Facility Feature
Revillo Farmers Elevator Adds Steel Tank As Producers Plant More High-Yield Crops

Over the last decade, farmers in northeast South Dakota increasingly have been planting high-yielding crops like corn, boosting the volume of grain local elevators must deal with year after year. And that has created an ongoing challenge for the elevators.

“We just needed more storage space,” says Byron Ruhr, general manager at Revillo Farmers Elevator Co., a single-location cooperative in Revillo, SD (605-623-4411).

Ruhr has been with Revillo Farmers since 2001 after working at the former Northeast Rail Terminal in nearby Watertown, SD.

“We’ve done some bagging to increase our storage capacity,” he says. “Some years, we’s had to pile grain on the ground using emergency storage.”

Getting that emptied out isn’t always easy. The Revillo elevator is strictly a truck house running along the length of Second Street in town, so grain leaves at roughly 1,000 bushels at a time, generally the capacity of a semi truck. Currently, the cooperative ships corn to area ethanol plants, wheat to mills in the Twin Cities area, and soybeans to AGP’s processing plant in Dawson, MN.

J&D Construction Heads Up Storage Project

In 2020, the Revillo Farmers board of directors gave the go-ahead for a roughly $2 million project to add a 509,000-bushel Behlen corrugated steel tank at the southeast corner of the cooperative’s property. The addition brings total storage capacity at Revillo 2.6 million bushels.

As general contractor and millwright on the project, the coop selected J&D Construction, Inc., Montevideo, MN (800-279-6447).

“We’ve been doing business with them for many years,” says Ruhr. “They’re local to this area, their bids are competitive, they do a good job, and they stand by their work.”

Work on the new tank began at the end of May 2020, and the tank was set to receive grain by mid-September.

Behlen Steel Tank Fed by AGI Hi Roller Enclosed Belt Conveyor

Behlen builds its storage tanks to metric dimensions, but roughly translated, the tank at Revillo stands 91 feet in diameter, 82 feet tall at the eave, and 107 feet tall at the peak.

The tank is equipped with a flat concrete floor, outside stiffeners, a Bin Gator paddle-type bin sweep from Prairie Land Millwright Inc., and an 18-cable grain temperature monitoring system from Tri-States Grain Conditioning, Inc. There are no sidedraw spouts.

A set of four 40-hp AGI Airlanco centrifugal fans provide 1/7 cfm per bushel of aeration through in-floor ducting, giving the tank the flexibility to handle both small and coarse grains.

Grain reaches the tank via an overhead 40,000-bph AGI Hi Roller enclosed belt conveyor running out from existing grain handling equipment.

The tank empties onto a 10,000-bph Schlagel drag conveyor in an above-ground tunnel, which carries grain back to existing equipment.

Currently, the tank is storing soybeans. Ruhr says he is pleased with its performance so far.

Ed Zdrojewski editor

- From the March/April 2021 Grain Journal

Revillo Farmers Elevator Co., Revillo, SD • 605-623-4411

• Founded: 1938
• Storage capacity: 2.6 million bushels at one location
• Annual volume: 4 million bushels
• Annual sales: $35 million
• Number of members: 300
• Number of employees: 20
• Crops handled: Corn, soybeans, hard red spring and hard red winter wheat, oats, rye
• Services: Grain handling and merchandising, feed, agronomy, seed

Key personnel:

• Byron Ruhr, general manager
• Chris Schafer, operations manager
• Kevin Stricherz, agronomy manager
• Ted Holscher, seed manager
• Vicki Leonard, office manager

Revillo Supplier List

• Aeration fans • AGI Airlanco
• Bin sweep • Prairie Land Millwright Inc.
• Bucket elevator • Schlagel Inc.
• Contractor • J&D Construction, Inc.
• Conveyor (belt) • AGI Hi Roller
• Conveyor (drag) • Schlagel Inc.
• Electric contractor • Lane’s Electric
• Grain temperature system • Tri-States Grain Conditioning, Inc.
• Millwright • J&D Construction Inc.
• Motors • Toshiba International
• Speed reducers • Dodge
• Steel storage • Behlen Mfg. Co.
• Steel tank erection • Peiker Construction
• Tower support system • Custom Fabricating Co.