Advance-Rumely

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Advance-Rumley were Canadian Farm engine builders of steam and later oil and gas tractors. Advance Thresher was founded in 1881 and worked from the Abell plant in Toronto, Ontario. The company was trans-national in outlook with Canadian plants and connections, but American ownership and markets. Many thousands of steam engines were built under the Advance label in the ensuing decades.

On the other hand, M. Rumely, a German-American immigrant, founded a blacksmith shop in Indiana and proceeded to build grain threshers and steam engines in the latter half of the nineteenth century. It was a merger of the Advance Thresher Company and the distribution company Rumley in 1911, that formed this marque. This joint-company had a factory in LaPorte, Indiana.

Afterwards the company went on to build their famed "Oil Pull" kerosene tractor in various sizes. These green, belching behomeths became common in the wheat fields and were known as a rugged tractor with their two cylinder horizontal oil engine. Rumely went on to make a more conventional tractor in the 1920's.

Many acquisitions and mergers passed over the years when the company absorbed several famous steam engine builders of Gaar-Scott and later Aultman-Taylor. The Advance Rumely Company itself merged with Allis Chalmers in 1931 during the Great Depression and disappeared from the business scene.