1970-1979:

• 1972 First semi is purchased

• 1978 Vic retired, and Walker bought a sprayer

• 1979 rail shipping ended and moved to trucks

The elevator depended almost entirely on rail to ship grain until the railroads closed down. Prior to that the only grain shipped by truck was soybeans. The branch that went through Walker and Rowley closed in 1972, and that is when they purchased their first semi. They shipped corncobs by rail for several years to a plant that made a chemical called furfural. One of the plants was in Cedar Rapids. For a couple of years they sent about twenty five cars a year of ground corn to Cargill. It was bagged in 100# bags and wheeled it into the cars. In reference to this, Norb later quipped, “Man, talk about work.” They ground it into one of the feed mixers and used the bagger on the mixer, weighed it on a little platform scale and piled five bags at a time on the hand truck. The job was to keep ahead of the grinder. Cargill became equipped to handle bulk cornmeal so they were able to auger it into the cars. The last railcar to be loaded out of FJ Krob and Company went out of Ely on November 15, 1979. Shipping was then done entirely with trucks.

The Third Generation, changing with the times… Vic’s son Larry began working with him in Rowley after spending three years in the army. He started the way each and every Krob starts in the business: At the bottom (or “pit rat” as Larry referred to himself). Cleaning leg pits (a most unpleasant task), cutting weeds, then driving trucks and scooping bins, working up to and experiencing all aspects of the elevator operation first-hand. In 1966, he moved down to Solon and became assistant manager to John until John’s retirement in 1978, whereupon he was named manager.

Robert “Mike” Krob, Norbert’s eldest son, worked at the elevator after school, on weekends, and summers. He remembered spending a lot of time delivering coal. He later said, “It seems the pickup deliveries were always saved for me…coal, feed, and tile.” He graduated from Loras College in 1968, was immediately drafted, and served in the army until his discharge in 1970. He returned to the elevator to work full-time.

Likewise, Norbert's younger son David had also worked in the same capacity as Larry and Mike. David graduated from Iowa State with a degree in Industrial Engineering, and served stateside and overseas in the army from 1968 until 1970. After returning from service in Vietnam, he worked for Caterpillar in Aurora, Illinois for four years. He returned to the Ely elevator in 1974 as a truck driver, sprayer operator, and “Just about anything that needed to be done.”

Vic retired in 1978.

Walker bought the first Big A floater sprayer in 1978.