Positive Allmand Culture Creates Thriving Workplace & Sales

One day each month, the Allmand Inc. leadership team cooks burgers and brats for employees on both the first and second shifts.

If the local manufacturing facility meets its quarterly sales goals, the team prepares a steak dinner instead.

David Dooley, Senior Vice President and President of Allmand Inc., recently sat down next to a new employee during a steak dinner.

“I can’t believe we’re getting steak and it's being served by managers,” Dooley said the new employee stated in disbelief.

This is just one of the ways Dooley and his team have created a positive, welcoming and hard-working culture at Allmand Inc. in the past three years. The company, which manufactures towable light towers, heaters and generators, has stabilized its workforce with an average of 210-220 employees and is seeing record sales volume and production.

In a competitive labor market, Allmand set itself apart with a new English as a Second Language workforce development program. The local manufacturer added Spanish translators to its leadership team, translated all of its documents and signs into Spanish, and offers daily huddle and weekly all-employee meetings with Spanish translation available through headphones. About 15-20 percent of its workforce is Spanish speaking only.

With a stable workforce, Allmand is preparing to launch production of a new hybrid light tower. 

“In 2023, we worked on strengthening our product portfolio with many customer meetings to establish what products to develop next,” Dooley said. “From this, we developed the CM1.5 light tower, MP8XR generator, and our latest development, the hybrid light tower.”

Dooley said Allmand will have the only hybrid light tower with a vertically integrated lithium battery pack. It can achieve 9,000 hours of light and produces less greenhouse gas emissions. Advance orders for the new light tower are already coming in.

Operations Director Roy Fanning said Allmand is celebrating multiple wins in the past year, including record sales and record average build volume per day.

“Allmand has a unique product portfolio from the other businesses within Briggs & Stratton,” Fanning said. “While Allmand overall is one of the smaller businesses within the Briggs & Stratton portfolio, over the last couple of years, we have been one of the best-performing companies within the group. This stellar performance was recognized in the last couple of Briggs & Stratton all-employee meetings by the CFO and CEO.”

Allmand was started by Walt and Les Allmand in 1938 in a garage in Huntley with the electric welder that became popular with area farmers. The Allmand family sold the company to Briggs and Stratton in Briggs & Stratton in 2014. 

Dooley welcomes members of the Allmand family into the facility several times a year, and he meets with Roger Allmand regularly to draw on his experience and expertise in the business. 

Fanning noted several Allmand employees who worked at the company when it was family owned have noticed the positive culture and have returned to work there.

The local manufacturing plant celebrated 85 years in business in 2023 with a year of philanthropy. They conducted donation drive challenges each month that included canned food, winter weather gear, a holiday toy drive, and necessities for local animal shelter, just to name a few.

“In total, we made donations to local charities for 15 consecutive months,” HR Manager Shannon Busch said. “We are proud to say that our generous employees hit it out of the park every single month.”

In addition to its charitable work and monthly meals, Allmand managers have encouraged camaraderie by offering sports leagues with the most popular being bowling, cornhole and golf. 

Employees drive from as far as Lexington and Grand Island to work at Allmand, and a half dozen of those commuters have recently become local residents.

With a stable and connected local workforce and the addition of new sales staff to cover an international market, Allmand is poised for success.

“With the launch of new products and our increased market share, we are positioned well to continue our success in the upcoming years,” Dooley said.