It happens every once in a while where a grain elevator was built out beyond the edge of town to make it easy for grain trucks to get in and out. Over the years, the town grows, and the elevator becomes surrounded by residential areas.
In this case, the town was a relatively big one – Billings, MT – and the elevator was owned by Gavilon Grain, LLC.
“The elevator in Billings had outlived its life expectancy,” says Montana area manager Terry Bartelt, a 38-year grain industry veteran. “After the town swallowed up the elevator, it became hard to get trucks in and out of here.
“The regional guys in Omaha came out to look for a new site for a rail terminal. They were looking for level ground and rail access to the BNSF (Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway).”
What they found was a site 12 miles to the northeast of the Billings city limit near the town of Huntley, MT, population 400.
The new terminal includes an 800,000-bushel slipform concrete elevator, a 1.5-million-bushel temporary storage bunker, and a 8,200-foot loop track.
Bartelt notes that Gavilon went with a concrete structure for its longevity. “The elevator will still be standing 100 years from now, whereas steel might not,” he says.
He added that for now, the Huntley facility will be handling only hard red winter and hard red spring wheat. Slipform construction allows for the inclusion of multiple tanks in various shapes and sizes, which is well-suited to the variety of separations required for wheat.
Managers at the Gavilon home office in Omaha took bids and awarded a contract for the project to Vigen Construction, East Grand Forks, MN (218-773-1159). Bartelt notes that Vigen has done several other successful projects for Gavilon.
Groundbreaking on the project took place in May 2020, and the facility began taking grain with the wheat harvest in July 2021. No trains had been loaded as of November 2021.
Upright and Temporary Storage
The slipform structure Vigen built consists of four large 180,000-bushel tanks, four interstices, and a section to house the bulk weigh loadout scale.
The four big tanks have flat floors and stand 46 feet in diameter and 140 feet tall. There are no grain temperature monitoring systems, but all of the large tanks and interstices have level monitoring. Depending on which tank, level monitoring products from BinMaster, 4B Components Ltd., and Siemens are used.
Each of the large tanks has a pair of AGI Airlanco 50-hp centrifugal fans generating roughly 1/13 cfm per bushel of aeration, with the assistance of two 2-hp roof exhausters.
In addition to upright storage, the complex includes an oval-shaped 1.5-million-bushel temporary storage pile 720 feet long by 150 feet wide. The unit has an asphalt floor and four-foot-tall perforated steel walls with 12 AGI Airlanco 10-hp axial fans generating 1/9 cfm per bushel of aeration, to hold in place the JMI Covers tarp.
The pile is filled with a LeMar 15,000-bph transport conveyor. To empty the pile, front-end loaders push grain to a sump at the west end, where a 38,000-bph AGI Hi Roller enclosed belt conveyor carries it back to the main house.
Grain Movement
Incoming trucks go first to a probe station equipped with a Gamet Apollo truck probe. While the load is sampled, the driver checks in with an RFID card read by the facility’s oneWeigh automation system. The driver then proceeds to a 120-foot Rice Lake pitless inbound-outbound truck scale.
A digital display board directs the driver to one of two 1,000-bushel mechanical receiving pits in an enclosed building. Drivers return to the scale for tare weights and scale tickets.
Each pit feeds a Warrior 38,000-bph receiving drag conveyor, which empties into a Warrior 38,000-bph receiving leg, 207-foot discharge height, equipped with two rows of Tapco 18x8 CC-HD buckets mounted on a 40-inch All-State belt. The legs are enclosed in a Vigen-fabricated support tower with a switchback staircase.
Each leg feeds grain into its own Schlagel nine-duct Syncroset distributor outfitted with ceramic liner on the high-wear surfaces. A Cimbria Bratney 168 Mega Cleaner rated at 10,000 bph is installed on the work floor and is fed by two 10,500-bushel overhead bins and side taps from two of the 180,000-bushel silos. The clean grain is discharged into either of the two 38,000-bph Warrior receiving legs. Screenings are discharged into a 3,000-bph Warrior screenings leg, which discharges into an overhead bin for truck loadout.
The distributors send grain out to storage via two Warrior 38,000-bph drag conveyors.
Tanks in the slipform structure have no sidedraws. Instead, they empty onto a set of AGI Hi Roller enclosed belts in a below-ground tunnel. These run back to the receiving legs, which double as loadout legs.
Railcar loading is done with oneWeigh software through a 80,000-bph Vigen-fabricated bulkweigher inside the slip. During loading operations, workers atop railcars are protected by a Tritech Fall Protection trolley-type system running the length of six covered hopper cars.
Bartelt says on paper a 116-car train should be loaded in about six hours.
Ed Zdrojewski, editor
Gavilon Grain
Omaha, NE • 402-889-4000
Founded: 2008
Storage capacity: 350 million bushels at 105 locations
Number of employees: 2,000
Crops handled: Corn, soybeans, wheat, sorghum, specialty grains
Services: Grain origination, storage, and handling; transportation and logistics; marketing and distribution; risk management
Key personnel at Huntley:
- Terry Bartelt, Montana area manager
- Tim Cecrle, superintendent
- Wanda Richardson, coordinator
- Josh Perkins, merchandiser
Huntley Supplier List
Aeration fans • AGI Airlanco
Bearing sensors • AGI SURETRACK CMC
Bin sweeps • Prairie Land Millwright, Inc.
Bucket elevators • Warrior Mfg., LLC
Bulk weigh scale • Vigen Construction Inc.; Meier Sales and Engineering/Prairie Scales
Catwalk • Vigen Construction Inc.
Cleaner • Cimbria Bratney
Concrete tank builder • Vigen Construction Inc.
Contractor • Vigen Construction Inc.
Control system • Advanced Electric
Conveyors (belt) • AGI Hi Roller
Conveyors (drag) • Warrior Mfg., LLC
Conveyor belting • Fenner Dunlop
Distributors • Schlagel Inc.
Dust collection system • Schenck Process
Electrical contractor • Advanced Electric
Elevator buckets • Tapco Inc.
Engineering (structural) • VAA, LLC
Engineering (civil) • Krech Ojard
Fall protection • Tritech Fall Protection Systems
Leg belting • All-State Belting, LLC
Level indicators • Siemens; BinMaster; 4B Components Ltd.
Magnets • Magnetic Products, Inc.
Manlift • Schumacher Elevator Co.
Millwright • Vigen Construction Inc.
Motion sensors • AGI SURETRACK CMC
Motors • WEG
Rail contractor • Northern Plains Rail
Roof system • Nijac Roofing
Sampler • GSI
Speed reducers • Nord Gear Corp.
Tower support system • Vigen Construction Inc.
Transport conveyor • LeMar Industries
Truck probe • Gamet Mfg., Inc.
Truck scale • Rice Lake Weighing Systems
