The Elevator

Going to the elevator is one of the things I enjoy most about driving a truck because it is where you meet people; other truck drivers, many from overseas; the boss-man checking on things at the unloading pit; farmers' wives, many driving semis for their husbands who work the combines out in their fields; the local sheriff who comes in to the office for a chat; the Mennonite farmer driving his 1956 Chevy tip-truck; the 15 year-old kid dumping trucks all summer so that he can buy his first car.

Most towns in the Wheat Belt will have at least one elevator. In a usually sleepy town, the elevator can be a hive of activity for a couple of months of the year, providing employment for many, the means by which the farmer makes a living, and the facilities to distribute a staple product to America and the world.

Many facilities are the same as they were when they were built back in the 40s. In many cases, they are the reason for a town’s existence, whether they established a town or they are what keeps it alive after everything else has closed.

If there are a couple of big crews in town and conditions are good for cutting, it can get pretty busy. The busiest elevators we've seen were in Vernon Texas.

Andrew took this photo while in line. Up to 50 semi-trailers would snake around the backstreets, sometimes spilling out onto the highway, queuing for the weigh-bridge. A lot of the wheat dumped was loaded on to freight trains and transported down to the Gulf of Mexico to be shipped overseas.

We ran into a lot of problems in Texas because the trucks could not dump the combines fast enough, meaning that we’d have to stop cutting. What could have been a 45 minute round trip was taking up to four hours in some cases. Frustratingly, the elevators were disorganised and underequiped for the volume of crop this year.

I’m hoping to put up a video shortly to show exactly what happens when I go through the elevator…