More Allis Chalmers thoughts

NY 986

Well-known Member
I had mentioned product development in the other AC thread and wanted to expand upon it. It seems that even during the dark days of the early 1980's AC had money for new product development. Right before the sellout to Deutz they had a new series moldboard and chisel plow ready to be built. The 385 planters came out a couple of years prior. The R series combines had to be in development before the D-A merger. The biggest problem was that AC had no sense of timing when it came to product development and did not appear to be listening to dealers. The economy segment of the market mentality they had back in the WD days should have been dumped by 1970 at the latest. Some products should have found a way to continue to be built instead of short changing dealers who did not have access to shortlines such as New Holland. JD Seller mentioned that the JD 716/ 716A wagons were built outside the Deere factory system and Deere was not the first to do this. AC should have been agressive on that front as well with products that could not be justified on their own factory lines. We can moan about 'What could have been" with a lot of manufacturers but had AC management been more capable they could have been chasing right behind Deere today.
 
They were innovators for sure when it came to some things,but like it says all the way through the book Plow Peddler,they always found a way to grab defeat from the jaws of victory. I think one of their problems was that ag equipment was just a part of their business. They had their hands in a lot of stuff.
Makes you wonder how a company that built two cylinder tractors for 25 years after they were obsolete could survive and AC didn't.
 
Good point about the JD two cylinders and AC. I remember in the 1980s they were doing a story on the news about something with John Deere. The story had stated that John Deere nearly went broke with the two cylinder design and then came out with the new generation which saved them. It is kind of funny they were the "new generation" which almost everyone else was doing already lol. New generation to JD though. Im just glad they didnt try to make a 4 wheel drive tractor with a two cylinder engine....
 
For quite a while mining equipment was a large share of their business. The local dealer always said that the ag equipment division never accounted for more than 15 percent of sales for a given year. It just amazed me back in the day that AC was big in small dairy country and by the time the mid 1970's came they had no chopper, blower, forage wagon, or manure spreader to sell. Somebody from management should have seen that the dealers need a certain core of products to survive. Ford had already out sourced products during the 1960's so somebody at AC should have been looking to have somebody build stuff either to AC's spec or their own to sell in orange and white paint.
 
(quoted from post at 07:39:51 04/27/16) They were innovators for sure when it came to some things,but like it says all the way through the book Plow Peddler,they always found a way to grab defeat from the jaws of victory. I think one of their problems was that ag equipment was just a part of their business. They had their hands in a lot of stuff.
Makes you wonder how a company that built two cylinder tractors for 25 years after they were obsolete could survive and AC didn't.

I think the difference there was quality. I've heard about trannies popping out of gear on WD's, C's, B's and at least one CA. Never, ever heard about that issue on that obsolete JD. And when Both JD and IH were offering live hydraulics and IPTO well before AC it shows a lack of interest in research and development to me. It's kinda like IH staying with the TA as long as they did when even AC was offering a power shift. By the time AC offered PS that it was already too late and IH shot themselves in the foot too with the TA. In both cases it lost them sales. Another thing that really hurt both companies was trying to compete with an already full construction market. Ford, JD and Case only offered small equipment for a long time where both AC and IH devoted a lot of R&D money trying to compete with Cat that would have been better spent IMO on their respective AG divisions. For a long time both JD and Case didn't spend a lot on the construction market mainly focusing mostly on smaller things, not a full line until the market opened up.

Rick
 
Actually IH was one of the bigger players in the construction market after CAT. Given how CAT has the habit of driving off some of their customers a little competition for them was good. The construction market became a loser for IH when (just like in ag) they built a huge inventory after the strike to supply a market that was going through a massive contraction due to 20 percent plus interest rates.


Payline was sold to Dresser that became part of Komatsu and then part of Dressta that is still building equipment today.
 
Back in the day, none of the Ag equipment manufacturers had marketing research departments. They were guessing all the way. The sales department sent out booklets to the district managers to fill in their estimate of what they were going to sell in the coming year. After the DM's consulted with their dealers, they filled in their booklets and sent them to West Allis - - and most of them came back marked "NOT ENOUGH!". When managers fail to listen to the people in the field, it's time for new managers.

