Tag Archives: Business

A look at the inside of a concrete elevator in Wichita, Kansas

by kocart

Story by Kristen Cart

The run, at the top of the annex, has a conveyor to deliver grain to the bins. A tripper pushes the grain off the conveyor into the correct bin. Photo by Christopher

Benton, Kansas, was an interesting place to visit if you wanted to learn about elevators. Christopher, a worker for Mid Kansas Co-op at the Benton elevator, had previously worked at their Wichita, Kansas, concrete elevator. He took a few minutes to explain the differences between elevator types when I stopped in to visit during harvest. He also sent me some photos of the Mid Kansas Co-op’s concrete elevator in Wichita taken from the top and from the inside. I had a rough idea how elevators worked, but I had never seen these parts for myself.

The man lift, seen from above, has a platform to stand on and a hand-hold above it. It is essentially a conveyor belt. Photo by Christopher.

The elevator was conspicuously clean. Dust could not be tolerated because of the explosive hazard, and cleaning took place before and during each harvest. This elevator was taking corn from the smaller Benton elevator on the day I stopped in Benton.

The photos show a few of the numerous large elevators in an area north of the city, which leads me to believe that Wichita is a major hub for grain storage and shipment in the Midwest. Except for a few very old elevators in the area they all appear to be in use.

I appreciate seeing some of the inner workings of an elevator. If you get the chance to work at an elevator and get out on top, the view is breathtaking.

A view of one of the huge Wichita elevators from the top of the MKC elevator, giving a true sense of its height. Photo by Christopher

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Benton, Kansas, offers some direct lessons in elevator operations

by kocart

The Benton, Kan., elevator complex.

Story and photos by Kristen Cart

Sometimes while checking out leads about elevators my grandfather was involved with, I’ve made some fascinating side trips. I stopped at a Chalmers and Borton-built elevator in Walton, Kansas, and met the grain manager there, Jeff Snyder. He tipped me off about an operating wooden elevator at Benton, Kansas, also owned and operated by Mid Kansas Co-op, which would make a rare photo opportunity. I made a point to drive up there the next time I had a layover in Wichita.

Loading corn for transfer to a larger elevator.

My earlier visit to Traer, Kansas, left me with questions about why cooperatives have come to rely so heavily on metal bins, and why relatively few new concrete elevators are built. The speed of loading and unloading is one limiting factor for elevators. But on my visit to Benton, I was able to gain some insight into other design considerations.

Benton, Kansas, still uses a wooden elevator with metal siding for part of their storage. Beside it, several metal bins make up the rest of their capacity.  Harvest was going strong when I stopped by. I saw trucks pull up every few minutes to load corn from a large metal hopper near the grain bins, looping through the scales both before and after filling their trailers. A worker conducting the loading operation noticed me by the railroad tracks with my camera, and during a lull he laconically introduced himself, saying, “Just Christopher will do.” He had a temporary job working for Mid Kansas Co-op during harvest both in Benton and in Wichita at their large concrete elevator, where he became well-versed in elevator operations.

Spencer Reams, site manager for Mid Kansas Co-op at Benton, Kan.

Spencer Reams, the site manager, greeted me inside the scale house. According to Mr. Reams, Benton, Kansas, had a unique problem for a region in the grips of a severe drought. Because of very localized rain at just the right times, the area immediately around Benton had experienced a record harvest, up to five percent over any previous harvest.  So the elevator was completely full of corn while the milo and bean harvest was underway. Grain trucks were called in to move the corn to the cooperative’s larger Wichita elevator to make room, as Christopher explained. While I watched, an old farm truck full of milo pulled in to unload into the pit. Meanwhile the grain trucks, once they were loaded with corn and weighed, made the nine-mile trip into Wichita and then returned for more, waiting for the loading hopper to fill before filling up.

A truck dumps milo into the pit where a conveyor would take it to the leg, out of the photo behind a bin on the right. The loading hopper is to the left.

