Grain elevators are an easily overlooked feature of the rural American landscape. But their role in the marketplace remains an essential one, and it is changing.
Jay Johnson of Waverly and Jesse Ruff of Toluca, Ill., are part of that change.
Each runs an agriculture company in Illinois started by his father. Each operates not just a traditional grain elevator adjacent to railroad tracks at the heart of a small town, but also an elaborate cluster of shiny steel grain storage bins, loading equipment and truck scales in what had been corn and soybean fields just outside those towns.
These new facilities, called shuttle loaders, quickly fill railroad cars with corn. The shuttle loaders feature rail sidings that run in mile-and-a-half loops of track. Trains of empty grain cars come off the main line and await loading on the loop.
Each car passes in turn through a tall shed adjacent to the grain bins. Computers direct the grain from the bins by conveyors to the loading shed. Once there, a remote-controlled spout pours corn into the three hoppers contained in each rail car.
Each 110-car Burlington Northern Santa Fe train can be loaded with 440,000 bushels of corn in less than 15 hours.
In less than two days, that corn is delivered to cattle and dairy feedlots in Texas and Mexico. Soon, Ruff said, it will also go to Texas ethanol plants under construction.
The six shuttle loaders now in Illinois offer new competition to the state’s time-tested method of moving corn by river barge.
The Jersey County Grain Co.’s barge-loading facility, nestled along the Illinois River’s edge in Hardin, isn’t nearly as modern or sophisticated as the shiny rail shuttle loaders. But it does the job.
Crews load a barge with 58,000 bushels of corn a day, and then raft loaded barges downstream until a tug comes to pick them up. From there, they travel a few miles to the Mississippi River and then New Orleans. Once there, the Jersey County corn is transferred to freighters for a trip to Asia.
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