America’s Land Auctioneer
Captivate and celebrate the dynamics of rural America, American Agriculture and inspire and teach others how to live a bold and abundant life in rural America. Background: The intrigue, endless opportunities, and romance of rural life in America have never been more on the minds of Americans. The recent pandemic and civil unrest have Americans of all ages earning for a more peaceful, less hectic life. Even billionaire Bill Gates is now the largest crop landowner in America. As many Americans look for peaceful refuge in the rolling hills and wheat fields they are faced with a richness of opportunities. But where do you begin to look? This show will highlight and feature endless opportunities in every state. What is it that is so unique about rural America, the land and what it produces? How can I live that life? The American Land Auctioneer will tell stories and weave into those stories a place for you to dream, live and enjoy the abundance of all that rural America has to offer.
America’s Land Auctioneer
From Grain Elevators to Fertilizer Plants: How One Small-Town Co-op Is Transforming Rural Business
The heartbeat of southwest North Dakota pulses through the iconic white grain elevators of the Scranton Equity Exchange. For 110 years, this cooperative has adapted, evolved, and expanded to remain the cornerstone of its community—a testament to rural resilience in an ever-changing agricultural landscape.
General Manager Ben Hetzel takes us behind the scenes of this remarkable operation that stretches far beyond a typical grain elevator. From its robust feed plant that once defined the company to its modern grocery store, C-stores, lumber yard, and truck shop, the Scranton Equity embodies the diverse needs of the communities it serves. What truly sets this cooperative apart is its forward-thinking approach to agricultural services, especially evident in its recently completed 24,000-ton fertilizer storage facility.
The fertilizer plant represents a quantum leap from the days of 50-pound bags of Elephant Brand fertilizer unloaded manually from rail cars. Today's automated system allows for precision blending in seconds, delivering higher quality products with greater efficiency. This forward-thinking investment allows the cooperative to ship fertilizer as far as the Canadian border and deep into Montana, turning Scranton into a hub for agricultural inputs across the Northern Plains.
Looking ahead, the horizon of Scranton is set to change again with plans for a new slip elevator and additional dump pits designed to improve traffic flow and accommodate the increasingly diverse crop mix grown in southwest North Dakota. From traditional wheat and durum to newer crops like corn, canola, and pulses, the cooperative continues to evolve with its producer-members.
What makes the story of Scranton Equity particularly compelling is how it balances technological advancement with community service—maintaining vital services like its beloved bakery and meat department while investing in cutting-edge agricultural technology. It's a formula that has sustained this cooperative for over a century and positions it for generations to come. Discover how rural businesses can thrive by embracing change while honoring their community roots.
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Welcome to America's Land Auctioneer. I'm Jim Sabby, your host for this segment of a. I tell you what a great spring here that we're having, with no moisture. We need some moisture and my guests and I will talk about that here in a little bit. But here at Piper's we're lining up with a lot of auction sales for the spring, a big one coming up in Bowman on March 27th. Make sure you come over and take a look. Our lot is full. We're actually filling out more to the west every time here, every time I look out here with more equipment. So we've got equipment coming from Crosby, north Dakota, to Sydney, montana, to Belleelfou, south Dakota, sturgis and then the whole tri-state area. So a lot of stuff coming in here.
Speaker 2:I want to just highlight an item that I believe is probably one of the nicest items we're going to have, and it's a saddle. It's a Mile City saddle. We've got it up on the web and folks, you've got to take a look at this. You know we've had that thing checked out and it's very valuable, coming from a local family here that had it. So make sure you check out pyferscom, check out what's going on in Bowman, but through all of our sales coming up here, whether it's machinery or land. I know we just picked up another land auction in Stark County here today that we moved, I think, around the 20th of May for that auction and then we had that big one north of Beach 20th of May.
Speaker 2:But again I want to welcome my guest today, ben Hetzel. He's the general manager of the Scranton Equity and folks you know, kevin Pfeiffer always gives me a little grief he said you know, jim Sabby's epic center of the world is Scranton. You know, and I grew up south of town and been there my whole life. My kids live up by Amidon.