Christopher told me what he thought of the various types of elevators. He said that he preferred the metal bins–they were easier to work around. He showed me a photo of the man-lift that was used in the Wichita concrete elevator, and I agreed that it looked like a harrowing ride. A simple ladder on the side of a metal bin seemed safer. Also, older concrete elevators were crumbling, he said. For one thing, during freezing temperatures, trapped moisture could cause the concrete to crack and flake. It could be patched, but much like a road bed, eventually the elevator would become unserviceable and unsafe.  Though he did not comment on Benton’s wooden elevator, it was apparent that for various reasons these wooden structures were becoming harder to keep within regulatory bounds. It is very remarkable, in fact, to see one still in operation.

Each storage facility apparently has its advantages and drawbacks. One of the chief advantages of an elevator is its existence–if it is standing and in any way serviceable, it will be used. Its life ends when it can no longer keep up with demand, and when it becomes cheaper to build a new one than to repair or upgrade an old one. So each year more of the old landmarks go missing, to be replaced by the plain and common metal bin.

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Tillotson Construction’s Giddings, Texas, elevator rose by 10 feet per day but then disappeared entirely

by baggyparagraphs

By Ronald Ahrens

The Fairmont Foods Co. elevator that Tillotson Construction Co. built in Giddings, Tex., around 1945 became the hub of a busy and diverse agricultural service, one that had started a decade earlier.

As part of its Giddings operation, Fairmont, of Omaha, Neb.–just like Tillotson Construction–ran the largest turkey dressing plant in the Southwest. Every year, over 200 carloads shipped from here for the Thanksgiving and Christmas markets. During other parts of the year, the dressing plant stayed busy with chickens destined for such grocery chains as Weingarten’s, which in 1951 had twenty-five stores in Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana.

Besides the poultry dressing, Fairmont processed eggs here and had a locker plant described as “huge” in the June 13, 1974 centennial edition of the Giddings Times & News. A hatchery and feed-mixing plant completed the operation.

On July 14, 1955, the Times & News carried the following item:

Fairmont Foods Co. has announced the sale of its feed mixing plant in Giddings to the Nutrena Mills, Inc., of Wichita Falls and Minneapolis, Minn.

Change of ownership will take place officially about July 15. Nutrena is one of the nation’s oldest and largest feed manufacturers. Nutrena feeds are distributed in a 24-state area from the Rocky Mountains to the Southeastern coast and from Canada to Mexico.

Fairmont Foods recently observed the 20th anniversary of their opening in Giddings. Fairmont officials emphasize that they will continue to serve their customers with the poultry processing plant.

The former site of the Fairmont Building has been paved over. Photo by Ray Kirchmeyer.

In 1966, Nutrena remodeled the offices. But few traces of the operation remain today. Tillotson’s Fairmont Building was demolished, and a bare parking lot is found at the site.

Special thanks to Ray Kirchmeyer for providing the photo and historical documents. 

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In 1945, William Osborn worked on Tillotson Construction’s elevator in Giddings, Texas

A Galveston seaside respite for the Osborns and Salroths in 1945

The elevator at McAllaster, Kansas, proved to be a missed opportunity

by kocart

McAllaster, Kan., photo by Gary Rich

Story by Kristen Cart

Sometimes our elevator quest ends in a dead end, without definitive answers. In the case of McAllaster, Kan., we had only an old photo belonging to my grandfather, William Osborn, to go on, and Gary Rich and I never got any independent confirmation of the builder. When I went to visit the elevator two months ago, nothing was left and there was no sign it had ever existed.

William Osborn photo

Gary Rich tried hard to get information about the builder, after he had gone to McAllaster to photograph the elevator. Both of us made calls to the cooperative. But all we were able to confirm was that it was slated for destruction sometime this year. It was shut up tight, of course, when Gary went to see it, and, no man-hole covers were visible from the outside. The only clue we could find was an old photo of one of grandpa’s projects, which was probably built for J. H. Tillotson, Contractor, of Denver, Colo., judging by the style. The caveat was that quite a few others similar to this one were also built, and some of them have long since disappeared.