The next thing that happened was the DM's all got a letter from headquarters that a new tractor was being shipped to their home - and they better get an order from a dealer for that tractor if they didn't want the tractor setting in their driveway and billed to them. That might have worked in the past but when the Ag market was declining, their better people started looking for jobs elsewhere after that fiasco.

When I moved into sales management with another company, I did my own market research and forecast system that worked very well for the company. I never quite understood how the large manufacturers neglected to do market research and forecasting, which would have told them what to make and how many to make. I went through West Allis in the 70's and saw tractor parked in vacant lots all over the area; they kept on building tractors when they should have cut back - as did most of the other manufacturers. Dead inventory costs a lot of money.
 
I think by the 1970's that all the manufacturers were pursuing "big unit" sales which in theory would lead to more profit in terms of money spent to build that product. While the real dollar margin is slimmer on a forage blower versus a mid size crawler the AC ag dealer needed that blower to help keep the doors open. Quite a few AC dealers here had no significant shortline to sell and it was not by choice. It had to be disheartening to be an AC dealer during the mid 1970's knowing once the boom came to an end (and they all do) that their dealership was going to become a ghost town.
 
(quoted from post at 08:19:02 04/27/16) Actually IH was one of the bigger players in the construction market after CAT. Given how CAT has the habit of driving off some of their customers a little competition for them was good. The construction market became a loser for IH when (just like in ag) they built a huge inventory after the strike to supply a market that was going through a massive contraction due to 20 percent plus interest rates.


Payline was sold to Dresser that became part of Komatsu and then part of Dressta that is still building equipment today.

Yea they were a big player but most large companies were using Cat. IH's market share was small compared to Cat. Talk to some old operators and you consistently hear "well this dozer that was supposed to compete against the D (fill in the number) had this issue. On one it was weak finals. That's not saying that IH didn't build some good equipment but when every company at the time was trying to compare their equipment to Cat it's got to be as good and as productive for the same or less cost. Cat for a very long time set the industry standards. When Cat dropped the D2 that opened the door for small dozers. JD, Case, AC and IH became the big competitors for that market. Both Case and JD grabbed the brass ring with their respective 300 series. Case JD and Ford were the big 3 as far as backhoes went with both IH and AC missing the mark but were still spending a lot of money on those programs. Why AC and IH couldn't build a small dozer or backhoe to compete with the others is beyond me.

Rick
 
I will start by saying dad owns a D 17 series4 with a loader and it will out lift the 5095 Deere. The tractor has never given us any problems. I have helped others that owned new and bigger AC tractors and I was not impressed at all . They were loud and uncomfortable to drive and the shifter was between your legs and my feet always got hot. I believe that Deere won over the market with the cabs.
 
(quoted from post at 10:15:58 04/27/16) I will start by saying dad owns a D 17 series4 with a loader and it will out lift the 5095 Deere. The tractor has never given us any problems. I have helped others that owned new and bigger AC tractors and I was not impressed at all . They were loud and uncomfortable to drive and the shifter was between your legs and my feet always got hot. I believe that Deere won over the market with the cabs.

OK, you want me to believe that a 2000 PSI system that flows 10.5 GPM will out lift a 2828 PSI system that flows 18.4 GPM?

I may have been born at night but it wasn't last night!

Put matching loaders on them and tell me that.

Rick
 
There is nothing true in your statement about JD going broke. In fact its just the opposite. JD overtook IH in the late 50s with the 2 cylinders and the New Generation kept them there.
 
What did AC have to compete with the obsolete JD 80/820/830s or the Case 500 or the IH W9 series for that matter? AC kind of forgot that there were farms west of the Mississippi in the "wheat" belt.
 
AC's less than competitive hydraulics were the least of their problems back during the 1960's and 1970's. Poor planning by AC corporate left the dealers to die during the 1980's. Grain guys were not buying combines and dairymen who had to go to Farm Credit bought very few tractors. JI Case, IH, and to a small extent JD dealers held around half the New Holland (pre Ford merger) franchises around here leaving AC, Oliver, MM, MF, and Ford to fight over what was left with Gehl, Hesston, New Idea, etc.. A few AC dealers transitioned to Ford NH as FNH was not going to let CaseIH and JD dealers double up with them but quite a few AC dealers closed up during the 1980's because they did not have enough product to sell.
 
