Reply To: Grain industry questions

[David Boeschen]

Here are some ideas. My knowledge revolves around wheat, but I’ve seen plenty of rice elevators and the storage practices aren’t that different. Note that I’m a city kid so I didn’t grow up with this, but they’ve been part of the scenery for as long as I’ve been around.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_grain_elevators

This article talks about the big concrete grain elevators, most of which were already in existence by your timeframe. But there could be some other useful stuff mentioned here.

I have spent many years driving along the Big Friendly at places between Rosenberg and Eagle Lake, Texas, and at places like Iowa, Louisiana. These are local collection elevators and they have a mix of concrete assembled silos with steel tie-rods holding them together (oldest), concrete slipformed silos and tall steel silos. These are rice elevators, generally smaller than the midwest grain elevators but the same basic idea. There are lots of the smaller steel grain tanks as you show, on individual farmers’ property, and possibly at smaller dealers.

That small piece of equipment is a grain dryer. I don’t recall seeing those in rice country, but can’t say for sure. It could be they’re not needed for rice.

Back to the grain tanks, which are often called ‘Butler bins’ where I came from. http://butlermfg.com/en/about_us

The first part of this article is enlightening for its history, but I think it definitively answers the question that, yes, there would have been at least a few of these things around by 1945. I believe there could have been a few bins made from flat steel like a water tank, which would have preceded the corrugated steel ones, but those were probably rare.

Ron Merrick