Speaker 2:But you know, if we wouldn't have the Scranton Equity and the school in our town, well, we wouldn't have the school, we didn't have the Scranton Equity. But it's been a vital part of the heartbeat in southwest North Dakota, not only Scranton but southwest North Dakota, into South Dakota, into Montana. So again, ben, welcome. And I guess first things I want to ask you is give me kind of an update of where you grew up, and it's got to be a Lemons area name down there, keldron Hetzels. I know we used to buy Angus Bulls from a Hetzel down there, but anyway, go ahead and introduce yourself and let us know where you come from and how you got to this point being the manager of the Scranton Equity general manager.
Speaker 3:Well, thanks, jim for having me. Yeah, I grew up down there. We moved down there when I was six years old, south of Keldron, went to school in Lemon all the way through. Once I graduated high school, actually signed up with Southwest Grain as an intern through a sponsorship program while I went to college. I had some help from them to get my education Through that experience. I had an opportunity to go back to work for them once I was done with college and kind of fell in love with the grain marketing side of the business.
Speaker 3:Throughout my experience as a seasonal summertime employee, you know, I started out in the boot pit loading trucks, dumping trucks, just kind of everything that a new employee would get exposed to. And when I went back to college after one of the summers I decided that I didn't want to be in the boot pit my whole life. So I had the opportunity to work in the grain office and had two great mentors there, went off and got my Series 3, moved back to Lemon, started my family there. I worked three months shy of 20 years for them and all of that was pretty much at the Lemon location there in Lemon, south Dakota. Then I did have one stint in there that I was a business ag banker with Wells Fargo out of Bowman for a short time and so, yeah, you know Scranton Equity was looking for a general manager here in 2022.
Speaker 3:They called me up, gave me the opportunity to look at it and it was just. It felt like a really good fit for me and where I was at in my career, the challenge was something I was needing and looking for and was excited to come. I was needing and looking for and was excited to come Again being exposed to the whole co-op system, spending almost all of my career within a co-op, it seemed logical to take that step and I was excited to come to independent co-op being a part of the big regional. You're just another person in a big pool of people doing that work and you know, scranton was very similar to Lemon in size and volumes, obviously a little bigger in some areas, a little different in regard to the grocery store and the C stores. A lot of people don't know it, but we own that frontier travel in Bowman, which is a really good business for the community and for us and for the patrons that own Scranton equity. But yeah, so coming here was definitely going to be a challenge, and one I was looking forward to.
Speaker 2:So I'm you know we're really happy to have you and I've heard a lot of great things. You know, I guess we'd probably have you and I've heard a lot of great things. You know, I guess we've probably never met in person, but maybe in passing, but heard a lot of great things. And you know, our co-op is a. This grant equity is a little different than a lot of other co-ops. You know there's a lot of little moving, I shouldn't say a little bit other moving parts. You know, like you said, the grocery store, the C store, the lumber yard. You know, like you said, the grocery store, the C store, the lumber yard, we've got a lot of things happening in those areas. And then you know the old Durham elevator. That's still an integral part.
Speaker 2:But then the feed plant. You know that was kind of the staple that built this company years ago, years ago. And I remember riding with my neighbor as he was delivering feed in a 1967 international truck down to the hills or something for guys for cattle feed, and and then, you know, used to go into Montana with another guy unloading bags. We, everything was bagged back then and we got our workout and we'd leave Scranton at three in the morning and be back by noon and get ready and get loaded for the next one. But so the feed plant, know, we got the auto parts store, the truck shop up there and again a little bit different. And then you know, you guys have been adding on things over the years with different segments. But this fertilizer segment we'll talk about that one in the second segment.
Speaker 2:But so we're a different cooperative than a lot of cooperatives, you know, and I don't even know how many employees you got there, but you know it seems like the employees you know with loading cars and stuff like that, they're working sometimes 24-hour shifts. It seems like I'm sure they went and got some sleep but you know I can hear the banging of the rail cars all night long and there's a lot of that going on with all the fertilizer coming in. So to me it's a big staple in our community in. So to me it's a big staple in our community, especially the Southwest North Dakota. But Northwest South Dakota and in the Eastern Montana, there I mean, everybody knows about the Scranton Equity and kind of makes us all a little proud about that. It's kind of nice to you know, everybody know about that and I'm sure when you stepped in you knew a lot of the vital things that went on at the Scranton Equity, but it is a little different than working at another cooperative.