John Deere is still in the construction equipment business and they were ever as big as IH was in construction until they sold the line in 1982. In the 1950s, 60s and 70s IH was second only to Cat and Case was third to them. A lot of market share in the US considering how little equipment was imported at that time. Today Kobelco, Kamatsu, Hyundai, Volvo, and Hitachi are all smaller than Cat and all still eat part of their lunch.
 
It's a shame that what made them back then,despite an inferior product,is the thing that they've flushed down the toilet now. That being,a good local dealer in every town.
 
That is true. A customer used to mean something. Your local dealer was someone you knew. Now it is someone who lives a state or two away and only sees dollar signs.
 
Allis was popular on small dairy farm's because they could go down the barn alley loading manure by hand . We used a john deere 50 there's still marks on the door frame from the axle catching.
You can't help but wonder if they had done more development on there ideas like mid tractor seating john deere and farmall had there seats behind the rear axle and had a rougher ride. You even wonder if they had made there round baler bigger and why there front unload spreader didn't take off.
 
"Makes you wonder how a company that built two cylinder tractors for 25 years after they were obsolete could survive and AC didn't."

I'm half way through the Plow Peddler, also read An Industrial Heritage: Allis Chalmers, A Corporate Tragedy: The Agony of International Harvester Company and a great book (IMHO) John Deere New Generation and Generation II Tractors by John Dietz.

I feel that AC was to diverse to maintain an adequate focus on tractors. What a huge conglomerate - industry segments I could have never imagined until reading about them - impressive none the less. IH - the perfect storm between mismanagement, employee relations and the economy.

Love or hate them - Deere, however, struck me (from the Dietz book) as being VERY well managed, focused on farm equipment (vs trucks, refrigerators), under no real threat to merge, financially sound. Were they innovative - maybe, maybe not. Did they embrace the 3 pt hitch and other creature comforts ahead of some of their competition, kind of. Did they outpace IH in tractor sales prior to the new generation tractors - I think so. Were they daring - with the new generation tractors, absolutely. Whatever Deere did - my boys are 5th generation on our farm. When they are using my newer model JD 5055d - looking down the hood towards the end of the field - I can't help to think about all the great tractor companies that either merged, out of business, bankrupt or bought out and that I bought a NEW tractor from the same company that may have very well sold my great grandfather a NEW plow - back in the day. I guess JD is the only one left on that front.

I would also suggest that EPA regulations took a severe toll on all heavy iron manufacturers during the 70's too.

Before I forget - also read Oliver Tractors by T. Herbert Morrell and highly recommend it too. Oliver was definately an innovator and some of their testing (crazy overkill) is testified by the Olivers still out there (and their White deveratives) working hard every day.

Bill
 
(quoted from post at 12:22:06 04/27/16) It's a shame that what made them back then,despite an inferior product,is the thing that they've flushed down the toilet now. That being,a good local dealer in every town.

Thing of it is that today there just are not enough farmers to support a dealer in every town, or every 3rd town for that matter. Not when they have to have all the specialized tools and equipment.

Rick
 
It's true that not everybody was going to make it to 2016. The thing with AC was that although they were not on the level that JD and IH were in terms of dealer popularity they were just below on the next tier. They had quite a number of popular dealers here at one time before 1980. It seems to me the "letdown" factor was greatest with AC in terms of short changing their dealers. Ford kind of made moves early in the post WWII machinery market to let dealers know that Ford was not concerned about being a full line company. AC may not have had the top product in every category but for more than a few farmers their AC dealer was a one stop shop for most products. Further, companies such as Oliver and IH had financial issues so their dealers could somewhat brace for difficulties but as stated before AC had the hard part licked in terms of having money for R & D and then gearing up a factory for a new product. It was understandable for a while to chase the economy portion of the machinery market and maximize return on investment but it was obvious for most manufacturers about 1970 that a company could not rest on its laurels and that rapid change in products was going to be needed to stay competitive.
 
Its no secret why IH and JD were the two biggest companies back then. There were JD and IH dealers everywhere even out here in MT were there are far fewer farms then back east. But AC, Oliver, MM, and others were far and few between.
 
