page_title: Allis-Chalmers
section_title: 1960s and 1970s
hierarchical_section_title: Allis-Chalmers / History / 1960s and 1970s
caption_attribution_description: English: Allis Chalmers D21 Series II tractor (built 1968), taken at the 2008 Michigan Steam Engine and Threshers Club annual meet in Mason, MI, 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: In 1960, the U.S. government uncovered an attempt to form a cartel in the heavy electric equipment industry. It charged 13 companies, including the largest in the industry (Westinghouse, General Electric, and Allis-Chalmers), with price fixing and bid rigging. Most feigned innocence, but Allis-Chalmers pleaded guilty. Although one motive for the forming of cartels is so that amply profitable firms can try to become obscenely profitable, it did not apply in this instance, according to Buescher; rather, his view of the attempt at a heavy-electrical cartel was that it was a desperate (and foolish) attempt to turn red ink to black ink among fierce competition.
  The D series continued to be successful in the 1960s. The factory-installed turbocharger on the D19 was the first in the industry. It was soon followed by the 190 and the 190 XT, which was a direct competitor for the John Deere Model 4020 with 98 horsepower (factory rating).
  In 1965, Allis-Chalmers acquired Simplicity for its line of lawn and garden equipment. Also in that year, the nuclear reactor SAFARI-1, a research reactor built by Allis-Chalmers, went into operation.
  In the 1960s, the farm equipment, construction equipment, and heavy electrical industries were not as profitable for Allis-Chalmers as they had been in the 1930s through 1950s. Reasonable prosperity continued in the farm equipment line, but the economics of all the industries shifted toward greater uncertainty and brittler success for firms that didn't become number one or two in a field. Allis-Chalmers was often number three or four, as Deere and International Harvester led in farm machinery, Caterpillar and Case led in construction, and Westinghouse and General Electric led in heavy electric markets. In the late 1960s, a trend of conglomeration flared, as mega-conglomerates like Ling-Temco-Vought, Gulf+Western, and White Consolidated Industries went on buying sprees. Several takeover attempts by those firms were made on Allis-Chalmers. It was during the same era and business climate that Tenneco acquired Case.
  In 1960, Allis-Chalmers built the first grate-kiln ore pellet plant at the Humboldt mine in Michigan. The company eventually built about 50 such plants.
  In 1974, Allis-Chalmers's construction equipment business was reorganized into a joint venture with Fiat SpA, which bought a 65% majority stake at the outset. The new company was called Fiat-Allis.
  In May 1975, the company closed its 20-acre, 78-year-old Pittsburgh North Side factory that employed close to 1,100 full-time and produced both distribution and instrument control transformers.
  In 1977, to compete in the recently expanding market segment of compact diesel utility tractors (such as the Kubota line and the Ford 1000 and 1600 built by Shibaura), Allis-Chalmers began importing Hinomoto tractors with Toyosha diesel engines from Japan. They were rebadged with the Allis-Chalmers brand for U.S. sales.
  In 1978, a joint venture with Siemens, Siemens-Allis, was formed, supplying electrical control equipment.
caption: An Allis-Chalmers D21 Series II tractor
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