![]() ![]() Unlike other ag investment failures that are largely hidden from view, the farm where someone went bankrupt feeding cattle or dairying was forever marked by these distinctive structures. This is where the nickname “Blue Tombstone” was born. The farm crisis hit in the early 80s taking out many of cattle feeders and dairies that had purchased Harvestores. Harvestores became hugely popular in the 1960s and 70s, with sales peaking in 1979. And they painted them with their trademark blue color. Someone said, hmmm, if we stack these things up and put a top on it that would make a great silo. After Prohibition ended in the ’30s, the AO Smith company figured out how to attach fiberglass to steel to create vats for making beer at newly legalized breweries. Cattle have to have forage and this is a favorite.īack to Harvestores. Then the silo is sealed and the silage ferments to create a feed that cattle, and dairy cows in particular, love to eat. In the case of corn, the entire corn plant is chopped up green in late summer and then blown (literally) up into the silo. Silage is mainly made from corn and sometimes from hay and grasses. ![]() So, why are there so many silos around? The reason is that they are used for storage of silage, an important cattle feed. Have you ever seen a farm playset for little kids that includes a barn but NOT a silo? Maybe after barns, there is no more iconic landmark for a farm. Silos are everywhere in the country landscape in North America (and elsewhere). 2018 - CST Industries, Inc., celebrates 125 years in business.That title should get your attention! I am talking here about a particular type of silo found on livestock farms-blue Harvestores made by AO Smith like that in the picture below.The company introduced an XL Unloader for Harvestores, nearly doubling unloading capacity. , a Houston, Texas, private equity firm, acquires CST Industries Inc. (A CST predecessor company name was Columbian Steel Tank Co.) 2001 - CST Industries Inc., of Kansas City, Missouri, purchases AOS’s “Engineered Storage Products Company” including Harvestore.1997 - AOS puts up its Harvestore unit for sale “in the face of numerous lawsuits and class-action suits that Harvestore had sold farmers defective silos.” A sale doesn’t materialize and the unit is merged back with the industrial storage tank unit.AOS makes deals with Japanese automaker Nissan, and in 1995 launches three joint ventures in China, making it the first U.S. 1990s - The company returns to profitability, making frames for increasingly popular SUVs.AOS shifts the subsidiary’s focus to municipal water tank storage and sells Harvestore’s United Kingdom subsidiary. The division shutters two plants and consolidates operations to the main plant in DeKalb, Illinois. 1984 - Harvestore sales decline to $21 million.1980 to 1985 - AOS moves its auto frame business to making frames for trucks, vans and sport utility vehicles.1979 - AOS’s Harvestore division sales are $140 million.1959 - AOS forms a fiberglass division and introduces glass-lined silos (and Corvette Sting Ray auto bodies).1953 - AOS and Dow explore a fiberglass process.The silos “filled from the top, emptied from the bottom, and were dark-colored to prevent wintertime freezing” of the feed stored inside. 1949 - AOS designs a silo made from bolted steel beer vats.1941 - AOS makes aerial bombs, propeller blades, landing gears, and was targeted in an unexecuted U.S.1936 - AOS builds glass-lined water heaters for home use.AOS, in Milwaukee’s brewing capital, revives with glass-lined steel beer barrel liners. 1929 - AOS is hit hard by the stock market crash.Smith, (“AOS”), the company becomes the “largest manufacturer of component bicycle parts in the world” and auto frames for Ford and other auto makers. 1904 - Smith’s descendants incorporate as A.O.1874 - English immigrant Charles Jeremiah Smith settles in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and makes baby carriage parts.The most silo-related developments are in boldface: What’s the latest on Harvestore? Here’s a brief history of the Harvestore silo, according to company websites. How a farmer's giant self-made silo mover saved the farm when others were losing theirsīut even though Grotte's Mighty Mover took some Harvestores away, the silos have never gone away. Walter Grotte started moving Harvestore silos, the big, blue silos that still dot the landscape in farm country, in the 1980s, when many farmers were hit with hard times and could no longer afford the feed systems. ![]()
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