The Gleaner Manufacturing Company (aka: Gleaner Combine Harvester Corp.) is an American manufacturer of
combine harvesters. Gleaner (or Gleaner Baldwin) has been a popular brand of combine harvester particularly in the
Midwestern United States
The Midwestern United States, also referred to as the Midwest or the American Midwest, is one of four census regions of the United States Census Bureau (also known as "Region 2"). It occupies the northern central part of the United States. I ...
for many decades, first as an independent firm, and later as a division of
Allis-Chalmers
Allis-Chalmers was a U.S. manufacturer of machinery for various industries. Its business lines included agricultural equipment, construction equipment, power generation and power transmission equipment, and machinery for use in industrial set ...
. The Gleaner brand continues today under the ownership of
AGCO.
History
![1965 Gleaner E on trailer](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/54/1965_Gleaner_E_on_trailer.jpg)
Gleaner combines date from 1923, when the Baldwin brothers of
Nickerson, Kansas
Nickerson is a city in Reno County, Kansas, United States. As of the 2020 census, the population of the city was 1,058. It was named in honor of Thomas Nickerson, former president of Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway.
History
Nickerson ...
, created a high-quality and reliable self-propelled combine harvester. They decided to use the "Gleaner" name for their radically redesigned grain harvesting machine based on inspiration from "
The Gleaners
''The Gleaners'' (''Des glaneuses'') is an oil painting by Jean-François Millet completed in 1857.
It depicts three peasant women gleaning a field of stray stalks of wheat after the harvest. The painting is famous for featuring in a sympathet ...
", an 1857 painting by
Jean-François Millet
Jean-François Millet (; 4 October 1814 – 20 January 1875) was a French artist and one of the founders of the Barbizon school in rural France. Millet is noted for his paintings of peasant farmers and can be categorized as part of the Realism ...
. ''
Gleaning
Gleaning is the act of collecting leftover crops from farmers' fields after they have been commercially harvested or on fields where it is not economically profitable to harvest. It is a practice described in the Hebrew Bible that became a legall ...
'' is the act of collecting leftover crops from farm fields after they have been commercially harvested, or on fields where it is not economically profitable to harvest. In the
broadest sense, it is the act of frugally recovering resources from low-yield contexts. Thus, with the ''Gleaner'' name, the company evoked a positive
connotation in potential customers' minds, of a brand of harvester that would leave none of the grain behind. A combine harvester combines the
reaping
Harvesting is the process of gathering a ripe crop from the fields. Reaping is the cutting of grain or pulse for harvest, typically using a scythe, sickle, or reaper. On smaller farms with minimal mechanization, harvesting is the most labo ...
(plus or minus
binding),
threshing
Threshing, or thrashing, is the process of loosening the edible part of grain (or other crop) from the straw to which it is attached. It is the step in grain preparation after reaping. Threshing does not remove the bran from the grain.
History ...
, and
winnowing
Winnowing is a process by which chaff is separated from grain. It can also be used to remove pests from stored grain. Winnowing usually follows threshing in grain preparation. In its simplest form, it involves throwing the mixture into the ...
functions into one machine, hence the "combine" part of its name. To that list, the Baldwin brothers' Gleaner added self-propulsion. Earlier combines, the so-called pull-type or tractor-drawn combines, were towed by
tractor
A tractor is an engineering vehicle specifically designed to deliver a high tractive effort (or torque) at slow speeds, for the purposes of hauling a trailer or machinery such as that used in agriculture, mining or construction. Most commo ...
s.
First design
The original Gleaner design was mounted on a
Fordson
Fordson was a brand name of tractors and trucks. It was used on a range of mass-produced general-purpose tractors manufactured by Henry Ford & Son Inc from 1917 to 1920, by Ford Motor Company (U.S.) and Ford Motor Company Ltd (U.K.) from 1920 to ...
Model F. It had a retail price of
USD
The United States dollar (symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the official ...
$950 FOB at the factory in Nickerson. This design was manufactured between 1923 and 1928.
