Gleaner
Gleaner combines date back to 1923 when the Baldwin Brothers of Kansas were inspired by Jean Francois Millet’ s famous 1857 painting, The Gleaners and decided to use the term as the name for their radically redesigned self-propelled harvesting machine. The Baldwin Brother’ s Gleaner incorporated reaping, binding and threshing all into one machine. Gleaner Baldwin Combines of Independence, Missouri fell into bankruptcy in the 1930’ s as sales plummeted. William James Brace became the receiver and with his son-in-law, George Reuland, and others brought the company back. During World War II, they also produced war related machinery parts. They were among the pioneers in the“ self-propelled” machines, which are combines that 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. In 1978, 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 heads as big as 30 feet. When Allis-Chalmers folded, it became parzt of Deutz-Allis. In 1991, AGCO( Allis Gleaner Company) was created. In 2000, AGCO moved the Gleaner manufacturing facility from the Independence, Missouri plant to Hesston, Kansas, a more modern facility, and to centralize many engineering and production functions to one location. This location is just a few miles away from where the Baldwin brothers started. Gleaner combines are still in production today under AGCO.