I grew up in an Oliver family, everywhere you looked we had Olivers running the family farm, guess you could say it was a family tradition. My first tractor restore was a 1944 Oliver 60, it was a tractor very similar to what my dad learned how to drive on, so I wanted to keep the family tradition going. I fell in love with the look of the Oliver 60, and then I discovered that there was another 60. A Canadian company called Cockshutt hired Oliver to make a few tractors for them, using the same factory and the same assembly line, using 95% of Oliver parts, and one of those tractors was the Cockshutt 60. There was just a few differences, like the axle housing and front strip on the grille that said Cockshutt instead of Oliver, these tractors were painted Cockshutt Red and the wheels were painted Cockshutt Yellow. The neatest thing was that the gauges still said Oliver on them and the Serial Tag said COCKSHUTT 60, built by The Oliver Farm Equipment Company, Charles City Iowa. I had to have one, so the search was on!

After a few years of searching, I kept falling short. You would think being from Southeast Minnesota, the state above where the tractors were built and the bordering state to Canada, it would be easy to find one, not so much. My search finally ended when I stumbled upon a Craigslist ad from Michigan, an old Cockshutt 60 on steel wheels. This tractor needed a lot of work, but when this was the only tractor I could find, I had to buy it and have it shipped to Minnesota. Seeing that an Oliver 60 is pretty much the same tractor, I also bought two Olivers for parts tractors, using all three to make one tractor.

This was a pretty neat project, I removed the steel wheels and added rubber wheels, added a 5 speed transmission,  replaced the missing pieces with either new parts or parts from the Oliver parts tractors.  I used as many as the original parts as I could. This is truly a “RED” Oliver, every parts book  that I would look up Cockshutt 60, it would tell me to see Oliver 60. This “Red” Oliver got completely rebuilt from front to back, top to bottom.

It took me longer to find the tractor than it did for me to restore it, I finished it in just over a year! When I take the tractor out, there are people that think I painted the Oliver the wrong color, think is it a Massey, an Avery, or even a Farmall, until I tell them the history of the tractor. I believe I have the only Cockshutt 60 in Southeast Minnesota, making it stand out from the rest. So whether it is a green or “Red” Oliver 60, the family tradition rolls on!!

Thanks for Reading!!

Mitch Paulson of Rushford, Minnesota