Allmand Bros. Inc., recently celebrated its 75th anniversary.

Founded in 1938 in a small garage in the tiny town of Huntley, Neb., the third generation company has grown to become a leader in portable lighting, heating and traffic safety equipment.

In the midst of the Great Depression, and unable to afford a new arc welder for their repair shop, brothers Leslie and Walter Allmand built their own.

It worked so well that their neighbors asked the brothers to build welders for them, and the business was born.

Fast-forward to 1954, when Allmand developed the “Contractor’s Lantern,” the industry’s first portable light tower. From this humble origin today’s light tower industry began.

Allmand was the first to use 1,000 watt metal halide lighting in a light tower application, the first to use parallel lamp fixtures and the first to develop and use the high-efficiency SHO compact parallel lamp fixture, according to the company.

Adding to this list of firsts, Allmand was also the first to offer the LSC-100 light sequence control that allows unattended sequential start-up and shut-down of the light tower systems.

Today, Allmand is the only manufacturer to offer the SHO-HD 1250 watt engineered metal halide lighting system with a 150,000 lumens per fixture, providing a brighter, more true-to-life light.

The SHO-HD system is standard on all domestic Night-Lite PRO II and Maxi-Lite models. Allmand also developed and introduced the V-Series light tower in North America.

The innovative six-section V-Series tower remains in the vertical position as it extends and retracts, and does not lay down across the top of the trailer nor extend past the rear of the trailer, making it safer and easier to move, and taking up less space in storage, according to the manufacturer.

The operator can raise or lower the tower in only 20 seconds with the flip of a switch, while remaining safely away from the moving parts of the mast.

Allmand innovation is not just limited to lighting technology. The Allmand Maxi-Heat self-contained portable heater has been making work sites warmer since 1992 by providing over a million BTU/h of clean, breathable, heated air.

Twin 16 in. outlets allow the use of up to 110 ft. each of flexible ducting, while its increased fuel capacity now allows over 30 continuous hours of unattended operation. A combustible gas detection, safety shutdown and visible warning system also is available that allows the Maxi-Heat to meet the critical demands of the oil and gas industry.

Rounding out the current Allmand line-up is its Eclipse solar assisted arrowboard trailer. High efficiency LED lamps consume less power to allow the Eclipse to operate for as much as a year without needing to be recharged while still meeting all Federal traffic control visibility standards.

For more information, call call 800/562-1373 or visit www.allmand.com.

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