Interesting Ac \ West Allis facts

Last night my wife was at a neighborhood get -together and she got talking to a new neighbor ; he said he was from Milwaukee and he always saw my -ORANGE- glow of AC , they got to talking and he supplied ALLIS with cameras, video equipment for the Proving Grounds , engineering , and whatever they needed for pictures and videos ; he said at first it wasnt- yeah we,ll take that one, they had all kinds of brands and really worked them out - very perticular !!!!! He said it was a shame that when ALLIS started to fall apart , folks could never believe it could go bankrupt ; when it did WEST ALLIS folks couldnt believe how high property tax could be ; AC paid most all the city of WEST ALLIS,S taxes ; Allis was looking to move its headquarters to Kentucky, they had the AIR FILTER business there , that rumor got a huge up-roar and to add with the economy, slow big moving equipment ,and heavy high interest rates , AC was gone ; ALLIS paid there foundry works, production workers at WEST ALLIS  -with benefits 80% better than compition, ;across the board at all AC factories the pay was 30% higher ;3$ an hour higher than compition, so when AC asked for help to lower wages to get inline with compition  , of coarse no-one wants to lower wages , ; it didnt go well and ALLIS wasnt lying when they told them the end was near, ;;; he also said a friend of his helped tear down some of ALLIS buildings , equipment, he couldnt believe what engineering was working on , he said it was stuff that was way ahead of our time and equipment now, and this was the early 1980,s ; It wasnt just the lack of pay cuts that collapsed ALLIS  but like he said it could have helped, it was bad business moves, high interest and a combination ; they were making up divisions , companies , left and right and still working on things that were breaking them but they had to support the old business; he said the test farm ,PROVING GROUNDS was the best , those tractors were abused till something broke , it took a while but it usually did from what they put them through !!! I,ll be talking to him alot more !!!!

I met a fellow hiking a local park several summers ago who said he did professional photography for A-C heavy equipment brochures - rock crushers and the like.  Foolish me I did not get his name or hometown!

Speaking of DEERE  another magizine I have - Implement + Tractor [i think]  has an interview with a JD engineer that retied, he was working on the new Generation of JD tractors 3010,4010, etc ; he talked of secret trips to Texas, also he was so glad DEERE wanted a new tractor design - cause he said that they had tried to get more fuel thru a 730 diesel , and what a time they had - finally the engineers told managment ; ITS ONLY GOT 2 CYLINDERS !!!!! 

I have read that book about designing the new gen's and some of it is laughable like the time they had a transmission whine in the mid to late sixties and they fixed it by using the helical gear design. To hear them tell it they invented the helical gear. I said AC started using them in 1953. Deere had a lot better bean counters and pr people than AC did. I have always heard that AC was run by engineers instead business people.JP