When did orange switch to yellow?

I would guess it got to be an industry standard like school buses. The bus I rode in school was orange. When they finally got new buses in the 80's they were yellow.

Thanks, I figured someone on here would have insights from the past.

1961 was when Allis was trying to show the market that they were serious in the utility/ light industrial market. These machines were still basicly just a yellow farm tractor. By '64 A-C stepped it up a little more when the D-15 II became the I-60 and the D-10 III became the I-40. About then they also brought out the HD-4 because the H-3 was too small for most real jobs. Bigger construction machines out of Springfield were likely yellow or could have been ordered yellow long before that.

Eric,

All my early construction literature up to 1960 has all the big dozers, motor scrapers, and graders in orange. All literature with a '61 date has the equipment in yellow. Farm crawlers stayed orange after 1961.

My neighbor worked for AC in Springfield il. in the paint shop he told me that the Orange eqpt was sold through farm eqpt. dealers and the Yellow was sold through heavy eqpt dealers. at some time AC put on a network of heavy eqpt dealers and after awile thay complaned said oweners of heavy eqpt. were going to farm eqpt. dealers for parts so that is when thay started painting the yellow ones.to help seprate the farm from heavy eqpt. my neighbor said there was no difference in the eqpt. just color. ps. he said he had no way of knowing how much eqpt he painted but if it was made in the 50s 60s he had a part in painting it.

Edited by ctbowles58 - 20 Feb 2012 at 6:21am

Thanks Tom, with a neighbor like yours it's probably as close as we'll get with the paint question.  

Remember the sales phrase Darrel, "If it aint orange, its a lemon"   
Mac