Somebody mentioned komatsu very nice machine a older gentle man equipment operator told me komatsu would come out and ask operator what could we do to make better and they did faster more comforts for operators . american excavators were dinasours and they would not change or listen this is what we have take it or leave it there out of business.I just purchased a Nissan nv full size van when I go to get service the atmosphere is very good . I just sent wife to local ford dealer she was sick with attitudes and lack of care of the people there they act like your a problem same attitude as american do you know who we are.
 
And it wouldn't be the first time the media was wrong. Probably written by someone with a distaste of JD. If you research the topic you will find that the 2 cylinders and the Waterloo factory was JD's biggest money maker at that time. So much so that some of the upper management were hesitate to go from the 2 cylinders like Duke Rowland who was in charge of all tractor production. Charles Wiman president and the tractor engineers wanted to switch to over to multi cylinder engines but Duke and the marketing people wanted to stick with the 2 cylinders since both Waterloo and Dubuque were punching out 2 cylinders as fast as they could. Evidently a compromised was reached were as a feasibility study would start on a new series of multi cylinder tractors and while at the same time keeping the 2 cylinders updated. This occurred in the late 1940s. Then JD decided to start R&D on the New Generation in 1953. It also no coincidence that Duke Rowland by this time had been removed from the Waterloo planted and appointed manager of JD's new Chemical company. His replacement was Maurice Fraher who previously was the manager at the Dubuque factory were they had already been experiment with 4 cylinder engines. So he was no hesitant to change. Those are facts from J.R. Hobbs a well known author of JD articles who had access to the archives.
 
True enough,but leaving enough dealers to serve a geographic area with the kind of equipment that they can sell vs making it company policy to shut them down in favor of cookie cutter dealerships all with the same sales goals,regardless of location,just might prove to be their downfall. At least in areas where there are other brand dealers to serve local needs.
 
We live approximately 30 miles from Allis Chalmers "ground zero"- West Allis, WI.

My uncle had an opportunity to tour the Allis headquarters in the early 60's. At the time he was studying ag engineering, and Allis was still involved in a lot of enterprises- farm equipment, industrial, large turbines, etc. The take home message he remembered from the tour was this: Allis had NO internal accounting system to determine which sales products profits or losses were coming from. Kind of says a lot, doesn't it? It is hard to know where to focus your energy when you don't know what's actually bringing in the coin!
 
I ask myself a lot of these questions too, Allis was a very innovative company,and if one looks at what they were doing in the 70's and 80's up to the very end,most people would agree...
I think though there were a lot of things that helped bring them down,the company was a major player in every industry they were involved in,and almost every one of those branches of the Allis tree had a lot of really big ticket $$$ machines that in the 1980's people were having a hard time buying with 20% interest...

On the farm side in the 70's the 7000 series tractors were good sellers,then you had the 7080,had to be a lot of warrantee $$$ on those engines, along with 7580's,and later the N6 combines, these products brought to light the aging bullet proof 426 of the 60's had met its limit...

The Gleaner combine line was a huge $$ maker for the company,with an almost spotless reputation,but I think marketing won out in the company and rushed the N6 to market way to early to try compete with IH's Axial-flow,with a new "rotary" design,the early N series combines cost them a lot of market share in a very key big ticket item market..
just some of my takes on it,killing the hayline in 1975 I always thought was suicidal too,considering a lot of AC's bread and butter markets...
 
I agree with a lot of what you say. I don't know that the 7000 series tractors were good sellers here but that may have to do with a bunch of competing brand dealers doing heavy discounting to move large volumes of tractors then. The 426 was good at least into the 7045. The local dealer brought one out to try and I thought it was very capable with the Power Director. A reliable 500 cubic inch engine would have been tremendous for the 7080 and 7580. The N5 and N6 combines were disasters. The front unload spreader was one of those products that maybe if it came out several years later it would have been accepted such as Deere's Hydra Push was. I've seen a lot of lesser known AC products but I don't think I ever saw the front unload spreader.
 
Allis Chalmers had some design "firsts" in the 1950s but they seemed to back off their R&D budgets after that. I have operated and owned AC equipment over my life time. One of the three "new" tractors I have bought was an AC 8010. The AC line up was out dated by the mid 1960s. The rest of the market had some very standard features that AC tractors did not. Here are the ones that stood out to me as a multi brand farm equipment owner.

