Facility Feature
Farmers Coop Equity Co. Builds Branch Elevator For Wheat

St. Leo, KS — The tiny Kingman County hamlet of St. Leo, KS for more than a century was known for only one thing – the St. Leo Catholic Church, built in 1904 and still an active parish today.

As of 2020, however, St. Leo became known for a second item – a brand new jumpform concrete grain elevator at the intersection of two county blacktop roads, about a mile due west from the St. Leo church.

The greenfield, 525,000-bushel elevator was built by Farmers Coop Equity Co. of Isabel (KS), headquartered about 15 miles to the southwest.

“In this case, the reason for a new elevator had everything to do with location,” says General Manager Ted Behring, who has held this position since 2019. Previously, he worked for Collingwood Grain in Plains, KS.

The main goal of an elevator at St. Leo, he says, is to capture wheat bushels produced by farmers near the northern edge of the cooperative’s trade territory who find it too far to haul grain to facilities farther to the south. The elevator is handling strictly hard red winter wheat grown in the area.

In addition to storing wheat until the market calls for it, the St. Leo facility is intended to help ease truck congestion at the company’s other six elevators around south central Kansas.

When the job was bid out in 2019, Farmers Coop Equity chose to build a concrete facility. At the time, concrete was more expensive than steel, “but concrete offers more than triple the longevity,” Behring says. “Also, when properly constructed, concrete is good at standing up to high winds, and we have plenty of that in this part of the country.”

Project features three McPherson concrete tanks

After taking the bids, the cooperative awarded the $4.3 million contract to Industrial Maintenance Inc., Wichita, KS (316-267-7933). “Their bid was competitive,” Behring notes, “and they also offered a complete turnkey package – office, scales, probe, receiving pit, machinery, sewer, everything except the concrete.”

The three concrete tanks making up the elevator storage were constructed by McPherson Concrete Storage Systems, McPherson, KS (800-999-9191).

Construction began in the fall of 2019. The elevator began receiving grain at the end of August 2020.

The three McPherson concrete tanks stand 30 feet in diameter and 140 feet tall, holding 175,000 bushels of wheat each. Because of a low water table in the area, McPherson was able to outfit the tanks with concrete cone bottoms on a 37-1/2-degree angle. The cones add about 3,000 bushels to each tank’s storage capacity.

The tanks are equipped with five-cable Rolfes@Boone grain temperature monitoring systems. In lieu of a manlift, the northernmost of the tanks has a spiral staircase for ease of climbing.

A set of four Tiernan 30-hp centrifugal fans supply 1/5 cfm per bushel of aeration. “This much air lets us take in a high level of moisture, though we don’t accept grain at 25% moisture,” Behring comments. “There was some of that around here this year with all of the rains during harvest.”

Facility includes office building, receiving setup

The facility includes a small single-story office building, with an 80-foot Mettler Toledo inbound-outbound pitless truck scale on either side plus a Gamet JaHam truck probe. Grain grading is done inside the office using a DICKEY-john GAC 2100 moisture meter, Perten grain analyzer, and an MCi Kicker dockage tester.

From the scale, trucks proceed to a 2,800-bushel mechanical receiving pit adjacent to the storage tanks. Even though the elevator is positioned far from any residences, automated covers lower onto the pit gratings when the pit is not in use, keeping down dust and keeping stray materials out of the pit.

A 20,000-bph Schlagel leg outfitted with Tapco 20x8 buckets mounted on a 22-inch Continental belt, supplied by Applied Power Products, elevates grain to a Schlagel six-duct rotary distributor. The leg is attached directly to the middle tank, eliminating the need for a support tower.

The distributor deposits grain onto Schlagel 20,000-bph overhead drag conveyors running out to storage. One duct sends grain via gravity down to a 5,000-bushel GSI surge tank for truck loading.

The tanks are equipped with sidedraw spouts, and for complete emptying, Industrial Maintenance supplied augers for cleaning out the cones. Grain is deposited onto a Schlagel 10,000-bph exterior drag conveyor running back to the receiving leg.

Ed Zdrojewski, editor

From September/October 2021 Grain Journal

Farmers Coop Equity Co.

• Isabel, KS • 620-739-4335
• Founded: 1919
• Storage capacity: 4.3 million bushels at seven locations
• Annual volume: 4.5 million bushels
• Annual sales: $36-40 million
• Number of members: 1,200
• Number of employees: 32
• Crops handled: Hard red winter wheat, corn, soybeans, sorghum, oats
• Services: Grain handling and merchandising, feed, agronomy, fuels, service stations

Key personnel at St. Leo:

• Ted Behring, general manager
• Matthew Vajnar, merchandiser
• Randy Packard, location coordinator
• Madeline Wegerer, scale operator

St. Leo Supplier List

• Aeration fans • Tiernan Aeration
• Augers • Industrial Maintenance Inc.
• Bearing sensors • 4B Components Ltd.
• Bucket elevator • Schlagel Inc.
• Catwalk • Industrial Maintenance Inc.
• Concrete tank builder • McPherson Concrete Storage Systems
• Contractor • Industrial Maintenance Inc.
• Conveyors • Schlagel Inc.
• Distributor • Schlagel Inc.
• Dockage tester • Mid-Continent Industries, Inc.
• Electrical contractor/control system Linnebur Electric
• Elevator buckets • Tapco, Inc.
• Grain temperature system • Rolfes@Boone
• Leg belting • Continental, Applied Power Products
• Millwright • Industrial Maintenance Inc.
• Moisture meter • DICKEY-john
• Motion sensors • 4B Components Ltd.
• Motors • Toshiba
• Speed reducers • Dodge
• Truck probe • Gamet Mfg., Inc.
• Truck scale • Mettler Toledo
• Truck scale installation • Hammel Scale