Speaker 3:It certainly is and you've touched on it. But I really want to hit it home that there's a rich history here. When you drive by on Highway 12, it's iconic, these two big white elevators and it's special. I've known that my whole career. I drove by it a few times, working in Bowman until I moved there. But it is special and I tried to buy grain from this area throughout the years and there's just a loyalty to this co-op. That's part of that rich history, like you kind of alluded to there. But it is special, it takes care of the whole community. Um, it's, it's vital to the community, as you stated. The grocery store, the truck shop, you know it's. It's a challenge. It's definitely a challenge with the population of the rural communities decreasing, but you know that the board has been committed to. But you know the board has been committed to keeping this co-op the way it has been for, you know, 110 years I mean we just celebrated 110 years. It's a wonderful legacy. So, yeah, it is special.
Speaker 2:You know and you talk to the board members and it goes back a long ways. But my dad was on the board there for 10 years I think he was on there. But you know he enjoyed going to that and watching it grow with the different departments. You know, and I'm looking back now at you know the fuel deal is kind of growing. But then you look at the chemical department. You know now we've got the liquid fertilizer and all stuff coming out of there. They've got more spreaders and they've got sprayers and then that big fertilizer plant that we'll talk about again, like in the next segment. But you see what that has done for our local area. You know guys are getting hired to run these spreaders or the sprayers. Guys are needed to haul the stuff to the field. It's just grown a lot more than I'm sure, what the forefathers would even thought. You know what's happening there. But you know you've got to move along with the change and the Scranton equity has always been in the front of everything when change is coming.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and fortunately some forward-thinking board members over the years have really done a lot of good things. You know we'll talk about it, I'm sure, what our future plans are, but we talk in the boardroom about decisions that were made back in the early years when these first concrete silos were put up. You know those are hard decisions in those days, a lot less money than we're talking today, but still a monumental decision for a community. And thank goodness that they did that, because without those concrete elevators I don't believe Scranton would be what it is today.
Speaker 2:No, and we were lucky back when Scranton Green was going to sell out and they approached the Scranton Equity about buying that south elevator. That was a huge step back then, you know, and I remember getting our fertilizer off the rail car at the Scranton Equity in 50 pound bags of elephant brand fertilizer. That's how old I am. So yeah, I mean you remember that. But they were a great asset to the community. But they had, they knew it was time that they weren't going to expand and they wanted to help the Scranton Equity expand and sold out and that was one of the first steps that I remember as a kid that when Scranton Green got bought out by the Scranton Equity.
Speaker 3:Yeah, lots of tough decisions, lots of big decisions, you know, and the labor force was already becoming a challenge getting managers and stuff. I heard stories of that and you know that challenge is still here today, finding good quality labor to fill these roles, whether it's an applicator or an agronomist or grain merchandiser. You know I'm still filling that role today, largely as the general manager, so we're always looking for the right characters.
Speaker 2:I'm going to interrupt you here for a minute. We're going to get it ready for section two. But whether you're buying or selling land, equipment or real estate, trust the team that's built on experience and results. Piper's Auction Realty and Land Management, their farm and ranch auctioneers, land brokers and land managers are the best in the business.
Speaker 1:Visit wwwpiperscom today because when it comes to auctions and land sales, nobody does it better than pipers, and we'll be right back, welcome back to America's Land Auctioneer.
Speaker 2:I'm Jim Sabby with America's Land Auctioneer host here this morning and I'm speaking with Ben Hensel out of the Scranton Equity Exchange. He is a general manager and we're kind of talking about through the years of what's. You know what's happening with the Scranton Equity. You know there's always something moving and shaking over there. They've got a great board and the community supports them. But you know they built up the fertilizer deal where it's kind of amazing what's going on there now. You know they started with a lot of liquid tanks and kind of revamping their whole chemical and fertilizer division and you know been built at a building here I suppose maybe it's probably 15, 10 years ago I don't know how many long that other building they put up and then all of a sudden they expanded and I'll let you kind of tell the area folks what happened back there. I mean you guys expanded to this big fertilizer. It's the biggest I've seen in the area.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we just finished that project to put that new fertilizer barn in when I was coming on board, so I got to finalize all the little details at the end. To finalize all the little details at the end, but that was a big project in the making for a few years for the board and management. That finally came to fruition there in 2022. I guess we used it the spring of 23. It's kind of neat. When you come through here, jim, you can see the history of the fertilizer evolution the old building to then the new one that was, you know, somewhere around 7,000 ton, and then the brand new storage barn that holds 24,000 ton. It is a big bugger and it's fun to see, fun to have that on the map right here, because we've shipped fertilizer all over the place.