Pull-types
From 1928 until 1954, Gleaner produced pull-type combine harvesters of both large and small sizes. The large models were intended for throughput and were the favored types for customer harvesters, while the small models were made for smaller, single-farm operations. Early "Gleaner-Baldwin" combines used the
Ford Model A engine. The Gleaner Baldwin Model A, built from 1930 to 1935, was so equipped, as were later Gleaner Models, the NA and NR, until 1938. The combine's Model A engine was mounted on a frame fitted for the radiator, and was coupled to a
power take-off unit.
["Model A Gleaner Baldwin Combine,"](_blank)
"Ford Garage," (with photos and original advertisement, retrieved November 30, 2022
"U.S. Law," ''JUSTIA
Justia is an American website specializing in legal information retrieval. It was founded in 2003 by Tim Stanley, formerly of FindLaw, and is one of the largest online databases of legal cases. The company is headquartered in Mountain View, Cali ...
'' citing Pierce v State, 1932 OK CR 189, 15 P.2d 603, 54 Okl.Cr. 118, Decided: 10/14/1932, Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals, retrieved November 30, 2022
First in self-propelled
The Gleaner was one of the pioneers in self-propelled combines. They were often considered the "Cadillac" of the industry because of this feature and because of their solid engineering. Buescher (1991)
[.] credited the design principally to one of the brothers, Curt Baldwin, and explained that it focused on the needs of ''custom cutters'' like the Baldwin brothers themselves: contractors who move north with the harvest season, providing harvesting services to farmers. It resulted in machines that were reliable and useful, which benefited not only custom cutters but anyone who bought a Gleaner. The short
wheelbase
In both road and rail vehicles, the wheelbase is the horizontal distance between the centers of the front and rear wheels. For road vehicles with more than two axles (e.g. some trucks), the wheelbase is the distance between the steering (front ...
and
axle track
In automobiles (and other wheeled vehicles which have two wheels on an axle), the axle track is the distance between the hub flanges on an axle. Wheel track, track width or simply track refers to the distance between the centerline of two wheels ...
allowed the combine to fit on a truck.
The grain header did not need to be detached for transit, because it fit over the cab of the truck.
Buescher said, "Since custom cutters didn't know where their next parts supply source would be, Baldwin designed his combine so that it wouldn't need parts."
(Buescher's tongue-in-cheek point is that the machines were designed and built well so that need for repairs would be minimal.) The frame was "like a bridge" in its strength.
The
bearings were chosen with service in mind: large and good quality (to obviate failure) and of common sizes (so that the operator could carry a small stock of spares in his truck, and have the size needed when a replacement became necessary).
The Gleaner's exterior sheet metal was
galvanized
Galvanization or galvanizing ( also spelled galvanisation or galvanising) is the process of applying a protective zinc coating to steel or iron, to prevent rusting. The most common method is hot-dip galvanizing, in which the parts are submerged ...
(zinc plated), providing superior weather resistance. As Buescher said, "Baldwin reasoned that most of his combines would sit outdoors.
Texas
Texas (, ; Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2020, it is the second-largest U.S. state by ...
and
Oklahoma dust storm
A dust storm, also called a sandstorm, is a meteorological phenomenon common in arid and semi-arid regions. Dust storms arise when a gust front or other strong wind blows loose sand and dirt from a dry surface. Fine particles are transp ...
s have a way of peeling paint off of machinery."
As a result of the silver color of the zinc plating, the Gleaner brand ended up having a distinctive color (just as Allis had Persian Orange,
IH had red, and
John Deere had green), despite the sheet metal not even having any paint.
1930s
During the
Great Depression, owing mostly to the collapse of the farm economy and the
Dust Bowl
The Dust Bowl was a period of severe dust storms that greatly damaged the ecology and agriculture of the American and Canadian prairies during the 1930s. The phenomenon was caused by a combination of both natural factors (severe drought) a ...
, the Baldwins' company entered bankruptcy in the 1930s as equipment sales plummeted. William James Brace acquired the company with his son-in-law, George Reuland. The pair, along with other investors, brought the company back to profitability and maintained ownership until 1955. During
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...