1) A true independent PTO or at least a foot operated two stage PTO clutch. This was the industry standard by the middle 1960s. AC stuck to their "Power Director" lever to control ground speed and PTO operations until the 7000 series came out in 1973. I bought an AC 185 that was an 1980 model tractor. It still had the darn "power director" controlled PTO. In the "D" series you at least had a long lever that made controlling the PD pretty easy. The "newer" tractors like the 180/185 and 200 had short levers. The 180/185 with the short lever mounted ahead of you on the side of the dash, with "STRONG" detents, was almost impossible to smoothly control the PD.

2) The lack of a quadrant style control of the three point hitch. This makes using some implements like a rear mounted blade harder. For seasoned operators you can do it but you end up using TWO levers rather than a single quadrant to control the three point. I will amend this with the fact that on other operations like plowing the AC system works well. You set your down level and then go up and down to that point with the single lever. It works well when set right.

The trouble with AC tractors from the early 1960s to the mid 1970s was they where more complicated to operate. The PTO operation required the use of TWO different controls. The foot clutch to engage it and the Power director to control ground speed/direction while using the PTO. For operators, used to most other brands, this feature is not easy or common. Try getting a woman to operate the PTO on a AC 185 while pulling a small baler pulling a wagon. My first wife was a veteran tractor operator. She accidently jerked me off the hay wagon several times with the AC 185 on the baler. She finally refused to run the baler with that tractor on it. That AC 185 only stayed here less than four months. Find me any other tractor build in 1980 that had hand controlled ground speed while doing PTO work??????

Then looking at the AC and IH from a business stand point. IH and AC lagged behind most corporations in the US on profit margins. JD averaged 6-7% profit margins on gross sales. IH and AC struggled to do 2-3% margins. Then you add in the fact that AC and IH both where conglomerates that soon where out managed by companies with a narrower business focus. At one time the pull type combine plant/sales where making the majority of the entire companies' profit. So that made a whole bunch of other iron being sold and manufactured for nothing.
 
I've seen a couple there's one that sat next to a road for a couple years. Story I heard was they made them about the time the w d was out and the idea was as the load came forward the weight would stay on the tractor. It's a good idea and if you ever hauled in the winter and lost all the weight when the load was over the rear axle on the spreader it was a real good idea. There built the same as the newer ones with side discharge. Google allis Chalmers 110 manure spreaders then hit images.
 
In my area the 7000's were pretty good sellers,we had a good dealer in the county,Hervey implement in Keosauqua Iowa and a little ways south,35 miles or so was another fairly Strong AC dealer in Kahoka Missouri..

the economy killed what spark shined on the 8000 series...
The 8000 series were able to stand toe to toe with IH or Deere with the largest cab,very good hydaulics for the time,FWA front axle,ground level fueling,ground level door access,and so on.

Engineering was alive and well because there have been a couple of the 8095's show up in recent years,they were also planning on an 18 speed version of there powershift,also a powershift of some kind in the 4w-305 as well...


the AC min-til disk chisel was selling well in some areas.. Field cultivators and Disks were selling fairly well,used to see a few in these parts from that era, AC was also a major player in the corn planter market in the mid to late 70's and into the 80's,they pretty much invented the no-till planting concept,I was always curious what direction they would have kept going in planters...

The engine division I always thought was puzzling, that how could a company with a very competitive engine line in the 60's,with the 301 and 426, all the way to the early to mid 70's let it get so dated compared to its chief competition...
by the early 80's the tractor engineers saw the writing on the wall and were looking at other engine sources for future projects,thats why the 8095 prototypes had Komatsu's,and Harvey works was no more by 1985-86,not just because KHD was primairly an engine maker, AC was planning on killing the engine division themselves
 
AC let certain products get very stale but AC did not completely turn off the R & D. They used very poor decision making and the comments that you and Coonie Minnie made were enlightening to say the least. I am guessing that low margin products such as certain hay and forage tools did not bring enough return for the factories that they were made in. Again I would say that AC should have followed the lead of others such as Ford and looked to build some of those products outside the AC factory system where maybe labor cost less. Either just slap AC orange and white on somebody else's design or use AC engineers and let the outsider build to AC specs. I would still maintain that the average dealer here in the east needed a wide base of products to sell to keep viable. A fair number here in New York had no local market for a self propelled combine so when pull type combines faded that created a gap in the dealer's line. I don't know about the Midwest but there were not enough shortlines available for every dealer who wanted one here and not having forage tools to sell was a definite hindrance. I am sure for certain dealers here who had IH and NH that the district managers cringed having a competitor on the lot so prominently but when the yard is chuck full of new equipment which brings customer traffic it is hard to justify pulling the franchise in favor of a dealer that looks like he is barely in business. The bottom line is if you do not have dealers at some point you will not have a company and that was the direction AC was heading in the mid 1980's.
 
