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My first visit to Fort Robinson, Nebraska was in 1965. I was 15 years old and invited to go 'Fossil Hunting' in the Badlands of Western Nebraska. My friends had a pop up camper and drove from Independence, Missouri to Fort Robinson. Although since the 1980's the Ranchers I met and knew in the Badlands have died and their ranches have changed hands several times. In the 1960's to early 1980's there were not many fossil collectors coming to this sparsely populated panhandle of west Nebraska. I knew the local Ranchers, each by name. I was given free roaming rights for many years. Even the Mayor of Crawford, also an avid artifact and fossil collector invited me to stay at their home when I came as a 16 year old... with a 1956 VW. For an independent teenager who loved collecting fossils... wouldn't it been even more wonderful in a 23 foot Oliver!!!!! Sioux County and Dawes County, Nebraska. These are the same age as the Badlands National Monument of western South Dakota. Give or take a million years... 35,000,000 year old white clay and ash deposits. The area was humid, meandering rivers and a wide variety of animals. Saber Toothed cats, Rhinos, Horse, Deer, Rabbit, Mice, Moles, Tortoise, Pond Turtles, Birds, Snakes, Lizards and on. Their remains are still washing out of these same Badlands. The only areas that you can actually hunt these fossils is by paying a Ranch to collect. I suspect that today all of the major Ranches have leased collecting to professional dealers. BUT... Toadstool Park is open to those who want to wander these Badlands, but prohibit your picking anything up that is washing out. The main attraction for most is Fort Robinson State Park. They have wonderful tent and RV Trailer sites at reasonable prices. www.outdoornebraska.org has the details and when facilities open and close for the Season. A very nice restaurant. Melodrama in the Summers... making pottery, painting classes. For kids... turn them loose and they have unlimited recreation options. This is a 'destination campsite' with everything... yet reasonable prices! Fort Robinson's attractions are an Olympic swimming pool, Horse back rides into the bluffs, a very intact Cavalry Fort where Crazy Horse was murdered in 1877 and a monument marks the spot... right next to the camping areas. Tennis. A museum. The Black Hills are close enough where you can leave your trailer and drive to see Mount Rushmore and the Crazy Horse Monument, among other things worth visiting... like Deadwood and Lead. A busy 'day trip'! There is some National Grassland camping to the north and west of Toadstool. The gate will say 'Please Close Gate'. These areas are leased to ranchers for grazing, but they are Public Lands. You would be camped right in the middle of these Badlands. Wandering around them is a lot of fun. Can an Oliver do all of this? Your Oliver can do all of this and MORE... You are about 50 miles east of the Wyoming border and your camping trip can extend all the way to... Yellowstone Park and, beyond. I am including some photographs taken June 1, 2006. Just so you have a sense of what the area is like.

Well, I am pretty sure that 80k and 8 years later, weve never done anything with the front jack except to replace a fuse a few years back... We have ths axles serviced each year. And brakes.

By the way, here's a link to 80/20's website if you aren't familiar with it - https://8020.net They run an eBay store where you can get small quantities at a discount, overruns and the like - http://stores.ebay.com/8020-Inc-Garage-Sale Here's a roof rack that I built a few years ago to hold Hardigg cases - it's way overbuilt but I wanted the depth to lock the cases in place -

Nice work on the jack cover paint. Ours has yellowed, too. The ac, oh well... Whoever looks?

Wish we could have been with you!

It was great seeing old friends and meeting new friends! Enjoyed the Rally and appreciate the effort the Oliver folks put in the gathering making a fine event! Can't wait until the next gathering! Friday night: Saturday night:

I share the same sentiment with Dean and Laura. Huge thanks to the Oliver family and extended community. It was a great pleasure to meet you and learn about the brand. You have inspired me to be an Oliver promoter, and I'm a future Oliver owner!

Hi All! Great rally! Had never seen an Oliver prior to the rally. I had read and researched a great deal, but had not seen one at other egg rallies this spring and summer. Now that Laura and I have seen a dozen or so, our previous wow is now an even BIGGER WOW! Amazing trailers. Perhaps the only thing better than the trailers were the owners! ;) What a great group of folks to show off their Ollies. Thank you to Oliver Travel Trailers for hosting a great rally! Take care, Dean

