So.Bend Plant looks like. At one time,So Bend,In.,had many factories both large and small. Biggest were: Studebaker,Oliver, Singer Sewing and Bendix aviation. There were also many smaller ones. They are mostly gone! First to the South, then to Mexico,then to China.
The railroad track running east and west and the street is on the north side of plant, that's the street you parked on. The display of turn table tractors westside of the plant. Alan points west in the video towards the elevator. North is at the back of where you are standing. You where facing south.
Very interesting history lesson. Amazing how much he has recalled. Has to be hard for him to see all of his past gone. Nothing much left but concrete. I guess that's progress. And to ship it to China, rather than keep it here to be recycled, wow. I'm grateful that you were able to get some kind of record in video to preserve the memory.
@@Oliver66FarmBoy lots of our old machinery is bought and shipped to China. I'm in forestry a d pretty much every mill that closes or is retooled the old equipment is bought and shipped to China. They buy tooling from many of these manufacturing equipment from the big companies and then use it there to produce the same stuff. The tooling is worn out which is why many of the repro parts don't fit as well .
It’s amazing how these factories were their own little town essentially. This reminds me of the old Clark plant here in town. My grandfather retired from there back before I was born. I wish I would have gotten more stories from him about his time there.
Thank you Ethan for doing a very interesting video of how the Oliver plant was laid out your counterpart was very helpful in remembering how things were so many years ago. I live about 90 miles south and never made it there but grew up on Oliver's to bad time took them away I still have a 1655 and love the old girl. Thanks again
Great Video, Al knows what he is talking about. When I went out to the slab I was with my wife n grandkids, I'm sure they noticed how my mood changed when I saw for myself that basically nothing remains of such a huge facility... After reading "the Tractor Builders" book I had to see it for myself. When they start moving dirt they will find some tunnels that were under the plant. ( They were just filled with sand n rubble) Thanks for sharing Ethan!
These tunnels where used during the tornado the went through Charles City that cought the west edge of plant. Theses tunnels save the employees of Oliver's plant that it was 4:30 pm 1968
1962 - graduated HS - summer job. Ran one of those Bullard lathes he talked about. Had to use an electric hoist to lift the cast iron rear wheels onto the chucks on the table that spun the wheel around under the head that held the cutters. The job was to face off both sides of the hole the axle hub bolted to the wheel. Sometimes I didn't get the wheel clear down on the chucks as I tightened the clamps which meant that when the hub was bolted on it was not perfectly perpendicular to the axle - you can decide what the result of that was. They gave me a metal stamper that put my initials on the face of the whole so you can look for RW on the wheels of the 1600 series they were making then. Grew up on a farm SW of CC Take care all!!!
It's a shame that all that is left is just a slab. But after seeing the picture and you and AL explaining everything, I can almost see the plant in its heyday. Would have been a sight to see
This is very cool. I know one guy that used to work there and he told me some stories about what he did for work and told me a story about the test track and how Oliver went out of business and how white went out of business. And this video adds more to it. And so does your videos about the history of Oliver.
I think it would’ve been so cool to have been a machinist there back in the day. I run mostly CNC now in modern times but it would’ve been really neat to see all of the specialty equipment and tooling used to produce those tractors before NC and CNC machines came to the market.
Thanks for part 2 ,I'll just say considering you got thrown into this as a kinda "right now" deal. Then none of your original plans working out for the filming/help you are doing real good so far. You are real lucky Al reached out to you to do this and honor the brand name this way on your channel, it must really mean a huge lot to you he didn't pick one of the real big channels out there . Take care
Great Video but you need to access Sanborn insurance maps at diffrent dates to confirm what was what at the site , they were used by insurance company's to insurance corporations
On some of the interviews I have seen. White had put over $3 million in to updating and expanding the foundry about 6 years before White went under. They were going to produce the castings for the new White corporate engines at Charles city and ship them to the new White engine plant that was built and never opened. Most of the new equipment in the foundry was never used when it closed and sold off.
I do work with railroads from time to time on right of way works.. I have seen plans for the old plant grounds to be set up as a trans load rail yard for Bio fuels and LP gas since you have 2 railroads CN and CP (CPKC) . The total Brownfield site is around 65 acres and the state has put up a million $$ to get it going. The plan calls for some trackage and will use about 25 acres of the area and have around 350 cars of storage tracks for 286,000 lb cars . So that will be a big change from 2000 people building 100 tractors per day .