Gary Rich photo

Elevators like those at Daykin, Fairbury, and Bradshaw, all in Nebraska, were built in a similar style, so the only clues to their builder are external to the main house: elements such as windows, driveways, office buildings, and loading chutes can be compared to details in my grandfather’s old photos. Of course, if we have independent verification, such as contemporary newspaper accounts or my dad’s memories, it makes our lives easier, since only one of grandpa’s photos has any caption. Daykin and Fairbury have both been verified in this way.

When the photo above is compared with the photos taken by Gary Rich of the McAllaster elevator, it shows just enough difference to dash our hopes for an identification. The building behind the driveway appears to be attached, and the windows don’t match our photos of McAllaster. So we are at a frustrating impasse. We still don’t know the identity of the elevator in grandpa’s photo, and we still don’t know the builder of the McAllaster elevator, though we suspect it was a J. H. Tillotson project. With no way to verify it, we are at the disappointing end of our quest.

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Flat storage for corn extends capacity at locations like Mitchellville, Iowa and Traer, Kansas

by kocart

Story and photos by Kristen Cart

Flat storage at Traer, Kan., for farm equipment, and an unused elevator.

During the heyday of elevator building, no sooner did an elevator go up, than it filled up, and left a town wanting for storage. The first option was to add an annex. But where economics dictated, cooperatives resorted to the simple expedient of horizontal storage. In the Farmers Elevator Guide during the 1940s and 1950s, between the slick ads for elevator builders, companies advertized Quonset-style buildings for flat storage.

A common sight in Nebraska and Kansas are long, flat piles of corn covered in tarps held down with old tires. At one grain facility, I saw a front-end loader filling grain trucks from one end of one of these great corn piles. At another, workmen were hurriedly applying tarp and tires in advance of a rainstorm. It seems the demand for ethanol has once again ramped up corn demand beyond the capacity of vertical storage facilities, or at least the ability to pay for them.

Mitchellville, Iowa: the Heartland Co-op elevator with the former feed mill and dryer. One of the two old flat-storage buildings for corn is in the foreground.

At two of the sites I recently visited, where the Tillotson-built elevators became insufficient for their purpose within a few years, I saw examples of  corrugated-style flat-storage buildings that were added after the original elevators were filled to capacity. These  served during a brief stretch of time until replaced by more modern, efficient bins, when the buildings found other uses. They were well suited for many farm needs since they could house virtually anything and were built to endure, once their corn storage days ended.

Mitchellville, Iowa, a site where an elevator built by Tillotson Construction of Omaha operates, has two such buildings.  They look like ordinary metal buildings, but the tip-off to their special use is the ladder leading to an opening in the roof where the auger operates. Both buildings have new jobs since the large annex additions were built beside the old elevator–one is a machine tool shed, and the other handles seed.

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Idaho corn stored under a tarp is loaded onto grain truck.

 

Gary Rich’s analysis reveals subtle aspects of Mitchellville, Iowa, elevator operation

by baggyparagraphs

Story by Gary Rich
Photos by Kristen Cart

There are several possibilities as to why Heartland Co-op’s Mitchellville, Iowa, elevator would only use rail service for shipping out its grain. The most obvious one is that this might be a shuttle operation. Whether corn or soybeans, the company that receives the grain might have a contract with the elevator specifying shipment of a certain number of carloads per week. It is probably a larger-name company, and they could be paying for the shipping charges. This would keep their operation from having to shut down for lack of grain.

The photos appear to show nine or ten covered hopper cars at the elevator’s far right. In the view at top, we see yellow markings on the rail on the elevator track. This is known as the “clearance point.” You can’t have cars sitting beyond these markings without “fouling” the main line. The following links to lexicons of railroad terminology will explain both terms:

http://www.icrr.net/terms.htm
http://cfr.vlex.com/vid/214-7-definitions-19944901

Here’s an illustration why it’s cheaper to move grain by rail. The amount of grain in one covered hopper car leaving the elevator equals three semi-trailer loads. If you load ten hopper cars, you’re probably looking at an equivalent of around thirty-three or thirty-four semi-trailers. If the plant that receives the grain is over 200 miles from Mitchellville, it would take more than a week to move all that grain over the highway.