Speaker 3:But as far as north of Grand Forks near the Canadian border, out into Montana, of course, we service our local area in probably a hundred mile radius in a big way, coming in on rail for the most part and leaving on truck, you know, going to other other fertilizer barns or plants that independents own or other other independent co-ops even are buying product through our barn. So we've got a great partnership on that to get that product moved, but it's. It's huge for our producers because you know how it was being operated before. It was busting at the seams. They were hauling fertilizer off of rail cars and putting it in storage buildings and having to load it back out to put it in the blender, you know. So just a lot of handling and of course, anytime you handle that kind of product you're breaking it down and that's not ideal for the producer. So quality and speed are two things that are very, very critical to a grower when they're buying that product.
Speaker 2:So you know it's very impressive how that stuff comes in on the rail, gets unloaded off the car with a system that takes it up and runs it into that big warehouse that you got. I mean, back then it was a lot of hands-on, you know, a lot of moving parts I shouldn't say wasted time, but that's what they had to do. And now all of a sudden it comes in and you open the doors and get those conveyors going and you're unloading a lot of fertilizer in a short period of time.
Speaker 3:Yep, when a train rolls in. Those shuttle trains hold around 8,500 tons. Each car is about 100 ton and they bring them in in 85 car blocks. So we pull them across two different track pits and convey it up into that barn and sort it into our bins, depending on what product it is. And you know, from there it's just a payloader. We scoop it with a. Our new shovel is a big old 200 Komatsu, you know. And so you scoop it into the conveyor that sorts it out into the blending system and it's all automated. It sorts it out into the blending system and it's all automated. You know, it's some neat technology in that fertilizer plant where it, you know, just every blend is precise, you know, it just measures it so close. And you know, back when I started we were using a little loader and watching a scale and just dipping it, you know, trickling it in there trying to get the weight right. And you know what we used to do took extra minutes to try to to get it accurate and this thing just does it in a second, you know. And so really neat technology and and fast in and out and one of the other things.
Speaker 3:After the first year we realized that we had such congestions with lines. The throughput trucks that were hauling out to other businesses were having to sit off to the side and let our farmers come through. And so because we were committed to the farmers first and we realized early on in that that we needed another lane and we just couldn't do it with one lane. So the board committed to putting in an addition after the first season. And one of the other complaints we had was the when it rains, farmers stop hauling fertilizer. They don't, they don't need to be moving fertilizer in the rain and they're not going around around in their fields.
Speaker 3:So but the throughput trucks that were hauling to other locations, that worked really well because there wasn't farmers in line so they wanted to haul. Well, if it was raining they were outside loading and that didn't work very well. So we put in a covered alleyway there on that throughput or on the one loadout, and then added the throughput lane at high speed. There's 50 ton in each bin above their head, so you can load a couple trucks just in an instant. You know it's fast.
Speaker 2:You know, with all this that you're talking about right now, you know and we talk about land on a lot of these shows but how things have changed. You know from people coming in with pickups or single ax trucks for the fertilizer. You know from people coming in with pickups or single-axe trucks for the fertilizer and maybe just grabbing a can of 2,4-D amine someplace and going out. But that's how it was back then. And you look how it's expanded into what you guys are doing today. I mean ranching and farming have come a long ways with technology and so has your systems that you're implementing right there.
Speaker 2:But when you see the difference, a lot of these and I know before my dad passed he would just shake his head with what's going on. You know, I mean it's one of those deals that you know he started with the horse and you know I ended up pulling my 1895 air seater and running a combine. But what they've seen. And now you look in the last 15 years, what the technology has done 10 years, and with this fertilizer thing, it's just kind of baffled me how we've got this thing going there. And there's trucks in and out of town and that's good for the fuel station. I mean, you look at the amount of diesel fuel that gets pumped out of there, and so it's a kind of a step-by-step basis, but it all works for our scrant equity.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's reciprocal and as one grows, the others benefit, and that's ideal. But you're right, Everything's changed drastically the precision that the farmers are dialed into and laser-focused on. There's lots of programs that they're trying to meet the demands of and get better at what they do. We got to stay with them and that's exactly what we're trying to do.
