A day at Greenlee Packing Co.

In my previous column, I wrote about Greenlee Packing Co., its history and some of the people who started it and who made it the great processing plant which it was.

I included the fact that it was truly family oriented, and amongst the best six years of my cattle business life, which it was. At the urging of a reader, in this column, I would like to continue with a day in the life of that plant and its people.

Obviously, a cattle buyer experienced a much different day than the beef luggers, or kill floor crew. To be honest, almost everyone had a different day than those folks. I should mention that over the past 50 years, technology has drastically changed those jobs, but make no mistake about it, many of the jobs in the modern-day processing plant are still darn hard work.

Several years ago, the recently retired plant manager at Smithfield Foods, who I have known since our stockyards and Morrell days, invited me to “tour” the plant, which we did. The technology, little of which I understood, was amazing. However, there were few jobs in the plant which did not require good old-fashioned manual labor.

During my years at Greenlee, although we purchased cattle direct from the feedlot, most of our cattle came out of the Sioux Falls Stockyards. On Friday, we always bought enough cattle direct in the country for “starters” on Monday morning, and because there were very few fed cattle at the yards on Thursday, if we planned a Saturday slaughter, most of that inventory also came from the country.

Most plants at that time purchased cattle from markets, primarily because at that time there were still eight terminal markets running full, which meant large numbers available for the plants. If memory serves, it was in the mid to late 60s that Mid Packing Co. in Luverne, Minnesota, began purchasing almost all their daily slaughter needs direct. Over the next several years, many plants in the tri-state region began doing the same. Times they were a-changing!

OK, let’s spend a day with a Greenlee cattle buyer, beginning about 5:30 a.m. at the West Truck Haven Café, which was a popular restaurant and truck stop, just east of the plant on 12th Street. As an aside, it is no wonder that sleeping much past 5 a.m. is troublesome for the old cattle guy. All my years with Olsen-Frankman, we normally gathered at the office no later than 5:30 a.m., and the 13 years during which I reported markets for the Stockyards, I arrived at my office in the basement of the Exchange Building about 5:30 a.m. to prepare for the day.

For several years, one of the real treats at the Truck Haven in those early hours was the fact that Orville would join us. In fact, usually, he was already eating his bacon when we arrived. He would tell us stories about most anything that came to mind, and we assumed that most were true. They were always funny.

Another aspect of our morning gathering was head buyer Hollis Williams, who ate in the same fashion that he did everything else: full steam ahead.

One morning, another of our crew, Garretson native Gordie Pederson, quietly timed Hollis from start to finish as he devoured his daily two scrambled and toast. 53 seconds! We must not have known about the Guiness Book of Records, or the best buyer in the country would have been there.

I should mention that Gordie was also a top-notch buyer, whom we lost way too early to cancer. Loved those guys.

From the café we went to the plant, where we checked the cattle that had arrived that night. About 7:30 a.m., we headed for the Stockyards, where we walked the alleys to take inventory of which firm had what. At 8:30, the trading officially began.

I mentioned that most plants were represented, which was evident when just prior to the market opening, there might be five or six buyers pulling pills to see who was first, second or third to walk with the salesman and bid.

Following trading, we would gather at the Café, put our buy together and eat a bale-size sweet roll with coffee like grandma made. Following that, a couple of us would water the Greenlee cattle in the holding pens, make out the necessary paper work to allow the cattle to be loaded and head back to the plant.

One advantage of being at the plant each day was the opportunity to don a cooler coat and hard hat and wander through the cooler, observing the cattle you had bought hanging on the rail. A great learning opportunity, to say the least.

From there it was off to the country to visit customers and potential customers, bid on and hopefully buy a few cattle, and get invited in for a piece of pie.

Although it was normally after noon when we headed out, it was not unusual to drive a couple hundred miles and make several stops. A few hundred miles was a piece of cake in a 3,000-pound automobile.

There may be another column involving how much the industry has changed the past half century – the problem being, who will I get to write it?

From the road it would appear we have the makings of a pretty good crop. Wish it were worth something. Be safe and thanks.