You mentioned the May 15, 1968 tornado. During my 5 semesters at Northern Iowa (Cedar Falls), I would occasionally have riders when I would drive home to Fort Dodge. A few times, I carried as set of twins, one of whom lost his life in Charles City from that tornado. I believe he was student teaching there. Sadly, I don't remember his name.... As I recall, the weather even in Cedar Falls was pretty stormy, that day!
Very nice! We drove by Charles City on our way to an Allis show a few years ago and thought about trying to see if anything was left. Did you take a chunk of concrete with for a memento?
Just in time inventory and a whole bunch of Tesla robotic assemblers would recreate Oliver as a US based Tractor company. The Oliver Hybrid Tractor - diesel/electric.
That is the problem with "progress" Old Gives way to what is considered New.... Except for some pictures and a lot of fading memories that is all that remains......
Picture is photo copy of 2015 building's where gone and removed by then. reunion of the foundry which I was in -at all the building's where gone few years before that.
What's amazing is how the government let these companies disappear and leave the super fund clean up to the taxpayers I got a leaky number 2 fuel oil tank under ground it's costing me over $10,000 because there was a small leak Number two fuel is a natural product
One thing that I remember is how big and all of the windows in the buildings for natural light and ventilation there were and the guys working along those windows. Here is a neat video that shows some of the interior I saw. th-cam.com/video/4LtZwvjIy9U/w-d-xo.html
Been by the slab many times. Back in the day there used to be some big name factories in north iowa and all around the us. There’s still a couple smaller names around here but it sucks to see all these manufacturers go out of business or sell out to china and then the whole place gets leveled here. Then it’s all about building dog parks and dumb bs that doesn’t make any money or provide jobs. I’d rather have the manufacturer. My dad being older always tells me about how it was when Oliver was there and the way thing were around here. I honestly prefer things they way they used to be back in the day. 🤷♂️
I appreciate the fact that you let the man talk and remember things at his own pace and didn’t muck up interview with a barrage of questions or by constantly interrupting him while he was speaking, very respectful and well done by you….. enjoyed the photo explanation at the beginning to give us an insight as to the layout of the plant to go along with the interview.
Learn more listen than talking.
With the way this world's going I can see these starting back up again. Rebuilding it.
I love ag history no matter the brand. A big thanks to all of you for preserving and presenting this!!
Thanks
You could see in Al's face and hear it in his voice as the memories came flooding back. The Plant had to be something back in the day. Thanks for this Ethan. Take care. Fred.
Actually E Street runs north and south. I was born and raised in Charles City, and worked at the plant when I graduated from high school. My Mom, Dad, and several aunts and uncles worked there. Mom was a traffic clerk, Dad worked in production, holding full assembly classification and iron pouring classifications. I held a final assembly class and material handler class (forklift operator) when I left in 1976. I'm gonna try and make it to your get together in July.
I think everyone that worked there has stories about it. Good times.
Al. A Wonderful Man and full of knowledge. We are better for getting to know him and Marcia
Thank you so much for doing this. Making sure that there's at least some record of an agricultural icon is so important. And I honestly hope that maybe the local historical society saves at least part of the area in rememberence of the factory.
Not much left to save.
Thanks for sharing the story and documenting this. The younger generation dosen't care. I'm 32 and think it's neat to see where we came from. I think Oliver and Allis changed alot for the future. I'm a AC guy but enjoy your channel. It's sad to see a town disappear when a factory closes.
its sad seeing the end of an era IN The late 60s our VoAg class made a trip to the Oliver plant at StCharlies but l didnt go had to work it was aSaturday. l have seen videos of the AC plant and its end and what they saved and what was torn down. One thing they did at the AC plant was kept a building and turned it into a restaurant with lots of pictures of the old plant! l will be watchin!!!!!
Wow! Just how the So.Bend Plant looks like. At one time,So Bend,In.,had many factories both large and small. Biggest were: Studebaker,Oliver, Singer Sewing and Bendix aviation. There were also many smaller ones. They are mostly gone! First to the South, then to Mexico,then to China.
