AGCO Gleaner isn't the only one proud of their 85 years of success. Schmidt & Sons as been selling Gleaner since 1966, almost half of the 85 years. We back up the Gleaner product with sales, great service and an excellent stock of Gleaner parts for all models of Gleaner combines, from F's to R75's.
For 85 years, Gleaner combines have been leading the industry in technology and productivity.
It's often been said that necessity is the mother of invention; but in the case of the first Gleaner self-propelled combine, the incentive was closer to adversity. Born to an immigrant family who moved to a farm near Nickerson, Kansas, in 1902, Curtis Baldwin and his two brothers, George and Ernest, often spent from dawn to dusk feeding wheat bundles into a threshing machine.
In addition to harvesting the family's crops while they were in their youth, George and Curtis had their own custom threshing business by the time they were 17 and 18 year old. In the process, they not only gained a wealth of information about wheat harvesting, but an impressive mechanical aptitude, as well. It was often stated around Nickerson that "if the Baldwin boys can't fix it, it can't be fixed."
Convinced that the right machine could eliminate most of the hard work of handling the crop twice, Curtis and his brothers ultimately designed and built the first Gleaner self-propelled combine in 1923. Mounted on a Fordson tractor it could cut an acre of wheat for every mile of travel.
A Kansas Homecoming
First of all, AGCO's Hesston, Kansas, manufacturing facility is located less than 40 miles from Nickerson, Kansas, where the Baldwin brothers built and marketed the first Gleaner self-propelled combine in 1923. By the mid 1920's, thanks to a 1,000 mile demonstration trek through the wheat state, the Gleaner Manufacturing Co., was in business with a reputable product; but it didn't have a manufacturing facility. Consequently, in 1925, the company purchased the factory and machine tools of the Baird Pneumatic Tool Co. in Independence, Mo., and moved the headquarters to Kansas City - where manufacturing remained for 77 years.
However, there's another irony to the relocation in that the Hesston factory - which now houses combine manufacturing for all AGCO brands - actually got its start as a manufacturer of combine components. It all began in 1947, when Lyle Yost, one of the original founders of the Hesston Machine and Manufacturing Company, was employed as a farmer and custom wheat harvester.
As Yost explained, noting that combines weren't equipped with unloading auger, "When the bin got full, you had to stop the combine and empty the grain by gravity into a waiting truck."
It was a process that could consume up to five hours of harvest time per day with two machines. That's when Yost came up with his idea for an unloading auger with the help of Adin Holdeman, a local machine shop operator, a business was soon born. By the early 1950's, the Hesston Unloading Auger was available for nearly every combine on the market.
- Articles are by Tharran Gaines
"85 years of Harvest History"
AGCO Corporation
