I was blessed this weekend!

I know this is an old thread now but thought I'd respond to a couple things.  Don Walter is my grandpa.  I found this post when I googled the name of the business back then.  Over the years, it was Walter's Garage, then Walter's Agri-Center, and finally Walter's of Rio Creek.

He was also very excited to have found someone to buy the parts who wanted to keep the old Allis' running...rather than someone buying them for scrap price.

I got a little more background from him tonight on the phone.  He couldn't remember some of the dates exactly but has a calendar with all of them on.

In the early to mid-1960's, he already had the business when a New Holland dealer in Algoma closed and a farmer friend convinced him to get into the implement business so they'd have a local place to buy parts.  When the dealer who sold Allis-Chalmers and Minneapolis Moline retired, he picked up those lines.

The cards that you reference actually originally came from the Allis dealer in Kewaunee when my grandpa bought their stock.  That was about 1975.  He's thinking that it was 1978 when he was dropped as a dealer.  The dealer up in Sturgeon Bay was the biggest in the area and they kept the Allis contract.  Fortunately for us, the owner of that dealership up in Sturgeon Bay is a great guy and we could continue to buy parts through him and do shop work in Rio Creek for quite some time.

Justin

chaskaduo wrote: Your gonna be buried in orders before your even unpacked. Now your definitely gonna have sleepless nights.

Yeah I was answering PM's and returning phone calls all day today, I think i'm caught up now. I only wish I could have new A-C tractors sitting on the lot

It sure has been exciting so far going through these parts! I feel like I'm on the American Picker's TV Show!!

This card file is 8"x5" They are very complete except most of them don't say what tractor/implement they fit. By the dates on the cards, it seems he was dropped as a dealer about 1975. So nothing for the 6/7/8000 series. The part counter I bought has numbered drawers where all the gaskets were kept and inventoried. Some drawers still had gaskets in!!

Man, I wish I could have bought out the dealership I worked at when they quit. They had pallets and pallets of stuff on their auction but me, being a new dad, didn't think I should bid on anything I didn't need too bad. It all went for little or nothing and a junk man got just about everything. The Peterson brothers had bought that dealership in 1951 IIRC. They had parts from the previous owners going back to the 1920's like head gasket kit for an E tractor and the y had the big gear that goes in the WC cultivator lift.... several of them. New augers for All crops and wood bats for the reel, the list goes on and on. Some stuff went to collectors but most of the parts on pallets went to the junk man. When the junk man was loading he had his children helping and I'm sure they took stuff they didn't buy. I watched as they loaded into an old grain truck. Anything near a pallet went into the truck as fast as they could throw it. Two of the kids were talking among themselves saying they didn't think certain things were theirs but it went anyhow.

I got a little off track..... Looks like you done good Alex. It has been a dream of mine to do the same.

   Howdy Alex,

   You stuck orange, your rich! Now your just having way too much fun!

    Kurzy

Don(MO) wrote: Good job!! Just a FYI. keep the index card inventory system up to-date as you sale off parts and if you can reproduce how he had his parts department setup so you can find the parts as you get all them calls for that one part they need. lol

Yes, we talked about how it was setup. I have numbered my shelves the same way so I can use his system, which is already on the cards. I am transferring the parts to the shelves one at a time so I know exactly what I have and on what shelf it is located.