page_title: Allis-Chalmers
section_title: 1980s and 1990s
hierarchical_section_title: Allis-Chalmers / History / 1980s and 1990s
caption_attribution_description: English: Allis-Chalmers 7060 tractor with a manure spreader on a farm somewhere in Wisconsin, USA
context_page_description: Allis-Chalmers was a U.S. manufacturer of machinery for various industries. Its business lines included agricultural equipment, construction equipment, power generation and power transmission equipment, and machinery for use in industrial settings such as factories, flour mills, sawmills, textile mills, steel mills, refineries, mines, and ore mills. The first Allis-Chalmers Company was formed in 1901 as an amalgamation of the Edward P. Allis Company, Fraser & Chalmers, the Gates Iron Works, and the industrial business line of the Dickson Manufacturing Company. It was reorganized in 1912 as the Allis-Chalmers Manufacturing Company. During the next 70 years its industrial machinery filled countless mills, mines, and factories around the world, and its brand gained fame among consumers mostly from its farm equipment business's orange tractors and silver combine harvesters. In the 1980s and 1990s, a series of divestitures transformed the firm and eventually dissolved it. Its successors today are Allis-Chalmers Energy and AGCO.
context_section_description: The company began to struggle in the 1980s in a climate of rapid economic change. It was forced amid financial struggles to sell major business lines.
  In 1983, Allis-Chalmers sold Simplicity, the lawn and garden equipment division, to the division's management.
  1985 was a year of great dissolution for Allis-Chalmers—the year when it folded three of its main business lines: 
  The Fiat-Allis joint venture in construction equipment, over which the firms' managements had long since had a falling-out, ended when Fiat bought out Allis's remaining minority stake. It renamed the company Fiatallis.
  The Allis-Chalmers farm equipment business line ended when Allis sold it to K-H-D (Klöckner-Humboldt-Deutz, Deutz AG) of Germany, at the time the owner of Deutz-Fahr. K-H-D renamed the business as Deutz-Allis and discarded the Allis Chalmers 8000 Series tractors and Persian Orange branding in favor of spring green tractors built by White Farm Equipment with Deutz air cooled engines.
  The Siemens-Allis joint venture in electrical controls ended when Siemens bought out Allis's remaining minority stake. Siemens then blended the company into the Siemens Energy and Automation division.
  In 1988, Allis-Chalmers sold its American Air Filter filtration business (with 27 production facilities internationally and sales into 100-plus countries) for approximately $225 million to SnyderGeneral Corporation of Dallas, a leading global air quality control firm.
  In 1990, Deutz-Allis was sold to its management and became Allis-Gleaner Corporation (AGCO). Tractors began selling under the AGCO-Allis name and were again painted Persian Orange. The AGCO brand of orange tractors was produced until 2010 when AGCO announced that it was phasing out the brand.
  In 1998, what remained of the Allis-Chalmers manufacturing businesses were divested, and in January 1999, the company officially closed its Milwaukee offices. The remaining service businesses became Allis-Chalmers Energy in Houston, Texas.
caption: An Allis-Chalmers 7060 in Wisconsin
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