Story by Kristen Cart
Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words. Luckily for us, old press photos have come on the market recently that show the inner workings of grain elevators in the past. Not much has changed over the years, since many of the elevators that served in the 1940s and 1950s are still in operation today.
The photo above shows a truck unloading into an elevator pit from the inside of a driveway. A grate covers the pit, and from the pit a leg serves the top of the elevator. A conveyor may also be in operation, delivering grain to the leg, depending on the size of the elevator or annex.
In the next image, you can see a worker beside the conveyor inside what looks like a run. Conveyors can be used in several places in an elevator complex, but they are normally installed in a run that delivers grain from an elevator headhouse for distribution to an annex, or they’re operating on a basement level that takes grain from an annex to the main elevator served by a headhouse and a leg.
Another place for a conveyor is from an elevator to a hopper or chute where a truck or rail car can be loaded. That is the case with this photo.
When grain is added to or taken from an elevator, it needs to be weighed and checked for moisture content to keep a strict account for the farmer and the elevator operator. Each truck arriving full will be weighed before delivery and also afterward, with the difference subtracted from the loaded weight to give the net weight of grain. Weight will change with moisture content, so that is an important figure to calculate.
When a truck arrives empty, it is weighed before loading, then weighed afterward to determine the net weight of grain. This process has always been an essential part of elevator operations from the earliest days.
Weighing the grain
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Our Grandfathers' Grain Elevators 
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Many elevators also used chain drags. This was basically a trough with a chain that has a steel or plastic T every so many feet. The worked section of the drag was on the bottom and the idle returning section of the chain ran along the top.
On the belt type conveyor some elevators used a round the world belt. In this case the top belt (bin loading) and bottom belt (bin unloading) were one in the same and it ran up to the top and down to the bottom through a shaft. They selected there unloading points with trippers that dipped the belt at certain points to dump the drain into a chute or bin.