(quoted from post at 18:22:15 04/27/16) I ask myself a lot of these questions too, Allis was a very innovative company,and if one looks at what they were doing in the 70's and 80's up to the very end,most people would agree.

WHOA! Hold up there! Just what were the innovations in the AG department at AC?

I checked sales numbers when AC was making the Roto Baler. NH sold far more balers in the same time frame, something like 10 to 1. That's not looking at other brands, just NH. That wasn't too successful.

Cat had the first turbo on a tractor around 53 (and yes an ag model was available) so the D19 wasn't a first unless you want to claim first wheeled turbo diesel.

While the Gleaner had a decent reputation the big guys and custom operators used the MF's until Deere came out with the 7700. They were picked for productivity and durability.

Other so called innovations? The Snap Coupler? That kinda died like the IH Fast Hitch.

That really falls under marketing and market research or the lack of....both AC and IH should have known that the target market had grown up during the depression and wanted to shop around for implements. Being stuck with preparatory implements wasn't a great idea for either company. The Snap Coupler and Fast Hitch had another short coming. As HP increased neither system could be made large enough to harness that extra HP.

AC was late to the game with IPTO.

Late in the game to Power Shift.

IH at least learned from the 560 tranny failure where AC was noted for Tranny issues clear up to and including the hundred series.

It's kinda like the IH fans claiming the first diesel tractor when Cat beat them to the punch in 1933 IIRC. Cat even beat CaseIH to the punch on the Quad Track design. They experimented with a steel tracked loader in the 60's. The problem was tire punctures in mining operations from sharp rocks. About the time Cat was really looking at building the thing someone figured out that a special kind of tire chains solved the problem.

You really look at it. The big innovations after the tractor was invented:

Row Crop. (IHC)

IC engines, including LP, gas and diesel. (Waterloo Gasoline Engine Company)

PTO, live PTO and IPTO included. (IHC first production model, JD first IPTO)

Hydraulics. Live included. (not sure of first but both Ford and IHC produced tractors in 1939 that had/could have hydraulics)

3 point hitch. (Ferguson system on the Ford 9N)

Shift on the go/Power Shift. (Ford selecto speed)

These are based on what stay with us.

Tractors once proven successful were bound to get larger. HP was going to go up. Things like cabs were bound to happen. But those were the big innovations. Power steering was a necessity as tractors got bigger. The turbo was a no brainer. It aloud using the same engine in several models of tractors.

That's at least how I see it.

Rick
 
You also have a wife that refuses to drive the tractor baling hay if its the god#$%^** AC???!!!!
I have an old 57 WD 45 with a late D17 engine in it,wife hates the hand clutch on it,I mean HATES it...
Me.. I dont mind it,tractor runs a IH 430 sq baler like a champ..
 
I'm not gonna get into a pi$$ing contest here,but on the CAT are you refering to the D8H or 9H? they're might have been an AG model but i'm sure it was a pretty limited one,lol
dont forget pneumatic rubber tires... LOL
I'm an IH guy,but AC is an interesting story of how to build a house of cards,or how big you can make one before.....
 
Most guys are smart enough to realize when AC claimed "first tractor with a turbo" they meant first mainstream tractor for the mass. Not too man guys on here farmed with D9 cats. Also you tend to speak as your area represents the whole USA. Gleaner combines by far were the preferred choice for custom cutters in this "area." Doesn't mean it was like that everywhere. And what does IPTO mean for JD? Cockshutt had the first successful mass produced live PTO followed by Oliver.
 
(quoted from post at 20:24:38 04/27/16) I'm not gonna get into a pi$$ing contest here,but on the CAT are you refering to the D8H or 9H? they're might have been an AG model but i'm sure it was a pretty limited one,lol
dont forget pneumatic rubber tires... LOL
I'm an IH guy,but AC is an interesting story of how to build a house of cards,or how big you can make one before.....