Thank You so very much
The railroad track running east and west and the street is on the north side of plant, that's the street you parked on. The display of turn table tractors westside of the plant. Alan points west in the video towards the elevator. North is at the back of where you are standing. You where facing south.
Thank you for capturing this. These old-timers have hords of knowledge and history. Thanks for capturing it.
Yep
Very interesting history lesson. Amazing how much he has recalled. Has to be hard for him to see all of his past gone. Nothing much left but concrete. I guess that's progress. And to ship it to China, rather than keep it here to be recycled, wow. I'm grateful that you were able to get some kind of record in video to preserve the memory.
The China part really burned me.
@@Oliver66FarmBoy lots of our old machinery is bought and shipped to China. I'm in forestry a d pretty much every mill that closes or is retooled the old equipment is bought and shipped to China. They buy tooling from many of these manufacturing equipment from the big companies and then use it there to produce the same stuff. The tooling is worn out which is why many of the repro parts don't fit as well .
It’s amazing how these factories were their own little town essentially. This reminds me of the old Clark plant here in town. My grandfather retired from there back before I was born. I wish I would have gotten more stories from him about his time there.
Buchanan Michigan. From industrial powerhouse to pot farm.
I always like the evaluations of tractors.Thanks for the tour.
Thank you Ethan for doing a very interesting video of how the Oliver plant was laid out your counterpart was very helpful in remembering how things were so many years ago. I live about 90 miles south and never made it there but grew up on Oliver's to bad time took them away I still have a 1655 and love the old girl. Thanks again
That’s really cool to get the general idea of just how big the place was and roughly where stuff was done in it
Yep
Great Video, Al knows what he is talking about. When I went out to the slab I was with my wife n grandkids, I'm sure they noticed how my mood changed when I saw for myself that basically nothing remains of such a huge facility... After reading "the Tractor Builders" book I had to see it for myself. When they start moving dirt they will find some tunnels that were under the plant. ( They were just filled with sand n rubble) Thanks for sharing Ethan!
These tunnels where used during the tornado the went through Charles City that cought the west edge of plant. Theses tunnels save the employees of Oliver's plant that it was 4:30 pm 1968
Good video!
Wow. How things change. Very enjoyable listening to Mr. Al talk. Woulda been something to see in its hayday. Thanks for doing this, big two thumbs up.
It is a shame pretty much all of it is gone! Thanks for sharing. i really enjoyed this video.
1962 - graduated HS - summer job. Ran one of those Bullard lathes he talked about. Had to use an electric hoist to lift the cast iron rear wheels onto the chucks on the table that spun the wheel around under the head that held the cutters. The job was to face off both sides of the hole the axle hub bolted to the wheel. Sometimes I didn't get the wheel clear down on the chucks as I tightened the clamps which meant that when the hub was bolted on it was not perfectly perpendicular to the axle - you can decide what the result of that was. They gave me a metal stamper that put my initials on the face of the whole so you can look for RW on the wheels of the 1600 series they were making then. Grew up on a farm SW of CC Take care all!!!
I’ll have to look at the wheels on the 1800 next time I think about it. That’s a 64.
@@Oliver66FarmBoy
My brother has 4-5 Glencoe. Spent many days - nights 60s - 90s in 1066 in IA.
Thanks for your time and can you thank Al for us? Thanks Michael
Yep
History matters. Thank you Ethan.
That so cool it cool you got to go see that
Thank you so much for this amazing video ,you are doing an incredible job
It's a shame that all that is left is just a slab. But after seeing the picture and you and AL explaining everything, I can almost see the plant in its heyday. Would have been a sight to see
This is very cool. I know one guy that used to work there and he told me some stories about what he did for work and told me a story about the test track and how Oliver went out of business and how white went out of business. And this video adds more to it. And so does your videos about the history of Oliver.
Thank you!!!
Interesting to hear a chapter in history, sad to see it all gone. Thanks for the video.
Yep
That is so sad about the Oliver plant. I am sentimental, they should have left the plant as a memorial.
I think it would’ve been so cool to have been a machinist there back in the day. I run mostly CNC now in modern times but it would’ve been really neat to see all of the specialty equipment and tooling used to produce those tractors before NC and CNC machines came to the market.
Would have been cool to do just about any job there.
That I cool be safe out there your buddy from Nebraska
Thanks.