Indeed, if the plant is 200 miles away, you also have to consider the amount of time a trucker can work. He wouldn’t be able to cover two round-trips per day. And besides, the trucker’s charge of something over $4.00 per mile might erode all profit for the grain operation.

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Tillotson Construction’s Mitchellville elevator is a key part of Heartland’s grain operation

by kocart

The Heartland Cooperative elevator complex at Mitchellville, Iowa.

Story and photos by Kristen Cart

The Mitchellville elevator is visible from Interstate 80, and the rounded head house drew my attention as we headed through Iowa on our way home from our recent trip out West. “Just one more stop, OK, kids?” I said, and they answered with groans. I think I promised ice cream to quell the protest.

The main elevator built by Tillotson Contruction Company of Omaha, with grain drier.

I parked the van, air conditioner running, in a shady spot and hopped out with my camera. Thunderheads threatened nearby, but the storm seemed to be moving off, and the sun peeked out and illuminated the scene. I took advantage of the beautiful light to photograph the elevator.  As I finished up, I saw a truck rounding the corner from an alley into the gravel lot beside the elevator, so I flagged the driver down to ask if he knew anything about it. We were in luck.

The driver introduced himself as Ed Baldwin, a grain truck driver for Webb Farms. He was more than happy to talk about the elevator, having trucked “at least two million bushels” in and out of Michellville. Bill and Stan Webb own the farm, and Ed purchased his truck from their father who used to truck his own grain. Ed gave me a quick outside tour of the elevator property.

The Younglove annex viewed from the driveway.

Ed explained the Heartland Cooperative operation at Mitchellville. He did not know the builder of the “head house,” as he termed the main elevator, but he knew the adjacent annex was built by Younglove in 1972.  The bins had numbers and he pointed out the function of each one. All the way to the left was a new bin with its own leg that was built in the 1980s and used for damaged corn. Immediately to the right of it, on one end of the Younglove annex, was a bin dedicated to soybeans. The rest of the annex held corn, with the main house taking all the wet corn since it gave access to the grain drier.

The Younglove annex is placarded with the date of construction.

During harvest, the employees kept a grueling schedule filling the bins, especially during a wet year. Jim Dietrich, grain manager for Heartland Co-op at Mitchellville, would pull a twenty-four hour shift to accept the grain into the main elevator and dry it. The drier had a capacity of seven thousand bushels per hour, which would limit the amount of grain that could be taken in. Ed said the main house would take seven semi loads per hour of grain that needed to be dried. Shipments from the elevator were by rail, unless capacity was reached and grain needed to be trucked.  Trucking would be the exception for Mitchellville’s operation.

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In Wahoo, Nebr., Tillotson’s elevator finds new life as a cell tower for AT&T

by kocart

The Wahoo, Nebraska elevator, built by the Tillotson Construction Company of Omaha, Nebraska

Story and photos by Kristen Cart

Another stop on my recent elevator trip was Wahoo, Nebraska. Dad tipped me off that it might be one of Tillotson’s projects. Wahoo is the seat of Saunders County, where Dad lives, and he frequently has occasion to stop there.

Wahoo’s elevator, at first glance, appeared unused. It was closed up tight, and the only indication of any activity was a sign warning workers to stay at least three feet away from any antenna, and to contact AT&T before performing any maintenance or repairs near their equipment.  Ah, hah!  Then I noticed the wires running to the top of the structure. I walked around the elevator, taking pictures.

Next door to the building was a Pet Rescue center, and as a woman was leaving there with a little dog in her arms, I asked her about the elevator.  While she did not know the builder, she said the elevator was privately owned by David Rood, and that at present, the elevator was full of corn.  But she commented that he probably made more money from the AT&T installation. I had heard of cell antennas being installed in every kind of tall building–even church steeples–but it had never occurred to me to look for them atop an elevator.

