Allis-Chalmers Construction Division

here is a quote from the allis chamlers website: http://www.allischalmerslawn.com/about_us/

Over the years, the company made a series of acquisitions, including Simplicity Manufacturing, Inc., and introduced a number of product lines. In addition to farm tractors, Allis-Chalmers offered combines, hydroturbines, values and pumps, compressors, electric motors and Simplicity lawn & garden tractors. By 1979, Allis-Chalmers had grown into a $2 billion corporation and was one of the prominent machinery and tractor manufacturers in the United States.

The rapid economic change during the 1980s, however, created financial struggles from which Allis-Chalmers could not recover. It sold Simplicity manufacturing to its management in 1983. This move was followed by the sale of its farm equipment division to K-H-D AG of Germany (which was renamed Deutz-Allis) in 1985. Deutz-Allis was later sold to its management and became what is now the AGCO Corporation.

What remained of the manufacturing businesses were dispersed in 1998 and the company officially closed its offices in Milwaukee in January 1999. The remaining service businesses became Allis-Chalmers Energy in Houston, Texas.

In 2008, Briggs & Stratton Power Products, LLC, announced it would be restoring the Allis-Chalmers brand to the lawn and garden industry with two new lawn tractors. Available at Simplicity dealerships beginning this fall, the new tractors harken back to the glory days of the Allis-Chalmers farm tractor. The design of the new AC130 lawn tractor is reminiscent of these products, leaning heavily on the familiar orange color and distinctive Allis-Chalmers logo.

AC's and International's were never built to the standard Cat was. Down time and heavy repair costs contributed their demise.

Hi, Rch101.
A-C ackshully built quite a good machine in most of their product lines and were also quite innovative in some ways. How-wevver, while I don't quite agree with 657Bruce's lumping of A-C and International Harvester together in the same statement as I regarded A-C as the better brand of the two, it was my observation that the earlier A-C dozers did have transmission/final drive issues, possibly largely due to the 'Driptroit' power plants that were used and inadequate engineering. The later models with the Buda/A-C diesels did not seem to have quite the same issues but the 'mould had been set' by then, Cats had proven to be the better machines with the better service and parts back-up and had built their reputation on that. The A-C HD41 did NOT do anything to help this image either. A-C sold out their heavy equipment division to Fiat in, I think, the very late 1970's, the service and back-up became even less 'user-friendly' and sales dropped off further until the Fiat-Allis brand disappeared too.

I sorta suspect that financial difficulties, mis-management/call-it-what-you-will, may have played a fairly substantial part in the demise too, including the need to sell out to Fiat in the first place. I think they call it 'history'.

Just my 0.02.

We've had both,A C and Cat and still do I've a later 6B the last of the Buda engines,the head is problomatic at times,the rest of the machine has been good,compared to a D-4 of that era the AC runs circles around it,but you'll pay for it in undercarriage,it is a comfortable machine to operate,they are easier to work on components are seperate the engine is one,the trans is another and the clutch can be gotten to easy,we also had the HD5 with a 2 cyl Driptroit it also was a decent machine,along side a Cat I'd call them about the same,other than having to listen to the screamer,these two machines at least didn't self destruct like the big brothers in the line up such as the H D 21's,there was one in this area several years ago and I worked a fire along side of it trying to clean up the slash that 21 left in its wake with a well tuned D6D that was in very nice shape,along with me was a D6C,between the two of us we couldn't clear a path thru the caranage that 21 left in its wake,it would hit 2 foot across trees knock them out of the dirt and not even bark,the owner was having a ball knocking over trees,but here again you paid for it in undercarage,transmissions,and final drives those 21's just tore themselves apart.

I purchased an HD11 series B new in 1974, it was badged a Fiat Allis 11B, so the take over by Fiat I think was in 1972 or 1973. Compared to a D6C the engine and hydraulics were far superior on the 11B, I would say the hydraulics were equivalent to the 270 D8H I had at the time. The tracks and final drives were not so good however, I would say they were D5 equivalent, hence putting 140hp through components engineered for about 105hp. The finals had to be re raced every 3,000 hrs and new pins and bushes fitted at the same time, other than that, it was a very good tractor. I eventually replaced it with a D6D, I missed the hydraulics of the 11B, but enjoyed not having to re race final drives all the time.

We have owned and operated FD10c,FD14c, FD16B, FD21B/C, FD30, FD50 We found them to be excellent machines. Buy far out working there cat equivalents. Operators were well pleased with them. The reason we ended up with so many Fiat Allis was because we had a very arrogant cat dealer 15 miles from our shop that we could no longer work with after 25 years, we were not alone several contractors refused there service. So we started selling cats and buying Fiats and Internationals BTW the Fiat dealer was 80 miles away They started off treating us like gold in the early 80's and still are today. Over all the machines stood up to our work well , I don't recall a lot of down time. I would say anyone that says that were greatly inferior or under designed were not around them much or had a chance to run one much. I think Allis Chalmers was one of many large company's that were not able to stand a very tough economic recession of the late seventy's early eighty's, seems like company's like Allis Chalmers that were very diversified had a high overheads and plummeting sales in every endeavor they had going on and were forced to sell assets to try to hold on and Waite out the recession, but time ran out for them and many others. In my opinion, it was a very tough time for manufacturing company's in the US . Chum.

Hi, Chumduffy.
You may have had bad experiences with one Cat dealership but, by and large, I have found them to be better able to provide service back-up and spares than most of their competition and I would venture to suggest that that fact is quite probably equal to their reputation for quality as a reason for them still being here when most of their competition from the very early days is gone.

I might add that you are talking Fiat-Allis products, NOT A-C and the machines and the dealerships are/were two different kettles of fish.

Just my 0.02.

Over here in South Africa we also had some A-C's. Sentiments expressed by others here also applied here.

They'd run circles round the Cat's of the day, but they were costly in the UC departments.

In Afrikaans the A-C's were said to "lig in die boude" (lacking or "too light" in the backsides) and that was unfortunately their demise here. Some of the Divisional Councils (rural local governments) had fleets of them as they were much cheaper to buy than Cats, but they quickly burned their fingers when it came to maintenance cost.

IH was also well represented on the crawler side here, with lots of TD40's, TD35's, T9/TD9, T6/TD6 and the bigger models earning their keep. Cost of UC, un-availability of spares all compunded in some going "scrapside" sooner. IH was regarded as "hardegat"(gutsy) tractors, and my Dad reckoned the TD9 would give the D4 a good run for it's money, with the old TD35 even better in it's day than the Cat RD4.

The divisional councils was a tier of local government in the coutryside outside the municipal boundaries of towns and cities, and were responsible for upkeep of roads and road infrastructure such as bridges, etc. You'd travel along some distant gravel road only to see a lonely DC trailer parked on an "outspan" and see a lonely road grader busy down the road. The "outspans" were areas (about 10 morgen or 20 acres) of "crown land" where in days gone by you could lay over for at least 3 days with a team of oxen and an ox-wagon, or rest your horses on your journey. These were located about 10-15 miles apart, as that was distance you can expect to have traveled in a day. As a kid I remember some folk actually "trekking" from outspan to outspan grazing there sheep or cattle (free of course, as long as they did not stay over longer than the 3 days...)

In 1968 I was working with a Melroe Bobcat rep. who had left A-C managment training program for rep. job with Bobcat which seemed like a bad move to me. He said A-C is going broke. No company can exist with the home office over load of managment A-C has. Time proved he was right.
Gene Walker