I know a guy that has a big collection of the harr Parr stainary engines. He lives in the Webb iowa.
Nice
Thankyou
Nice vid kiddo. Great job listening to this guy. Who else is preserving this before it is totally lost.
Thanks
Thanks for part 2 ,I'll just say considering you got thrown into this as a kinda "right now" deal. Then none of your original plans working out for the filming/help you are doing real good so far. You are real lucky Al reached out to you to do this and honor the brand name this way on your channel, it must really mean a huge lot to you he didn't pick one of the real big channels out there . Take care
Great Video but you need to access Sanborn insurance maps at diffrent dates to confirm what was what at the site , they were used by insurance company's to insurance corporations
On some of the interviews I have seen. White had put over $3 million in to updating and expanding the foundry about 6 years before White went under. They were going to produce the castings for the new White corporate engines at Charles city and ship them to the new White engine plant that was built and never opened. Most of the new equipment in the foundry was never used when it closed and sold off.
I do work with railroads from time to time on right of way works.. I have seen plans for the old plant grounds to be set up as a trans load rail yard for Bio fuels and LP gas since you have 2 railroads CN and CP (CPKC) . The total Brownfield site is around 65 acres and the state has put up a million $$ to get it going. The plan calls for some trackage and will use about 25 acres of the area and have around 350 cars of storage tracks for 286,000 lb cars . So that will be a big change from 2000 people building 100 tractors per day .
Doesn’t seem like enough room for all that.
You mentioned the May 15, 1968 tornado. During my 5 semesters at Northern Iowa (Cedar Falls), I would occasionally have riders when I would drive home to Fort Dodge. A few times, I carried as set of twins, one of whom lost his life in Charles City from that tornado. I believe he was student teaching there. Sadly, I don't remember his name.... As I recall, the weather even in Cedar Falls was pretty stormy, that day!
Heard lots of stories from that day while I was out there.
@@Oliver66FarmBoy Not surprised!
So very important to get this stuff on video cause once their gone everything is gone.
Yep
Very nice! We drove by Charles City on our way to an Allis show a few years ago and thought about trying to see if anything was left. Did you take a chunk of concrete with for a memento?
Na. Dad worked with a guy who had family there in 93 and they got us a brick when they tore it down.
@Oliver66FarmBoy when we visited the allis factory we were able to track down some bricks as well, good mementos to have
Just in time inventory and a whole bunch of Tesla robotic assemblers would recreate Oliver as a US based Tractor company. The Oliver Hybrid Tractor - diesel/electric.
That is the problem with "progress" Old Gives way to what is considered New.... Except for some pictures and a lot of fading memories that is all that remains......
Crazy hundreds of people working and then poof gone
I wonder if they didn’t cast parts and just farmed (pun intended) would they have made it? A lot of fixed costs.
The foundry never lost money. It turned profit until the day they shut it down.
Picture is photo copy of 2015 building's where gone and removed by then. reunion of the foundry which I was in -at all the building's where gone few years before that.
Picture is an original print not a copy. Buildings were gone loooong before 2015
Isnt there still the boiler house somewhere
No
@@Oliver66FarmBoy damn. I thought they saved that atleast
In South Bend. There is nothing in CC.
@@Oliver66FarmBoy well that's some good news atleast.
What's amazing is how the government let these companies disappear and leave the super fund clean up to the taxpayers I got a leaky number 2 fuel oil tank under ground it's costing me over $10,000 because there was a small leak Number two fuel is a natural product
One thing that I remember is how big and all of the windows in the buildings for natural light and ventilation there were and the guys working along those windows. Here is a neat video that shows some of the interior I saw. th-cam.com/video/4LtZwvjIy9U/w-d-xo.html
That’s one of my videos…
Been by the slab many times. Back in the day there used to be some big name factories in north iowa and all around the us. There’s still a couple smaller names around here but it sucks to see all these manufacturers go out of business or sell out to china and then the whole place gets leveled here. Then it’s all about building dog parks and dumb bs that doesn’t make any money or provide jobs. I’d rather have the manufacturer. My dad being older always tells me about how it was when Oliver was there and the way thing were around here. I honestly prefer things they way they used to be back in the day. 🤷♂️
Same thing happened here. Had Oliver, Clark, studebaker, south bend tool, bendix, whirlpool. All gone.
Thanks for a great video