The Anasazi Indians Boondocked long before Olivers. Had they the opportunity to have an Oliver... they would have been the envy of the entire Southwestern USA. This was their home without... wheels, or horse, or... all foot powered. I include some photographs of a number of Pit Houses in New Mexico at 6,500 feet elevation. They survived without the many things we require in our trailers. This is just one example of a community of five or six Pit Houses... the ancestors to the Cliff Dwellers. Although they could also been the 'summer homes' away from the Cliff Dwellings. This is what you and your Oliver can discover... just by reading about what requirements these Native Americans needed such as Shelter, Water, Food and supplies needed for maintaining and preparing these in their vicinity. Many Pit Houses will have large trees growing from them. The pit houses were originally circular when you stumble across any. At the beginning you may be standing on top of a Pit House and not realize it, until you see the pot shards and agate or Obsidian flakes... you would have never known. Many of these ancient dwellings were 'pot hunted' for their contents in the 1890's once the area was opened for logging. If you find stumps of large pine trees... expect the ancient contents dug out and taken. As you get further away from easy access, the Pit Houses are very impressive. Any of the wood used for a roof has rotted a thousand years ago, but you can see the shape, the entrance and as usual... one or more pine trees growing from them. The broken pot shards are examples of a talent in these primitive conditions... to us, that is. One photograph shows pottery and chips washing out of the dirt, away from the pit houses. They, for whatever reason, would break a damaged pot into smaller pieces and toss them aside. Find a pot shard... the Pit House can only be a short 'toss' from where you are standing. Have a wonderful 2017 Olivercamping Season!

It's a very nice looking design and I like getting away from the 19th century leaf springs and linkage. But adapting it to an Ollie will require taking some responsibility for the outcome without knowing how it will play out in the long run. The standard leaf spring system carries the load of the trailer in three places on each side for a total of six points distributed along the steel subframe. The subframe is somewhat flexible and bolted directly to the aluminum frame which is bolted to the fiberglass body. As a whole, there is a lot of strength there, the load is distributed well, but the system still flexes. Just jacking the trailer to level I can hear it flexing as the body creaks a bit. So now you apply all the load to two points with the Timbren system and the subframe is unfairly loaded and transferring that load to the trailer disproportionately. On top of that the twisting load all goes to those two points as you turn sharply, so the trailer has more of that load localized as well. Ollie's were not designed to deal with those two changes. The fix is a stiffener under the subframe that spreads the load fore and aft and a cross member, or X member, that makes the two sides share the twisting load. This will lift the trailer by the size of the stiffener, but offset that lift by the difference between the leaf spring design height and the Timbren design height. It might be interesting to find out how much the Timbren system settles at a 5,500 lb load, for instance, and decide if the 10K or the 7K system is best. The other thing is, if someone was going to change to this, I would go ahead and put in a set of 5,200 lb axles because they have the larger brakes. Those bigger brakes are much more powerful than the 3,500 lb brakes. My Ollie, unfortunately, has the 3,500 lb brakes. So that issue alone could decide the model of the Timbrens used. It would be nice to never worry about a broken leaf spring or those lousy nylon bushings wearing out. I'm planning to upgrade mine with the Dexter E-Z Flex kit to at least get rid of the cheap bushings.

Update: MSRP for the "Tandem with 3" round axle seat" in different load ratings: 7K : $1113 10K: $1265 14K: $1471 I suspect that the 7K kit would give a softer ride for a lightly loaded Ollie, but the 10K would be superior for nasty pot-holed ranch roads and a really heavy trailer. I listed the 14K one just to show the eTrailer's street price - it is about $205 less (14%). A similar discount would put the 7K kit at about $958. I did get some info from their tech/ sales rep Jeff Scott: The system is robust and easily field serviceable using no special tools. It would perhaps take a couple of hours to change all four rubber springs by a competent mechanic. It rides very well and should work well in this application (an Ollie). There is no individual parts/ price list - "I think I have only ever sent out one set of replacement springs for this suspension. It never needs parts." As far as lift goes: "Perhaps you should take some measurements of your existing suspension and compare them to the dimensions of our tandem and you may find that you have already gained some height. Aside from that, blocking up the suspension for additional height is simply the process of welding on a riser of your choice between the existing frame and the new suspension." As per their drawings, the distance from bottom of frame to axle centerline (unladen) is about 6.5 inches. I have no clue what the standard suspension dimension is. The 10K rubber spring would obviously ride a little higher than the 7K one.. It doesn't sound too terribly difficult or expensive. Who wants to do this first and post instructions? It would make a great project for a sunny weekend..... As a footnote, I once bought a new 27 ft SeaRay powerboat that came with an undersized trailer and it was a disaster. I made the store take the trailer back and substitute one with a proper (higher) GVWR. They half heartedly admitted their mistake, but were very unhappy to eat the cost of buying back a "used" trailer. I will never go with inadequate suspension, when in doubt go heavier. (This is why Oliver upgrades the axle tubes and hubs.) JD Spokane WA