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1920s-1960s Farm and Elevator Photos from Saskatchewan
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Jim in Sask
Posted 1/9/2019 10:09 (#7231890 - in reply to #7231643)
Subject: RE: A Little History of One of the Pictures


Rusty6 - 1/9/2019 06:32

grainbinder - 1/9/2019 06:21 Great pictures of the construction, Rusty! I am in disbelief of the short window that these structures were used, and then torn down like yesterdays garbage. And as you mentioned previously, the farmer ends up paying the bill for this destruction via the railroads ripping up the tracks, and the grain companies claiming inefficiencies, therefore, rendering them useless. So, so sad! I had learned in my research of wooden elevators that they were still building them well into the 80's. I believe the last one in Alberta was built in 1988. What the hell happened in that short time span??

Its plain to see that even the big grain companies could not see the future. That U.G.G. annex built in 76 was in use til closure about 2000 and then sold to a farmer who had it moved. I have a video of some of that on youtube as well. 
The Pool elevator being built in my photo from 84 was the best state of the art at the time and sad it only saw about 15 years use before demolition. 



The end of the wooden elevators came with the killing of the "Crow" freight rates on grain in 1996. The cost per bushel of hauling a few cars out of a bunch of wooden elevators on light-steel branch lines was much higher than the cost per bushel of unit trains out of the big concrete elevators on main lines. Of course all this efficiency gained by the elevator companies and the railways meant farmers were hauling a lot farther and needing semis instead of three-ton trucks. It costs me as much per bushel now to hire a semi to haul my grain to an elevator 50 miles away as the cost per bushel I was charged to get my grain from the small local wooden elevator out to Thunder Bay or Vancouver. Plus the railways now take another buck a bushel. Doesn't matter if it's right or wrong, that's just the way it is.
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