The call came early on a cold February morning.
Eric picked up the phone and learned that his office building was on fire.
Eric, who is the general manager at Farmers Grain in Roseville, IL, watched the flames destroy the building that was constructed in the 1900s.
The grain elevators survived, but suddenly Eric needed an office building, especially since harvest was less than eight months away.
“We wanted a good, solid building we could get put up fast,” Eric said. “We knew we needed to get the ball moving right away.”
Just hours after the fire occurred, a Morton Buildings sales consultant heard about the fire and showed up at the temporary location that Farmers Grain had set up.
“That really said a lot about the company,” Eric said. “They were there right then. It made a big difference.”
“He gave us his business card and told us when we got settled in and the time was right that he’d love to visit with us. That day we met with him and a couple of days later we called the Morton rep and started setting up the new office.”
Farmers Grain wanted their new office building to have everything under one roof. In the building that burned down, the grain they were selling was in a separate building across the street.
Now they have their office building attached to their storage area.
“We can do a ticket for them and we can walk out and get the products they need,” Eric said.
The new facility also includes spacious offices as well as an employee lounge and boardroom, but the most critical part was constructing a workflow for the grain scale.
“We had to get the location of the scale to fit with the size of the office and we had to get the right sized windows, which is an extra large window out front so we can see the truck coming through,” Eric said.
The first harvest in Farmers Grain’s new Morton was a huge success partly because of the traffic flow around the office.
“We can see the trucks coming in so we can prepare ahead of time, get that truck entered into the computer,” Eric said. “They can pull on the scale, we can see them leaving and we can see traffic coming back with a lot better visibility than we used to have.”
“We’re more efficient and the customers don’t have to wait as long. That’s very important.”
The fire that destroyed Farmers Grain’s old office building displaced them, but they quickly found their new home with Morton Buildings.
“The frame was basically done in two weeks and we were very amazed by that,” Eric said. “When Morton did it, we knew it was going to be done right away.”
