Even though farm lands in Colorado are shrinking at an alarming rate, local agricultural machinery manufacturers have created successful businesses by filling niche markets.
Each year, thousands of acres of farm land in Colorado and other states are being eaten up by commercial, industrial and housing developments. Many cattle and crop growers have sold their farms and ranches to huge commercial agricultural businesses. Farm — equipment manufacturers have had to think smart to keep up with the rapid changes in the market.
“The machines used to dig two rows of potatoes – now they want to dig six rows at a time,´ said Bob Benter, general manager for Noffsinger Manufacturing Co. Inc. in Greeley. “So the machinery has gotten larger, and most of the machinery is driven by hydraulics.”
Noffsinger manufactures chains, sprockets and other parts for conveyer belts used in farm machinery for root crops such as beets, onions, carrots, sugar beets, potatoes, garlic and others.
Noffsinger also makes a sizing device used for sizing round-shaped fruits and vegetables. A conveyer moves the produce over a series of screens with round holes. The biggest items, such as large potatoes, stay on the top, and the smaller items fall through the holes to the next level, where the smaller items fall through again until the potatoes are sorted into large, medium, small and even smaller sizes. The sizing machines are used for oranges, onions, potatoes, apples and various other produce.
Noffsinger Manufacturing has been making equipment in Greeley since 1924. The company operates out of four buildings and has customers across the United States, including Idaho, Florida, California, Washington, Canada and Mexico. Only about 5 percent of the company’s business hails from Colorado.
“Business has gone up every year that I’ve been here,” Benter said.
Some agricultural machinery companies have developed around creative inventions. When Bud Harsh came home from the war in 1945 after suffering a loss of equilibrium from a diving accident, he had no intention of starting a company.
Harsh, who invented underwater welding, was rescuing some Navy divers who were trapped when an explosion left him with permanent inner-ear damage. He won the Navy Cross but lost his equilibrium and was unable to walk.
Harsh went to live with his brother, who owned a farm, and after watching how difficult it was for the workers to unload trucks filled with produce, equipment, materials or other items, he invented a hydraulic lift for the truck bed, and Harsh International Inc. was launched in Eaton in 1948.
Before Harsh died in 1961, he had also developed a mixer-type blender for feed.
“Bud used to get around the plant in a little motorized cart,´ said Bob Brown, president of Harsh International. Brown took over in 1986, when Harsh’s wife sold the company that she had continued to run for 25 years after Harsh’s death.
The company still makes hydraulic lifts for truck beds, as well as auger blenders. The company has grown to 105 employees, making more than 6,000 hoists and 300 mixers a year.
“We have gone from $7 million in sales in 1986 to $25 million in 1995, and we expect to do $30 million in 1996,” Brown said.
Harsh makes 19 different models of blenders, ranging in size from 200 cubic feet to 900 cubic feet. The blenders are used for mixing cattle feed, dairy feed, explosives, fertilizers, compost, agricultural chemicals, dog food and chicken feed.
The agricultural hoists for truck beds are used for trucks hauling refuse, corn, grain and feed. In England, they are used in trucks hauling rocks from quarries.
The company operates 11 sites in the United States, one in Mexico and two in the United Kingdom.
He said the company has been fortunate to be located near the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley, Colorado State University in Fort Collins and the University of Colorado in Boulder.
“We use a lot of interns, who bring new ideas to the company,” Brown said. “The engineering departments help us do testing and evaluation of new technology. We use people from aerospace to pharmaceuticals. Something you look for all the time is that the process has to be environmentally safe and recyclable. We use all water-based paint, and we had to get away from lead and fluorocarbons. Our hoist is 100 percent recyclable.”
Brown said one of the things that forces products to change is the way people use things.
“So we had to completely change the way we think about things,” he said. “More and more farms are large corporate farms. California has some farms that have 5,000 cows. Years ago, the herds were 50 head. More and more of the little guys are going out, so our equipment has had to evolve to serve the large corporate farms.”
Changing equipment designs to serve the agricultural community is a real challenge, because crop and livestock markets are cyclical.
Some years, there is a shortage or overabundance of grain, depending on the weather, and some years there are more livestock than others.
Currently, beef prices are low, because ranchers have allowed their herds to get large. Now they are culling the herds, but it will take awhile for the prices to catch up. One solution for equipment manufacturers is to customize.
David Hewitt, owner of Hewco Manufacturing Ltd. in LaPorte, makes trailers and truck beds for hauling small equipment, machinery and cars.
“Most of the work I do is custom production,” Hewitt said. “We make 10 or 20 truck beds a year for Chevy, Dodge or Ford and trailers for hauling.”
The business is doing well, and Hewitt is thinking of adding some people. He has a new product on the market, equine modulars, which are portable prefabricated steel-shelters for horses. The shelters range in size from 10 feet by 10 feet to 40 feet by 120 feet.
“This is something we stumbled onto a year and a half ago,” Hewitt said. “These are like little mini barns.”
There is a lot of innovation going on in designing new products for the agricultural industry. Dewey Marcy, owner since 1977 of Marcy Equipment in Greeley, patented a design on a round bailer-feeder, which will chop up round bails of hay for cattle feed. He made the feeders for several years, then sold the patent in 1971.
“I still have the rights to make the round bailer-feeders,” Marcy said, but adds that someone would have a hard time convincing him to make one.
That’s because he has a new invention, the Cody Hitch.
“Now we are making a hitch for goose-neck trailers that goes in a flat bed,” he said. “We install it under the bed. Then the ball comes up through the bed. I came up with this two or three years ago, but the concept is not new.”
What is new is that although the steel hitch is permanent, the ball can be removed, and the truck bed can be used as a regular bed without the hitch interfering. The hitch costs about $200 and is patented.
About a year and a half ago, a new company was developed around the hitch called Quick Hitch Inc. The company works at a site on Marcy’s 40-acre farm, and he has a few temporary workers. They have sold 400 or 500 of the hitches, and Marcy said he hopes to sell about 1,000 this year.