Max said he’s thinking about how equipment will change over time. Here, he works the controls for his 30-ton Mighty Mover, a machine built 40 years ago to move Harvestore silos during the 1980s farm credit crisis. I got about a million miles on me, but I’m still okay,” says Walter Grotte, 81, who runs Grotte’s Farm Service, of Finley, North Dakota. “Anything that’s 18 feet, we can usually drive under the wires,” Walter said. 2, in Petersburg, North Dakota, the Grottes moved a 20,000-bushel bin, with a 24-foot diameter. If we could do them, they’d want it this week.” “We get calls all of the time,” Walter said. The Grottes usually haul bins for roughly 50 miles.Ī crew of two can do the job, unless they’re on state highways and need flag cars on the front and the rear.
He and Max charge about 50 cents per bushel of capacity. “I’ve got about a million miles on me, but I still feel pretty good,” Walter said. “It’s better he’s out doing something, profitable.” “If I can’t get him out of the house to do something, he’d drive me crazy in there,” she said. Walter keeps on going, flanked by Max, who had been helping since he was a teenager.ĭonna said she thinks it's good that Walter keeps on going. You’re going to fall off and break your bones,” Donna said. “The kids said, ‘Mom, you shouldn’t be climbing on that ladder.
#BLUE SILO FARMS FULL#
In 1996, Walter and Donna handed off the farming to their oldest son, Barry (Max’s father) and worked full time on silo and tank moving.ĭonna helped line up jobs and physically helped until Walter “retired her” at age 77, he said. The Grottes’ work shifted more to conventional bin moving. In the 1990s, farmers turned to cheaper, faster, bunk storage. “She said she wanted it off their farm because the lien was against their land.”
We owe money on it yet.’ She said 'We’ve paid $1,000 a month for it, and we still owe $60,000,''” Grotte recalled. “She says, 'We had a dairy, and we quit the dairy. Grotte remembers a woman on a dairy farm calling. As the farm crisis unfolded, some silos were being erected in the year their owners lost their farms. “It was a lot of work, doing the ground work, the foundation,” Walter said.įarmers who bought Harvestores often emblazoned them with the year and the family name, and the flag of the United States. The Grottes moved about 10 Harvestores through the 1990s, before the boys left home. So, they rented the machine and he removed the big dryer. “He just said, ‘It’s strong enough.’ I said, ‘You get a trucker to bring it to Chicago, I’ll follow, and we’ll do it,’” Walter recalled. The company engineer flew into Fargo, drove to Finley, and looked at the machine without getting out of his rented car. “I says, ‘Come up and look at it,’” Walter said. In the mid-1980s, a fellow from Hoopeston, Illinois, called, saying they had a $2 million Zimmerman Tower Dryer, 100 feet tall, and wanted to know if the Mighty Mover was strong enough to move it. A reporter from The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead helped spread the word, which reached customers in Iowa and Illinois.Īsked what the maximum capacity of the Mighty Mover might be, Walter laughs. The Mighty Mover got its public debut to great fanfare and interest at the Big Iron farm show at the Red River Valley Fairgrounds in West Fargo, North Dakota, in 1984. (From left: Kelly, Brenda, Barry, Walter, Donna, Glenn, Gail, Corey.) Photo taken in 2015 at Grand Forks, North Dakota. Walter and Donna Grotte (center-right) are raised four sons and two daughters on a farm they built from a bare pasture in the early 1960s, and kept going by moving hay stacks, then grain bins and Harvestore silos in the 1980s with their Mighty Mover invention. His solo business enterprise initially was moving hay stacks, using the stack movers that had just come into vogue.
Initially, the couple farmed with his two older brothers, Jennings and Jon. In 1959, at age 19, he married Donna Trost, a farm girl from Hope, North Dakota, whom he’d met roller-skating. In Fargo, North Dakota, and at Interstate Business College in Fargo for bookkeeping. “I never graduated from high school, but I did a lot of welding and things around the shop.” Older siblings taught him a lot.Īt first, Walter helped his parents on the farm. “I thought it was more fun to stay home and weld and fix things and make money,” he explained. ”Ever heard of Pickert Tech?” Pickert was a rural township school about seven miles southeast of Finley in eastern North Dakota. “I went through ‘Pickert Tech,’ “ he said, with a grin. Walter was the youngest among eight brothers and sisters.
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