Jim in Sask - 1/9/2019 08:09 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.