, the factory converted its production to war
materiel
Materiel (; ) refers to supplies, equipment, and weapons in military supply-chain management, and typically supplies and equipment in a commercial supply chain context.
In a military context, the term ''materiel'' refers either to the specif ...
.
1940s and 1950s
By the late 1940s and early 1950s, other farm equipment manufacturers were offering increased competition to Gleaner, having introduced their own versions of self-propelled combines.
In 1955,
Allis-Chalmers
Allis-Chalmers was a U.S. manufacturer of machinery for various industries. Its business lines included agricultural equipment, construction equipment, power generation and power transmission equipment, and machinery for use in industrial set ...
acquired Gleaner. This represented commercial renewal for Gleaner with the production and marketing success of various new models and technologies. It also represented a great gain for Allis-Chalmers. Allis was the market leader in pull-type (tractor-drawn) combines, with its
All-Crop Harvester line. Acquiring Gleaner meant that it would also be a leader in self-propelled machines, and it would own two of the leading brands in combines. The Gleaner line augmented (and later superseded) the All-Crop Harvester line, and for several years Gleaner's profits made up nearly all of Allis-Chalmers' profit.
[.] Gleaners continued to be manufactured at the same factory, in
Independence, Missouri
Independence is the fifth-largest city in Missouri and the county seat of Jackson County. Independence is a satellite city of Kansas City, Missouri, and is the largest suburb on the Missouri side of the Kansas City metropolitan area. In 2020, ...
, after the acquisition.
1970s–1990
In 1979, Gleaner released its first
rotary combine, the N6. It was soon followed by the N5 and N7. The latter was the largest combine of its time, with grain and corn/row-crop headers as wide as .
In 1985, Allis-Chalmers sold their farm machinery manufacturing business to
Deutz AG
Deutz AG is a German internal combustion engine manufacturer, based in Porz, Cologne, Germany.
History
The company was founded by Nicolaus Otto, the inventor of the four-stroke internal combustion engine, and his partner Eugen Langen on 31 ...
and became known as
Deutz-Allis
Deutz-Allis was formed when Deutz-Fahr of Germany, part of KHD, purchased the agricultural assets of the Allis-Chalmers corporation in 1985.
Deutz-Allis was eventually sold to the Allis-Gleaner Corporation, or AGCO), in 1990. Deutz-Allis tract ...
, and in 1991 its North American operations became
AGCO. Despite several ownership changes, the Gleaner brand never ceased to be produced or marketed. Between 1985 and 2000, Gleaner lost significant market share to other manufacturers with broader dealer bases and farm equipment product lines that had marketing and customer service advantages. Another problem for Gleaner was that some of their combines used the
air-cooled
Air-cooled engines rely on the circulation of air directly over heat dissipation fins or hot areas of the engine to cool them in order to keep the engine within operating temperatures. In all combustion engines, a great percentage of the heat ge ...
Deutz engine, a departure from water-cooled engines predominantly found in most other industrial and agricultural applications.
2000–present
In 2000, AGCO moved the Gleaner manufacturing operations from
Independence, Missouri
Independence is the fifth-largest city in Missouri and the county seat of Jackson County. Independence is a satellite city of Kansas City, Missouri, and is the largest suburb on the Missouri side of the Kansas City metropolitan area. In 2020, ...
to its
Hesston, Kansas
Hesston is a city in Harvey County, Kansas, United States. As of the 2020 census, the population of the city was 3,505. Large manufacturing facilities for AGCO (farm equipment) and Excel Industries (lawn mowers) are located in Hesston. It ...
facility, which featured modernized manufacturing equipment and techniques. It also centralized the
engineering
Engineering is the use of scientific principles to design and build machines, structures, and other items, including bridges, tunnels, roads, vehicles, and buildings. The discipline of engineering encompasses a broad range of more speciali ...
and production functions into one location. The Hesston facility is 35 miles east of
Nickerson, Kansas
Nickerson is a city in Reno County, Kansas, United States. As of the 2020 census, the population of the city was 1,058. It was named in honor of Thomas Nickerson, former president of Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway.
