Alis Chalmers - Allis Challmers tractors (tracktors) supply
Alis Chalmers (Allis Challmers) was founded in the mid 1800's as a millstone maker company. It was eventually sold to Deutz and later to AGCO farm equipment. Allis Challmers trackter parts supply, new and used, second hand can be difficult to find nowadays.
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Edward P. Allis & Company was the creation of E.P. Allis, starting off with a purchased business manufacturing French burr millstones, water wheels and similar products. Around 1870, the company went into steam power, shortly thereafter launching the first Allis steamengine and introducing products like pumps based on this engine.
The Allis Chalmers trackter company
The Allis Chalmers company as we know it was created by merger of several companies in 1901. Allis Chalmers constructed the first farm tractor in 1914 and towards the end of the 1920's the company had started a range of crawler trackters (following Caterpillar's success), they had bought up other companies and diversified into threshers, combines and tillage implements.
The big leap forward came in the 1930's as the company realized that although most larger farmers (above 100 acres) owned tractors, but the major part of America's farms were smaller and they had not been able to afford a tracktor. There was a gap in the market, just waiting to be plugged.
Alis Chalmers model B tracktor
The plug in that hole started with Allis-Chalmers model B trackters, first introduced near the end of the 1930's. They were small, inexpensive, light but still had enough horsepower to handle normal plowing and harvesting for the smaller farmer.The B model tracktor was the first to be sold on the American market at under 500 dollars. It also used design to sell - when all other tractors at the time were painted mud grey, the Allis Challmers B model was painted brightly orange.
The B model tracktors were hugely successful. Its first year was 1937 when 96 of these were built. In the following year, 1938, nearly 12,000 was manufactured and when the last models were built in 1956, the final count was over 127,000. The company used a lower margin initially than other tractor supply manufacturers, resulting in rapid growth. Something what would later force the company to sell out to Deutz when they ended up in financial problems.
With the B model came the new and patented torque tube, that was a long tube containing the driveshaft between the engine and the weels and a narrow torque shaft to the power takeoff. The advantage was that the driver could see around the tube to the cultivator hoes beween the crops rows. The technology was later licensed to other farm tractor manufacturers like John Deere, IH, Case.
In the next decade, Alis Chalmers introduced larger models buildng on the success of the B. There were the C, the WC, the U, A and WF models as well as many tracked versions for heavy construction. Alis Chalmers trackter supply and tracktor suply resources summary.