The next circuit around the elevator produced the answer I was looking for. Right there, adjacent to the sidewalk, in bright blue paint, was a manhole cover.

Some neighborhood teens were hanging around the street, in their cars, and when they saw me kneeling, taking the manhole cover shot, one of the boys shouted out, “What are you doing?”

“Taking pictures of the elevator!” I said.

The young man wanted to know why. When I said it was for a blog, I guess that was enough for him. Anyway, his attention went back to something on his cell phone.

The Wahoo elevator is an attractive feature of the town, fitting naturally with the older buildings along the main street. A man at a local pub, seeing my camera, popped out and said curiosity got the better of him. I told him what I was doing there. I guess a tourist with a camera along the street is a little unusual. And Nebraskans, by nature, like to know who is about.

Faked out in American Falls, Idaho

by kocart

Chalmers and Borton elevator at American Falls, Idaho.

During one of my recent road trips, I came upon a beautiful concrete construction elevator in American Falls, Idaho.  It looked much like the stand-alone elevators built by Tillotson Construction of Omaha, with an added annex.  It is in full operation.  I explored the elevator complex from about 7:30 am, and stayed on site as workers reported for their 8:00 am shift.  It was a very handsome elevator in the early morning light.  In its details it looked like a Tillotson elevator, except for the rectilinear head house, which is not unknown for a Tillotson or Mayer Osborn built elevator, but would be unusual.

As the shift started, I stopped at the elevator office to ask about the builder.  The worker smiled and pointed out the brass plaque by the door.  It was built by our grandfathers’ arch rival company, the ubiquitous Chalmers and Borton based in Hutchinson, Kansas.  Gary Rich pointed out one time that it seemed that wherever he found a J.H. Tillotson or Mayer Osborn elevator out in Kansas or Colorado, hard beside it would stand a Chalmers and Borton annex.  The companies played hard ball and competed for every contract.  Dad said, when I asked if Grandpa’s Mayer Osborn Construction of Denver, Colorado ever worked with Chalmers and Borton,  that “oh, no, they were his biggest competitor.”

Greenwood Nebraska’s straight-up elevator by Tillotson Construction of Omaha.

The elevator at Greenwood, Nebraska, built by Tillotson Construction of Omaha, is very reminiscent in its style to the elevator in American Falls.  I guess form followed function, and each company offered a product similar in its details–often the deciding factor was the bid price.  This Chalmers and Borton elevator certainly faked me out.  But it stands as a beautiful example and deserves notice.

Searching for Mayer-Osborn’s office in Denver produces a good possibility

by baggyparagraphs

Story and illustration by Kristen Osborn Cart

Looking for the original offices my grandfather used while putting up elevators for a living, I checked maps for the buildings that stood at the old Mayer-Osborn Company addresses. Google gives a bird’s-eye view. The newer address at 5100 York, in Denver, has no building and seems to be a parking lot full of junker cars and abandoned trailers. There is a small white cinderblock-looking building next door that might be that old, but it is nothing to speak of. I am sure the old building where William Osborn and his partner Gene Mayer located their business is long gone.

The address at 1717 E. Colfax has a handsome, two-toned, tan-and-brown brick building, three stories high, with a glass-brick corner feature on each floor and a style very like some of the better buildings from the Forties and Fifties. It has white-framed windows. It looks like it could have been newly built, if it was their office back then. A mural painted on the side looks like old Nebraska historical scenes, and a canvas awning shades the entry.

If I were any good at all at remembering architectural terminology from my college art history class, you would have a pretty good idea what it looks like just from my description.

Alas, there’s no way of knowing from a photo exactly when it was built, and whether Mayer-Osborn set up there in the old office of Holmen and Mayer, but I suspect so. The building would have made a very presentable impression on clients who came in looking for a reputable, established elevator construction company.