The times that I ran in to examples where it was used properly and elegantly I think it could have been done just as nice with a properly named function call.
I think the way it workd came from the DSL camp arguing that you should be able to make it look as though certain bits where native to the language, even if they weren't, and then the only uses we get are things that have nothing to do with DSLs but everything with children handling power tools (as in: bad idea).
Show me a single example of where operator overloading was necessity to make a function work, and I'll show you a more cleanly coded version using a function call.
The interesting thing is that after the compiler is done with it you'll be calling ::operatorX anyway.
Plenty of times there are naming issues as well, what does it mean to add two items of 'X' together, most times such a statement would be meaningless in the real world, but if you were forced to use a named function instead of an operator that function would have a name that matched what really happens.
Naming stuff is one of the great powers of computer languages, use of operators should be reserved to those situations where the outcome is predictable, and where operator precedence rules are the same as they would be when adding numbers.
So, it's fine to add an instance of a class called 'area' to another instance of that class, but you can't add one instance of 'boat' to another. That one should be done using:
cargospace = add_carcospace(boat1,boat2);