Allsteel was founded in 1912 as Allsteelequip Company and started out manufacturing custom metal objects, especially electrical equipment. The name was changed in 1929 to All-Steel-Equip Company. In the 1920s, the company began to branch out and started producing kitchen cabinets and refrigerated food lockers. Requests for metal file cabinets were becoming common, so the company bought out a supplier, the Aurora Metal Cabinet Company, in 1936 to enter this market.