Speaker 2:You know technology sometimes is not a good thing, but in your business and the farmer's business it's been really good. The amount of dollars that they're saving by not overlapping and you guys are saving by not having a mixture of stuff that isn't quite correct but you're still pushing it out because you don't have the technology there. You have it now and you know I'm sure it's going to get better with time. But you know we've got about 45 seconds left in this. But I just wanted to say that everybody's got to move with technology and time and that makes it a little bit tougher. But if you don't move on, you kind of get left in the dust.
Speaker 3:Yep, you become irrelevant and you know the competition will take over. Somebody's got to figure out a way to help them.
Speaker 2:It does, and you know that's one thing. We're going to move into the next segment here in just a little bit. But I'm Jim Sabby, your host for America's Land Auctioneer. Ben Hetzel is my guest from the Scranton Equity Exchange, the general manager, and I appreciate him being on because we've got a lot of things happening in southwest North Dakota that a lot of people don't hear about. They don't know. You know that we haul buffalo feed down into South Dakota for many thousands of buffalo's ranches down there. So it's just kind of a big difference than what everybody else kind of sees. But I will say this you were right when you said you drive by. It's kind of iconic statues sitting there, those big green elevators. It's kind of fun to watch when you're driving by and watch the other people pull into town just to take a look. So looking for a professional auction service or expert land management, pifers Auction and Realty and Land Management delivers proven success across the midwest with the best farm and ranch auctioneers and brokers in the industry. They'll help you get top dollar. Visit piferscom and see why nobody does it better for than Pifers. And again, we're going to be right back into our third segment and I appreciate you being here and then we'll be right back.
Speaker 2:Welcome back to America's Land Auctioneer.
Speaker 2:I'm Jim Sabby with Pipers out of the Bowman office in the great state of North Dakota, but we're down here in the southwest North Dakota, which we call God country, but right now it is dry, it is really dry, and you know that's one concern that I'm sure Ben and the board over there at Scranton Equity has got a little bit of concerns about.
Speaker 2:With the dryness, people are still going to farm like we're going to get rain. We were just talking the other day, 2013. It was drier than dry going into spring and I can't remember if it was late April or early May All of a sudden we started getting rain and we ended up with 32 inches of rain that year. So it does rain in this country, but only after a drought. So we've got to get ready for everything. But you know the equity has been prepping all winter for everything going on. But let's kind of wrap up with this fertilizer that you've got going on, but let's kind of wrap up with this fertilizer that you got going on and then we'll move into you know things that are happening coming down the road and then we can move into third and fourth hour with, or third and fourth segment with that, but let's talk a little bit more about fertilizer.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we're set for spring. We bring this product in as early as we can get that building full and you know we're moving fertilizer all winter, which is different for a lot of places. We bring fertilizer in and typically there's a train sometime august to get ready for a fall run and then so we're we're running fertilizer out of the plant, you know know, all the way out through into October typically, and then we start bringing trains in again in December and January and that product's leaving usually around the first of the year and getting in position in all the smaller barn or sheds around the country.
Speaker 2:So you know it's a busy. What I find interesting is there's semis coming in to unload grain, because you just loaded up a 110-car unit and the next day you got fertilizer in there and those guys are working their butt off, you know, unloading the trains with the grain, unloading the fertilizer. And there's trucks every day in town, I mean, and what I thought was kind of neat, you know, and I don't know if they're both doing it, but one of our places with food is now driving through the truck line and offering to bring food to them while they're sitting in the semis. And you know you got to be entrepreneurial, you know, in our business, but that is to me people seem very appreciative of them doing that.
Speaker 2:And then I want to just touch a minute about your grocery store. One night I was in there right before closing and they were getting ready for food for the guys that are going to be loading the cars all night. So sometimes it's 24 hours a day. These guys are working and you got food coming from the grocery store. You get food coming from either the main bar or next door pizza store. You get food coming from either the main bar or next door pizza and that's a great asset in our community because, well, I don't know, it'd be tough to pack a sandwich, pack lunch for these guys.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know, that's great that you're touching on that. We are blessed to have those two businesses on main street there. I believe the next door pizza even won an award Western edge best restaurants or something I recall. But kudos to them. They got that back open. It was a well-run business for a lot of years and it shut down for a brief time there and thankfully some local people picked it back up.