Hey IH had a pretty big house of cards too..... :lol:

And yea, Cat didn't sell many of them as an AG tractor but they did.

Turbo's were over 50 years old before they were applied to any type of tractor. So not really that big a deal.

Rubber tires were going to happen so that really wasn't a game changer, they drove steel wheels tractors on the road before them.

I was just looking at the major innovations that changed tractors and the face farming.

Rick

Really not much in the way of innovations.

Rick
 
Didn't AC down rate the 8070 to 170 hp from the 7080 that was 180 hp? I have never been around the newer ACs all we have is a Series 4 D-17 diesel. But I did pickup a 8000 series brochure from a local toy show one year and was impressed by the overall design except for the 426 being stretched in the two bigger tractors.
 
There wasn't any equipment built by AC that someone else didn't make better so we never saw much reason to buy any of their machinery. Often it was built lighter than the competition. This pertains to the machinery they built under their own name before their dissolution.
 
(quoted from post at 20:40:08 04/27/16) Didn't AC down rate the 8070 to 170 hp from the 7080 that was 180 hp? I have never been around the newer ACs all we have is a Series 4 D-17 diesel. But I did pickup a 8000 series brochure from a local toy show one year and was impressed by the overall design except for the 426 being stretched in the two bigger tractors.

According to tractor data the 7080 (75-81) was 210 HP and the 8070 (82-85) was 189 HP. Kinda the apples and orange thing.

The 7080 tested 181.5 at the Nebraska test and the 8070 tested at 170. The 210 and 189 were engine HP.

Rick
 
Well green envy I have to give jd credit for one thing. They were building antique tractors 50 years before anybody else!
 
(quoted from post at 20:35:20 04/27/16) Most guys are smart enough to realize when AC claimed "first tractor with a turbo" they meant first mainstream tractor for the mass. Not too man guys on here farmed with D9 cats. Also you tend to speak as your area represents the whole USA. Gleaner combines by far were the preferred choice for custom cutters in this "area." Doesn't mean it was like that everywhere. And what does IPTO mean for JD? Cockshutt had the first successful mass produced live PTO followed by Oliver.

JD offered as an option live hydraulics and IPTO on the R in 1949. I know tractor data says live but it was in fact an IPTO with a clutch pack to kick it in and out. My dad had one. I helped rebuild the clutch pack. The plates would warp and the PTO would run constant.

AH! I found it! The model 30 in 1946! It says live not IPTO? Which one was it? The JD R had an IPTO although tractordata say live. It had a clutch pack for engaging it. Dada had one and I helped him rebuild it while I was home on leave.

I'm talking about the big gun combiners who started harvest in the south and worked north. I worked that circuit in 73. The guy I worked for had taken over from his dad who still helped out. Mostly running back and forth into town to get us pops and bring us meals. He ran 3 new combines every year and had 3 grain trucks too. The crew was his dad, him, 3 operators and 3 truck drivers. Everything was JD and GMC.

We did have a few local guys who did some custom harvesting with Gleaners. But out on the circuit I only saw JD and MF. His dad claimed that with the 7700's and whatever the MF guys were running that they were the only to combines worth having.

So I'm most likely out of whack here because I don't think of custom work as doing you neighbors place. I think of it as a 6 month endurance run! I guess doing the local area is custom work too.

Rick
 
First of all JD and Cockshutt and maybe some of the others used the words "live" and "independent" interchangeably. That is why you are confused. You want proof? I have a brochure for the 30 describing the PTO as "live" when it does have its own clutch and is driven off the flywheel.

And on the custom cutting topic don't assume for a second that when I said Gleaners were popular among custom cutters back in the day I meant just the locals. The guy who used to cut for us was Forest Tupper of Tupper Harvesting based out of Kansas. He just died last year but started making the run in the 60s on Gleaners and ran them up till the 80s. He was still making the run each year up till last year. We used to be the last stop on Tupper's run. He would load up his M2s in our yard and head back down to KS. We also had another cutter out of Kansas cut our crop one year with a N7. And today we have 3 different main crews around here that are all based out of Kansas like Skinner and Farris. And there is usually another odd ball crew that shows up once here every year. All of these guys now run red or green but back in the day the Gleaners were a popular choice. And they are all out of the south and not some neighbor cutting another neighbor's crop like you said. Also Gleaner had an option the G that allowed the cab to be folded down for transport. It was aimed at the custom cutters.
 
