Gleaner Manufacturing Company
Encyclopedia
Self-propelled travel
Self-propelled travel is a type of recreational adventure travel using human powered transport. This includes non-motorized machines such as a bicycle or skateboard...
combine harvesters. They are best known for their production while part of Allis-Chalmers
Allis-Chalmers
The Allis-Chalmers Manufacturing Co. of West Allis, Wisconsin, is an American company known for its past as a manufacturer with diverse interests, perhaps most famous for their bright Persian Orange farm tractors...
Manufacturing Company. Gleaners were silver
Silver
Silver is a metallic chemical element with the chemical symbol Ag and atomic number 47. A soft, white, lustrous transition metal, it has the highest electrical conductivity of any element and the highest thermal conductivity of any metal...
in color, unlike the Allis-Chalmers field
Field (agriculture)
In agriculture, the word field refers generally to an area of land enclosed or otherwise and used for agricultural purposes such as:* Cultivating crops* Usage as a paddock or, generally, an enclosure of livestock...
tractors, which were unique for their bright orange
Orange (colour)
The colour orange occurs between red and yellow in the visible spectrum at a wavelength of about 585–620 nm, and has a hue of 30° in HSV colour space. It is numerically halfway between red and yellow in a gamma-compressed RGB colour space, the expression of which is the RGB colour wheel. The...
paint. Gleaners were unique for being the first to use galvanised sheet metal
Sheet metal
Sheet metal is simply metal formed into thin and flat pieces. It is one of the fundamental forms used in metalworking, and can be cut and bent into a variety of different shapes. Countless everyday objects are constructed of the material...
. Gleaning itself is the act of collecting leftover crops from farmers' fields after they have been commercially harvested or on fields where it is not economically profitable to harvest.
History
Gleaner combines date back to 1923, when the Baldwin Brothers of KansasKansas
Kansas is a US state located in the Midwestern United States. It is named after the Kansas River which flows through it, which in turn was named after the Kansa Native American tribe, which inhabited the area. The tribe's name is often said to mean "people of the wind" or "people of the south...
, inspired by Jean Francois Millet's famous 1857 painting, The Gleaners
The Gleaners
The Gleaners is an oil painting by Jean-François Millet completed in 1857. It depicts three peasant women gleaning a field of stray grains of wheat after the harvest...
, decided to use the term as the name for their radically redesigned self-propelled harvesting machine. The Baldwin Brothers' Gleaner incorporated reaping
Reaper
A reaper is a person or machine that reaps crops at harvest, when they are ripe.-Hand reaping:Hand reaping is done by various means, including plucking the ears of grains directly by hand, cutting the grain stalks with a sickle, cutting them with a scythe, or with a later type of scythe called a...
, binding and threshing
Threshing
Threshing is the process of loosening the edible part of cereal grain from the scaly, inedible chaff that surrounds it. It is the step in grain preparation after harvesting and before winnowing, which separates the loosened chaff from the grain...
all into one machine. Gleaner Baldwin Combines of Independence, MO
Missouri
Missouri is a US state located in the Midwestern United States, bordered by Iowa, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska. With a 2010 population of 5,988,927, Missouri is the 18th most populous state in the nation and the fifth most populous in the Midwest. It...
fell into bankruptcy in the 1930s as sales plummeted. William James Brace became the receiver and with his son-in-law, George Reuland and others brought the company back. During WWII, they also produced war-related machinery parts. They were among the pioneers in the "self-propelled" machines, that is combines which had integrated propulsion and were not pulled by tractors. These machines were often considered the "Cadillac" of the industry. Allis-Chalmers purchased Gleaner in 1955 and continued to build the Gleaner machines in Independence, MO. When Allis-Chalmers folded, it became part of Deutz-Allis and in 1991, AGCO (Allis Gleaner Company)was created. The Independence plant was moved to Hesston, Kansas
Hesston, Kansas
Hesston is a city in Harvey County, Kansas, United States. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 3,709. Hesston is home of Hesston College, which has approximately 450 students.-19th century:...
in 2000, near its roots where the Baldwin brothers started.
In 1979, Gleaner released another major innovation, the traversal rotary combine. The N6 was the first such combine produced by Gleaner, followed by the N5 and the N7, the largest combine of its time, with grain
GRAIN
GRAIN is a small international non-profit organisation that works to support small farmers and social movements in their struggles for community-controlled and biodiversity-based food systems. Our support takes the form of independent research and analysis, networking at local, regional and...
headers as big as 30 feet.
Firsts
Some of the firsts introduced by the Gleaner are: an augerAuger
An auger is a drilling device, or drill bit, that usually includes a rotating helical screw blade called a "flighting" to act as a screw conveyor to remove the drilled out material...
that replaced canvas
Canvas
Canvas is an extremely heavy-duty plain-woven fabric used for making sails, tents, marquees, backpacks, and other items for which sturdiness is required. It is also popularly used by artists as a painting surface, typically stretched across a wooden frame...
drapers
Drapers
Drapers, formerly Drapers Record, was founded on 6 August 1887 as a magazine for the women's clothing retail trade. It is now the leading weekly business-to-business magazine covering the fashion retail sector...