Speaker 3:But yeah, you know, we've got a little bit of food in our gas station right here on the Equity campus. And then we added some sandwiches into the grocery store because our employees, you know, they need something to eat every day and it's kind of nice to have a variety. So our gals in the grocery store do a tremendous job and our staff down at the Farm and Fuel C-Store they started putting together a little kind of a wrap sandwich and stuff. So good variety around the town. But yeah, we had a pretty good truck line one day and one of the owners of Next Door Pizza had a thought well, maybe we can get enough help and make some slices of pizza and see if we could sell some. And they had a pretty good day.
Speaker 3:You know there was 25 trucks stacked in there and and yeah it's. It's good that people in the community are are looking out for opportunities to help and be a part of it, no different than our staff being willing to. You know, it's our office staff that comes in and makes meals for our operations teams that are out late at night or early mornings, because there is times when we do have to run 24-7 shifts and it doesn't happen every day. But it's nice to have a home-cooked meal when you have to be here all night.
Speaker 2:You're right and it's nice seeing, you know, the trucks all in there and you know, probably in the last segment we'll talk a little bit about the new design and what's going on there with the grain facility. But I go into the grocery store and I'm not home a lot. You know I'm home 10, 12 days a month, otherwise I'm on the road. But I like stopping in my local grocery store. You know there's places, things you can't get there, but I normally just buy everything there.
Speaker 2:I go in there and it was totally different than what I saw a while back and you know they got. The aisles have changed, they've condensed a lot of things and we don't need a big grocery store in Scranton, north Dakota. You know, give me the staples. You know the milk, the bread and some cereal and ketchup and the other thing. But the meat department has always been pretty good, so you need a little bit of that and then you see the sandwiches that are in there.
Speaker 2:But I was very impressed when I saw you know we're finally getting it because you know the grocery store struggled and the equity always kept the thing open because they wanted to serve the community and I think they're designing this right where this is going to be a great service to the community. It's a bigger C-store, if you want to call it that, but they've got all the essentials we need, just not 10 types or 10 of one kind, you know. It's just kind of one of those where you know you get different chips and everything going online. But boy is it nice to walk in there now and see you know what I can get, whatever I need. But if I need something extra special, granted, I don't need diapers anymore and we've been through that stage. But you know, just didn't need to have that stuff in there and now it's cleaned up and looks good.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the staff that we have is doing a tremendous job in there. We've got a young gal that moved back home. She's a local family name and her and her husband moved back to the community. So it's nice to have young families as well. But one of the things we did, jim, is we cleared out the front windows there's beautiful big windows on that side and cleared the shelving away from it. Open it up it's bright in there, lots of natural light rearrange some aisles, move some some stuff around.
Speaker 3:You know, being a part of the super value chain, we got some help with some of that. They'll come in and help us, you know, re reset the store and make it fresh and new and just get people to see the items different. Because, like you say, you know we have a lot of stuff in that little store. I mean, I remember the first day of work when I walked in there. I'm privileged, I can walk through a door and I'm in the store. So you know my lunchbox is pretty big. But you know I walked in there the first day and I was like holy smokes.
Speaker 3:For a town this size, this grocery store is unbelievable and one of the really special things is the bakery. You talked about the meat and we get praise on our ribeye steaks. Everybody says they're the best around and I'm pretty fussy about my steak. We raise Angus beef still to this day and uh, sim angus beef. So you know I know what good beef is and people rave over these ribeyes and and stuff and. But our bakery, you know we still have a really robust bakery and you know we're making the buns for the main bar and for all of the community activities. So just an excellent job by our staff there and trying to keep that viable and exciting and fresh for the patrons. You know.
Speaker 2:I'm one of those that get up kind of early but a lot of times I'm over at the gas station having coffee in the morning and what really baffles me is you not believe, the amount of people that will come in right after he's brought the uh, the baked goods in uh into the gas station, you know, and it's not really a fight, but I mean everybody's there to grab um for the day and and pick up the baked goods and you can go to the grocery store and get the same ones. But people like to come in and visit there at the gas station and and I appreciate john and those guys for opening up a little earlier for some of us guys that just want to come see what's going on. But you know they've got the sandwiches there, also breakfast sandwiches, everything you need. But when that bakery comes in the caramel rolls or the long johns and it makes it kind of nice Some of those guys, that's probably one thing they look forward to.
Speaker 2:So we do appreciate that bakery. That's been there quite a while. It's been a big staple of everything and you're right, it goes to. Every group wants to get their buns there just because they're made fresh.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's fantastic quality and the donuts are as good as I've ever had, and I'm a donut connoisseur. So, the long Johns, I even got them to start sprinkling a little bit of peanuts on top of some of them chocolate. I sure do like that too.
