The Hytrol Story

Well, Tom was always the one to get things done as quickly as possible and it was faster to just go ahead and use the passenger elevator. On one particular day, he was carrying a large tray filled with probably a thousand tiny screws. As the elevator door opened, he charged inside only to be met by his boss and the president of the company! Quite startled, Tom spilled the tray of screws and hundreds of them fell down into the space between the elevator door and the floor! Tom just knew he would be fired, but he wasn’t. But things were still tough and the company was forced to lay off around 25 workers. Since Tom was one of the last ones hired, he was one of the first to go. So after only four weeks on the job, he found himself unemployed again. After looking around, Tom Loberg couldn’t find another job right away. Therefore, he decided to get a little more education so he returned to high school and took a typing course. Of course, back then, typing was more of a “girl thing,” but Tom thought knowing how to type might come in handy someday. Sometime around 1938, with the Great Depression finally over, Allis-Chalmers began hiring apprentice draftsmen. Tom Loberg was the first apprentice to be hired after the end of the Depression. He was started at 37.5 cents an hour. He was finally working where his father worked, which was one of his dreams, and he was making a decent wage. And in those days, everyone thought 37.5 cents an hour was wonderful. The company started Tom in the drafting room. It really wasn’t a department, per se, because all those who worked there were farmed out to other departments. But he was happy to be there and doing what he’d always wanted to do. On May 1, 1938, Tom and Rigmor were married. Since neither were quite 21, Tom and Rig had to get permission from their fathers in order to tie the knot. The next year, on March 25, their first child, David Thomas, was born. When World War II started, factories from coast to coast were soon helping in the war effort. Allis-Chalmers was no exception and the company was soon producing a variety of machines and parts for the Army and Navy. The whole plant was in high gear, people were gung-ho to be involved with helping win the war, and the pressure was on to design, manufacture, and ship product out in record times. Tom soon found himself working in the steam turbine department, doing government contracts for the military.