, a rasp bar threshing cylinder
Cylinder (geometry)
A cylinder is one of the most basic curvilinear geometric shapes, the surface formed by the points at a fixed distance from a given line segment, the axis of the cylinder. The solid enclosed by this surface and by two planes perpendicular to the axis is also called a cylinder...
instead of a spike-tooth arrangement, and a down-front cylinder that put threshing closer to the crop. In 1972 Gleaner was the first manufacturer to use electro-hydrualic controls,something that other companies didn't have until 25 years later. It also introduced the use of galvanised sheet metal
Sheet metal
Sheet metal is simply metal formed into thin and flat pieces. It is one of the fundamental forms used in metalworking, and can be cut and bent into a variety of different shapes. Countless everyday objects are constructed of the material...
and the name “GLEANER” – two trademark
Trademark
A trademark, trade mark, or trade-mark is a distinctive sign or indicator used by an individual, business organization, or other legal entity to identify that the products or services to consumers with which the trademark appears originate from a unique source, and to distinguish its products or...
s that have remained unchanged for over three-quarters of a century
Century
A century is one hundred consecutive years. Centuries are numbered ordinally in English and many other languages .-Start and end in the Gregorian Calendar:...
.
Allis-Chalmers
In 1955, Allis-Chalmers Manufacturing Company acquired Gleaner. This was what launched Gleaner into success and the production of numerous new models, as well as a wealth of new technology. Allis-Chalmers is the name under which Gleaners are most well known. These combines superseded the All-Crop Harvesters for Allis-Chalmers.In 1985, Allis-Chalmers became Deutz-Allis
Deutz-Allis
Deutz-Allis was formed when Deutz-Fahr of Germany, part of KHD, purchased the agricultural assets of the Allis-Chalmers corporation in 1985.Deutz-Allis was eventually sold to the Allis-Gleaner Corporation, or AGCO), in 1990...
, and Gleaners were produced under that name.This was the start of the dowmfall of the Gleaner combine. Gleaner lost a tremendous amount of market share between 1985 and 2000. They have never recovered.
AGCO Allis
In 1991, Deutz Allis became AGCO Allis, and Gleaners were consequently sold under AGCO.In 2000, AGCO moved the Gleaner manufacturing facility to its AGCO facility in order to have a more modern facility and to centralize many engineering
Engineering
Engineering is the discipline, art, skill and profession of acquiring and applying scientific, mathematical, economic, social, and practical knowledge, in order to design and build structures, machines, devices, systems, materials and processes that safely realize improvements to the lives of...
and production functions at one location. This facility is located in Kansas
Kansas
Kansas is a US state located in the Midwestern United States. It is named after the Kansas River which flows through it, which in turn was named after the Kansa Native American tribe, which inhabited the area. The tribe's name is often said to mean "people of the wind" or "people of the south...
, just a few miles away from where Gleaner originated.
Today
Even though Allis-Chalmers aren't here today, Gleaners are still in production under AGCOAGCO
AGCO is an agricultural equipment manufacturer based in Duluth, Georgia, USA. As a leading global manufacturer of agricultural equipment, AGCO offers a full line of tractors, combines, hay tools, sprayers, forage and tillage equipment, which are distributed through more than 2,700 independent...
, which actually stands for Allis Gleaner Company.
The class 8 Gleaner A85
Gleaner A85
The A85 is a Class 8 combine harvester made by Gleaner Manufacturing Company. The A85 is the largest Gleaner made, boasting a 459 horsepower Caterpillar C13 engine. It has a 350 bushel bin capacity, which it can unload in less than 90 seconds; unloading 4.5 bushels per second. The A85 has a 4-speed...
is the largest combine harvester made by Gleaner.
See also
- Allis-ChalmersAllis-ChalmersThe Allis-Chalmers Manufacturing Co. of West Allis, Wisconsin, is an American company known for its past as a manufacturer with diverse interests, perhaps most famous for their bright Persian Orange farm tractors...
- List of Allis-Chalmers tractors
- All-Crop HarvesterAll-Crop HarvesterAll-Crop Harvester, or All-Crop Combine, was the name of tractor-drawn, PTO-driven combine harvesters made by Allis-Chalmers from the mid 1930s to the early 1960s...
- Gleaner EGleaner EThe Gleaner E was a combine harvester manufactured by the Gleaner Manufacturing Company while part of the Allis-Chalmers Manufacturing Company in the 1960s. 17,300 machines were manufactured in total from 1962 to 1969....
- Gleaner A85Gleaner A85The A85 is a Class 8 combine harvester made by Gleaner Manufacturing Company. The A85 is the largest Gleaner made, boasting a 459 horsepower Caterpillar C13 engine. It has a 350 bushel bin capacity, which it can unload in less than 90 seconds; unloading 4.5 bushels per second. The A85 has a 4-speed...