Speaker 3:But yeah, we've had some changeover in staff and you're always going to have that in businesses in rural America, but we're really fortunate to have the local people that have either moved back or been here a long time. You talked about john. You know he's a guy that he runs our c store, our farm and fuel the lumber hardware. He's not from around here, but you know he's made this his home and and done a fantastic job. And, um, you know we've got we've got husbands and wives at work within our organization John, his fuel driver and propane driver, sean his wife's, our baker, karina. It's fun and it's really a family environment around here and that's what we're trying to create this robust team, and we've kind of broke down the barriers of the departments a little bit, so we have people that work within all the different departments and it's made a world of difference you know, and it seems to be a great atmosphere around there.
Speaker 2:You know I'm around, I go in and visit brent in the feed department because you know I think he's doing an excellent job there. And and, uh, you know I visit guys that I haven't got in the elevator much. I mean I'm not selling any grain anymore, but you know between the coffee shop and then up truck stop. You know I visit guys that I haven't got in the elevator much. I mean I'm not selling any grain anymore, but you know between the coffee shop and then up truck stop, you know we're always using them, and then, of course, the grocery store. But you look at the environment Everybody, you know, and we've all got our little hiccups in no matter what company, but everybody seems to work and do very well there and they're very appreciative. What I like is you come in and it's a smile wherever you're walking into. And you know we're going to end this segment here real shortly, but we'll talk about the next venture that the equity is doing coming up.
Speaker 2:When it comes to buying and selling farmland, ranches and equipment, experience matters. Piper's Auction and Realty and Land Management is the industry-leading professionals ready to serve. You See upcoming auctions at Piperscom, because when it comes to results, nobody is better than Pipers, and we do it better than anybody else. And we'll be right back for our final segment. See you right there. Get birded straight by.
Speaker 2:Welcome to America's Land Auctioneer. I'm Jim Sabby, your host today for this Piper's big radio show. We got going on and today my guest is Ben Hetzel, General Manager of the Scranton Equity, and we're kind of going through the progress of you know, they're 110 years old keeping up with what's going on in the agriculture industry, and now we're getting to the biggie again because they've changed the way trucks are routed in town. They put up a couple of new scales with coverings on them, Got a new building that they put up, and I know there's more coming. But I'll tell you what this is what you're doing. To me it looks like you're trying to help the flow of trucks through this whole situation, and why don't you kind of let us know how you guys come up with that and how things are going today?
Speaker 3:Yeah, thanks for giving me the opportunity to talk about that. It's a long-awaited project. You know they've been talking about the traffic flow and truck congestion in Scranton since I started in this business 24 years ago. You know we're set off the highway. You have to take a little interchange overpass to get into town and there's a creek that runs along here and it's laid out at an angle through town on the highway. So there's some challenges with the way the community was set up in the early years of settlement and how the track is orientated here. So when we looked at it as we talked about grain expansion and where we could do it, how we could fit the right thing in here to speed up the truck dumping and as well as give a sample segregation for the commodity mix that's grown in southwest North Dakota, northwest South Dakota and in Montana we draw all the way out of Montana too. So brought in a guy that I'd worked with a long time to help kind of vet some of the discussion with and we came up with this design where two scales, an inbound and an outbound, put one on one side of town, one on the other side of town. So the traffic comes in through that system and once they've come fully through it they can leave town at the south end. So the north traffic coming down Highway 67, they just drop right into the probe, you know, and get probed and then land on that first scale. Once they get to the south end they got to come back through town, but they only have to to travel through basically that circle one time where, if you put the a single scale at the north end, they got to make another loop up there to get out of town. And the south traffic the same thing. Trucks coming off Highway 12, they do have to come up through town once, but once they get back down to the south end they're done, they're gone, and so we're just trying to really keep it clean and simple and efficient, have enough room for staging trucks so that we don't have congestion and people wondering well, who gets to go next? And you know, back in the day I remember people would get literally into fistfights over who got to go next. Because you sit there for so long, you know, and things have sped up a lot in the last, you know, 15 years. Most of these elevators that have built new storage, they're dumping faster and moving trucks through more quickly and efficiently. So that gets better with time. We don't seem to have that issue anymore with arguments and stuff. People really do respect each other and it's just that harvest you get a lot of custom harvesters and they don't know the flow and and there can be some frustrations. But so we really we really wanted to clean that up but yet allow ourselves the ability to add our our new dump pits that we intended to do at some point. Fortunately, the board and and management has spent a lot of time with an engineer trying to figure out what the ideal expansion would look like and we really think we got a good product coming to the growers and the owners of Scranton Equity. We're going to put up another slip elevator, so it's going to change the horizon again.
