Allis roto balers

My uncle had one in the mid 50's and early 60's. When he died in 63, we moved to the ranch and got to use this "fine" machine. The baling was only part of the fun.

You can't get a hay hook into the ends, because the ends are loose. They are nearly impossible to haul and difficult at best to stack unless you have a barn and then they will push the ends out of the barn. In order to haul them you had to have bulkheads on each end of the truck then they would wedge in and you had to try to pry them loose. They wouldn't ride up a bale loader or an elevator. Once you got a stack started the bales often times would roll out as you went up with the stack meaning that you had to start all over again and clean out your shorts if you were on the stack when it rolled. It was unnerving to walk on the stack, because nothing was flat and you were forever turning an ankle. The worst fall that I ever took was from hauling round bales. I wasn't able to do anything with my hands for 2 weeks (I messed my wrists up pretty bad when I landed) and have had arthritis in my wrists since I was in my early 20's. That is the legacy that the Allis Chalmers Roto-Baler left me.

If you buy one, I wish you lots of luck.

Just my 2 bucks worth.
(this was too long winded for 2 cents worth)

Dan

The bales being a little smaller than an "average" square bale, I liked handling them better. Very easy to throw around with just a hay hook...can't do that very easy with a square bale.

AC built a lot of those balers. A book I have states there were in excess of 80,000 of those balers made. You still see them sitting under trees out in pastures, just rusting away.