History
Nickerson ...
, where the Baldwin brothers started the Gleaner company in 1923.
For the period of 2007-2010, Gleaner offered the A5 and A6 models which featured an axial processor (rotor) rather than the signature transverse rotor. This was done as a marketing move by AGCO to use the strength of the Gleaner name to attract new customers to the axial machine which was more heavily produced as the Challenger 500x series and the Massey Ferguson 95xx series combines. The Gleaner A series production ceased after 2010 and the Challenger and Massey Ferguson machines ceased production in 2017.
Firsts
Some of the firsts introduced by the Gleaner were: an
auger that replaced
canvas drapers
Draper was originally a term for a retailer or wholesaler of cloth that was mainly for clothing. A draper may additionally operate as a cloth merchant or a haberdasher.
History
Drapers were an important trade guild during the medieval period, ...
, a rasp bar threshing
cylinder
A cylinder (from ) has traditionally been a three-dimensional solid, one of the most basic of curvilinear geometric shapes. In elementary geometry, it is considered a prism with a circle as its base.
A cylinder may also be defined as an infin ...
instead of a spike-tooth arrangement, and a down-front cylinder that put threshing closer to the crop. In 1972 Gleaner was the first manufacturer to use electro-hydraulic controls, an innovation that other companies didn't offer until nearly two decades later. Gleaner was also the first in the industry to offer a 12 row corn head in 1979.
Gleaner also explored use of turbocharged diesel engines before the competition. Records from October 1962 list the 262-cubic-inch
turbo-diesel
The term turbo-diesel, also written as turbodiesel and turbo diesel, refers to any diesel engine equipped with a turbocharger. As with other engine types, turbocharging a diesel engine can significantly increase its efficiency and power output, ...
engine as being available for the model "C".
Another Gleaner innovation was a "rock door" to protect the machine from damage due to stones that it might pick up while harvesting. If a Gleaner combine ingests a rock, the rock door simply pops open and drops the stone on the ground, preventing damage to the cylinder and concave bars, unlike other machines with a "rock trap" that the operator must periodically clean out or dump.
A current Gleaner and world first is that they created the first Class VIII transverse rotor combine. This happened when AGCO introduced the new Gleaner S88 series combine in 2014. Also during this year of manufacturing, a 7-cylinder 9.8L diesel engine, built by AGCO Sisu (Later AGCO POWER), was first used in the S78 and S88 models.
In 2016, with the release of the S9 series, came a completely new cab as well as the first use of a "fly-by-wire" hydrostatic transmission in a Gleaner combine, meaning the propulsion of the machine as controlled by operator no longer used a direct cable interface and was now achieved strictly by electronic feedback into a transmission control module.
Today
Gleaners are still in production under
AGCO. The Gleaner brand is marketed in North America, South America, and Australia.
The current models available for sale, first released in 2016 and still in full production, are the S96, S97, and S98, which are Class VI, VII, and VIII combines, respectively. These combines still utilize the transverse rotor which was originally introduced in 1979.
File:Gleaner A Combine.jpg, Gleaner Model A Combine
File:AGCO Gleaner combine at Farm Progress Show 2007.jpg, AGCO Gleaner combine at Farm Progress Show 2007
File:Gleaner-a85.jpg, Gleaner A85 harvesting yellow peas
File:Gleaner R76 combine (AGCO) - 2010.jpg, Gleaner Model R76
File:2012 Gleaner S77 Combine.jpg, Gleaner S77 with Tritura Processor, 2012
File:Gleaner S98 Centennial Edition.jpg, Gleaner S98 Centennial Edition, 2022
Models
Here is a list of Gleaner Combine models built from 1951 to present.
References
Bibliography
*
External links
*
AGCO Corporation Gleaner Brand PageOfficial Twitter Page - Gleaner Combines
{{AGCO
Agricultural machinery manufacturers of the United States
Manufacturing companies established in 1923
AGCO
1923 establishments in Kansas