SHEFFIELD ñ Iowa Drainage Inc. will soon have a new office and attached shop. Construction has been underway since February at the northeast corner of Highway 65 and 250th St. By Joe Buttweiler.|
SHEFFIELD ñ Iowa Drainage Inc. will soon have a new office and attached shop.
Construction has been underway since February at the northeast corner of Highway 65 and 250th St.
Owner Jim Blood said the office will be closer to the existing main shop, which is to the east. He said he was “just wanting to upgrade” the office.
The office will house him and Tracy Shreckengost, who is office manager of the company.
The new shop will be used for storage and will have a hoist for working on company vehicles, Blood said. He said he hopes to be able to move in in June. The current office is at 703 Gilman St., just north of Casey’s General Store.
Blood founded the company in 1972 when he bought it from a guy who was retiring. Blood said he didn’t know much about the business. But he must have figured it out pretty well. He said the company has since installed enough tile to circle the planet ñ which is about 24,900 miles.
The company also installs and/or reshapes waterways such as ponds. It also installs terraces and does building demolition, and hauls sand, rock and black dirt.
But most of the business is still installation of drainage tile, Blood said. Due to the high prices for corn and soybeans and the advantages of having well-tiled fields, a lot of farmers have been installing more tile, he said.
“As soon as the farmer gets off his tiled ground, the yield drops off dramatically,” he said. There can be a 30- to 40-bushel-an-acre difference in yield for corn, he said, between tiled and non-tiled ground.
“There are a lot of farms that have random tiling or with big mains that have never been improved. With corn prices the way they’ve been, it’s kind of a no-brainer to get fields tiled well for optimum yield,” Blood said.
He said he doesn’t expect the building project will add to the number of employees. Currently there are 18, he said.|