AC made outdated equipment with POOR longevity/reliability.

It doesn't take a genius or a writer of revisionist history to figure out why they failed. As they should have.
 
More flakes of rust off the memory

Some interesting reading on company management

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricardo_Semler

And Semco. I have some articles (not to hand) and in there he was showing an Allis big wig their organisation wide computerised monitoring program, even down to employee's coffee.

The Allis rep was most impressed.

After Semco's liquidity crisis (the 1990 one IIRC) he hoped Allis never tried to implement it - or words to that effect
 
I think you meant to hit somebody else's reply button. I never specifically used the word innovation. I merely stated that AC did spend money on R & D. Examples. No till planters. Air system for row crop planter. They did go from the WD type transmission to develop a 12 speed power shift first used on the 7000 series. Front wheel assist for the 8000 series. Developed their own rotary combine but did release it before the bugs were out of it.
 
Agreed. In the 1960s and 1970s there was about an even split between IH, JD and Gleaner for combines in NE Kansas. A farmer would be all IH or all JD equipment but still have a Gleaner combine.
 
Yes somethings were going to happen.....eventually, but that goes for a lot of things. MM
had the first all enclosed cab in production back in 1938 which wasnt made common place on
tractors until 30 years later. Same with the front wheel drive. MM was working on that in
the late 1950s and early 1960s. Oliver was near the same time. That didnt become a big thing
until nearly 25 years later. The Moline Universal tractor to my knowledge was the first
production tractor with electric lighting, which was back in 1915-1918. The AC round baler
might not have been popular but they had it started a ways before anyone else.
 
Doesn't it seem like the companies with the most innovative ideas that were ahead of their time seemed to fail the quickest?

Everyone says Deere stuck with the two-cylinder design for far too long, but who is the only truly independent tractor manufacturer left? Deere, and not because they were the most innovative or the first with anything really. Either they had some really smart people in the marketing department or they were just plain lucky, but they managed to put the technology on the market right when the market was ready for it.

Hmm, maybe someone at Deere has a Delorean with a flux capacitor on it? Could explain a few things...
 
I agree, JD is well managed. If they are into something they are in it. Deere was daring with the new generation of tractors but just to Deere owners changing from a two cylinder. Other companies already had tractors with 4 and 6 cylinder engines and most of the features of the 3010 and 4010. A lot of what Deere had going for them is....it is a John Deere.
 
If you dig deep you will find that a lot of these innovations by any of these companies were the result of them buying
the patents or rights from farmers who originally came up with the idea. Good example is the AC Roto baler and All
Crop combine and the IH cyclo planted.
 
Heres something to ponder, Allis was looking at something like 4 companies in the 80's to possibly merge with,I've read by other people on other forums that worked for AC, that they were having talks with Massey,and there was supposidly a AC 8000 tractor painted in MF colors for a dealer show or some kind of meeting...
Imagine if the sell off of the AG division to Deutz never happened, If Massey and AC tied the knot...
Would you have had Allis-Ferguson?? or Massey-Chalmers??
I think that might have worked, MF still owned Perkins at that time, AC was driving nails in there engine division's coffin, so could we have seen the replacements for the 8000 series,probably the 9000 series,powered by the 640? v8 used in the 2775 and 2805?
Massey was out of the big tractor market by then with the closing of the detroit plant, so the larger models could have been based on a AC design with the smaller models filled out by a MF design,also at some point the R series Gleaners im sure were to be out soon,im sure they would have replaced MF's aging 750/60 850/60 machines,MF was looking for another way out of those too,hence why they bought the White rotary design, also AC had a pretty full implement line too,even though its future was a little shakey with the closing of the laPort factory...
sorry for the long rant,just some pondering,and asking what if....
 
I worked for the Allis and Oliver dealer in the early 60 s you guys point to the D19 coming out a turbo' ya they were first but they were so dam dumb that they lower the compression to 12- 1 it would not start below 40 degrees and with that inj system you just held the ether can near the air cleaner just let smell it or it would lock it up, that engine was just reworked D17
 

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