SEGMENT: FARM FACILITIES

Jay Johnson>LPL Walk & Talk Interviews>Johnson, Section 1

SEGMENT: FARM FACILITIES,

duration 12:42
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FARM FACILITIES
; At the scale house they use a probe and vacuum hose to take a sample of corn from the truck. They then measure moisture, smell, damage and foreign objects. They're allowed anything under 15% moisture. They also weigh the trucks. Anything over 15% has to be conditioned, but dry corn is put directly on the train. Trucks are allowed 80,000 pounds. They have three dump pits and two scales--one of the first in the industry to have two scales. If they need more corn they will put out a bid to fill a shipment; they purchase the grain from farmers. Trucks are allowed three percent foreign objects, five percent damaged kernels. The grain is smelled to see if there is a musty aroma to them. Wet and musty corn is dried before it's loaded on the train. The trucks drive onto scales with a read-out that tells them what their weight is, then they drive to the dump pit and dump their grain. The whole prodcedure only takes about five minutes. The have dumped over 900 trucks in one day. They have five Behlen tanks or bins for storing the grain to hold wet corn. They hold over 100,000 bushels each. There are three grain driers. Use propane. Have a storage building that holds 7 million bushels of corn. Construction was started in October 2003, finished in March 2004. They had to work with the railroads to have tracks laid for their facility. Several developers from all over the midwest wanted to build for them but they settled with a company from outside Peoria, IL.