Speaker 3:Elevator, so it's going to change the the horizon again. You know, and and so it's going to be fun to see how that, how that looks when you drive by on the highway. It's going to be a different view and it should be as soon as thanksgiving. You might even see it. So really exciting changes coming. We're going to add two new dump pits in our traffic flow. The traffic flow will stay the same, it's just we're adding two more pits into that flow. They're high speed. It should alleviate any kind of lines that we've experienced in the past.
Speaker 3:The one thing that's really unique and I had touched on it is the commodity mix grown here. Mix grown here, you know. There's pulses, wheat, durum, sunflowers, flax, safflower, you know all different stuff. And corn is becoming a really big thing in Southwest North Dakota as the years have gone on here in the last decade. Even soybeans to some degree. But we're just trying to figure out how we can serve the patrons the best. And you know we're utilizing that two elevator system for segregation and we're just outgrowing it in a short amount of time. You know we went from a facility that handled Durham in one elevator and Spring Wheat in the other to two elevators that are maxing out their capacity and we're loading cars almost every day.
Speaker 3:Jim, and you probably see it, she's a retired pastor in town here, pastor Mary. You know, pastor Mary, she come up to me at the annual meeting my first year and after my first full year, and she said Ben, I don't know how you do it, but you seem to have cars in here so often. I hear that bang and I just love that, you know. So, uh, it's. It's been a lot of fun, but we have literally maxed out what we can do and at any. Well, today, just as an example, we have a shuttle train a canola sitting in-house, we have a shuttle train of corn in-house and we have a shuttle train of wheat in-house. So you know it's, it's a whole different ball game, and and we're just talking about progressing and how things have happened.
Speaker 2:But look at the amount of crops we grow. And I remember as a kid it was, you know we always grew durham and barley. That's all we did, and you know. And if we did any corn we chopped it and whatever. But now you look at all those crops, you got've got to have the ability to get them in your elevator and your system somewhere and then you've got to have the ability to load them out. I mean you don't want to lose those guys going to the next elevator because they have that. And now you see how much more corn, safflower and safflower not as much, but canola. I mean a lot of times this whole country is yellow, you know, and so when you look at that, you have to be able to service those guys doing that. And yeah, it costs some money to do it, but eventually you know with what everybody's grown and it'll pay off for our local cooperative, pay off for community and pay off for the farmers.
Speaker 3:It will. And the board's challenge to me right out of the gate was we need to figure out a way to utilize these elevators for these other commodities, because we're all growing three, four crops on our farms and we're handling two of them at the equity and they weren't satisfied with that and you know it was just. It was a change that had to come with time and you know in my experience, where I was at before I was doing that, I was handling sunflowers, canola, corn, wheat. We didn't handle Durham as much, but it was not really Durham country over there, but corn got to be a big thing. We were big in sunflowers for a long time and you know the market dynamics changed, so it changes what you can do to some degree and that's what happened with the sunflowers. You've seen a lot of flowers over the years in this country and then all of a sudden this last year, and maybe even to some degree this next year, there just isn't going to be as many sunflowers. They're going to come back.
Speaker 2:They will, they always do, and you know we've got about 30 seconds left here. Kind of just give a synopsis again of the Scranton Equity. You're the general manager, ben Hetzel, appreciate you being on to give a little synopsis of, in a nutshell, the Scranton Equity and you've got about 25 seconds.
Speaker 3:You know just again that rich history and that legacy we're trying to carry forward and make it to another 50 years, and that's what these projects and what we're doing with our people. We want to be the customer's first choice and we want to be able to take this co-op into the future and set it up successful for another generation or two, and then they'll have to figure it out from there.
Speaker 2:Yes, and I appreciate you being on. The Scranton Equity has been a big, basically the heartbeat of Southwest North Dakota and Scranton. But again, thank you very much. And this is Jim Savvy with America's Land Auctioneer. Thanks to Ben Hetzel for being my guest today. See you next week.