1930-1939:

• 1934 Vic, 2nd generation starts at Ely, a year later Norb joins Rowley & Bob joins Ely, and John Phillips joins Solon.

• 1936 the Rowley elevator was purchased, the first customer gifts were given (quart cream pitchers), a blizzard and coal

• "Modernization” came in the form of fertilizer, tile, a portable elevator and 2 Chevy trucks

By 1935 things had improved considerably, and so Frank purchased the Rowley elevator in the winter of 1936 for about $3000. His eldest son Vic had graduated high school in 1934 and was working with him in Ely. Vic and Frank had decided to once again try their hand at selling commercial fertilizer, running test plots to show the benefits of fertilizer use. The following spring Vic was sent up to Rowley to manage the new elevator. Frank’s twin sons, Norb and Bob, also worked at the elevator after school and on weekends. That summer Norb began working with Vic at Rowley, and Bob became Frank’s right-hand man in Ely. CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THE TWINS NORB AND BOB.

The Rowley elevator was quite run down, and it took the Krob men lot of work to get it back in good operating condition. “We poured so much concrete that you wouldn’t believe it,” said Bob. Norb helped Vic haul corn and coal. They made enough to pay for it in less than a year because Frank had canvassed the country buying cribs of corn. He bought so much that it took Norb and Vic all summer, a summer of heat wave and drought, to get it hauled. Norb made quite a reputation for himself handling a scoop shovel. The truck held 100 bushels of ear corn and it was a matter of pride for him to never stop shoveling until it was loaded, usually within an hour, four loads a day.

The ground around Rowley was very boggy, and raised poor quality corn. The use of tile to channel water became increasingly popular, and the elevator began bringing in railcars full of tile to sell. Thousands of miles of tile were laid, and the land around Rowley became some of the best for cropping.

The blizzard of 1936 was so severe that trains could not run, and coal supplies became so critical that customers were rationed to 500# each. That same year Frank bought a coal conveyor. It was powered by an electric motor and one end fit under the bottom of hopper bottom coal cars. It piled the coal in piles about ten feet high, which caused some problems in the winter because of snow and ice. Prior to this the coal could be stored in covered sheds. They hauled the one conveyor from elevator to elevator, and had to schedule the shipments so that they could unload at least five cars before moving to another elevator. The hopper cars held from fifty to seventy tons each depending on whether they were two hopper or four hopper cars. 40 to 50 railcars full of coal were handled each summer to fill customers’ coal bins, and another 40 to 50 were sold in the winter.

Gifts for Our Friends. . .In 1936, FJ Krob and Company began the tradition of giving away a Christmas gift every year. The first item they gave was a quart cream pitcher. The following years brought the Wattware bowls, and from then on the company has always tried to give away long-time, daily-use items such as kitchenware and tools. This tradition has continued to this day.

Man’s Best Friend. . .The Krobs had a family dog, a mongrel named Snoop, who would ride down the road on the hood of the company truck. If the driver took a corner too fast, Snoop would slide off, and the driver would have to stop and let him climb back on. On one occasion, they were making a delivery near Mt Vernon, and Snoop had run off. Snoop was nowhere to be found, so the driver headed back without him. By the following day, Snoop had made the 12-mile journey back to Ely on his own.

In 1937, Frank’s daughter Martha married John Phillips, whose parents owned the tavern across the street from the Ely elevator. John had been working with Frank at the elevator, and shortly thereafter, John was put in charge of the Solon location.

At this time farming was just beginning to step out of the era of horse-drawn cultivators and test the potentials of internal combustion and the gasoline traction engine. The tractor had become a small, mobile power source that had various uses around the farm, but many farmers still chose to rely on their horses. Willy Klinsky had one of the first tractors in the area. There were a few pre-1920s-era Fordsons, but most of the work was still done with horses. In 1938, a Horse-Sleeping Sickness hit, and many of the horses died. This spurred many farmers to purchase small two-row tractors.

Soon trucks had almost entirely replaced the horse-and-wagon as the means for delivering grain, and so a new truck dump was installed. Norb Krob later described this new contraption as "quite an affair." The system consisted of a cradle for the front wheels, attached to heavy chains that went up onto a large cylinder which crossed the driveway overhead. An arrangement of gears and chains enabled the men to turn a large crank and wind the chains around the drum. Needless to say, this system required considerable effort, but as far as everybody was concerned, it beat unloading the trucks by hand.

In 1938, Frank Krob along with a local carpenter named Albert Hruby, modernized the company’s ability to pick up grain on the farm by building the company’s first portable elevator. The pair took a farm elevator, cut it in half, and hinged it in the middle. They then put it on a set of wheels so that it could be pulled behind the truck. It did not trail well and so it had to be pulled rather slowly. It was powered by a small gasoline engine which was mounted one end, and there was a small drag that hooked up to feed the elevator. The drag was hauled on special two-foot extensions which were mounted on the backs of the truck beds. Norbert later said, “We thought we were really in the clover with a modern convenience like this.” By this time, the company had added two more 1930 Chevrolet 1½ ton trucks.