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Pipestone Grain Company will be celebrating 100 years of serving the community in August. Pictured are (back row, l-r) Mitchell and Brady Bobendrier and Lisa Nobel, (front row l-r) Shelly, Tom, Jan and Chuck Bobendrier.
Pipestone Grain Company, located at 318 North Hiawatha, will be celebrating 100 years of serving the community on Aug. 15. The celebration will take place on August 6, and community members are welcome to attend a barbecue at the business from 11 a.m. – 1 p.m.
According to a business directory database compiled by Lorraine Draper for the Pipestone County Museum, the property was originally bought by M.O. Peterson, and was known as the Tobias elevator, while being occupied by Scott-Logan Milling. The business took on the name Pipestone Grain Company in July of 1930, and was owned by I.L. Tobias & Son. The company remained in the hands of the Tobias family up until it was purchased on a contract for deed by Chuck and Jan Bobendrier, who bought it from Lloyd and Helen Tobias. In about 2000. Chuck and Jan’s son, Tom Bobendrier, and Tom’s wife, Shelly, began to transition into owning and managing the business.
Chuck, who was raised near Elk River, Minn., married Jan in 1968, who grew up near Staples, Minn. Both had grown up on dairy farms, so the agricultural industry was a familiar occupation for them. In 1975, the couple moved to Pipestone and in December of that year, they purchased the business. Prior to that, they had lived in Albert Lea, and Chuck was a lamb buyer for Wilson Packing Company.
“He had a college buddy that was selling Purina Feeds for dealers and stumbled into here,” Jan said. “He (the owner at the time) said ‘I’m not looking to expand, I’m looking to sell.’ These guys had just been in the cities with a buddy and they got the impression that he (Chuck) would be willing to uproot if the opportunity came along.”
A photo from a December 1975 edition of the Pipestone County Star that accompanied a news story about Chuck and Jan Bobendrier purchasing Pipestone Grain Company.
Jan, who was a registered nurse, worked at the hospital part-time while managing the books for the business and raising their seven children: Amy, Tom, Sarah, Dave, Laura, Pam and Deb. Eventually, Jan realized nursing wasn’t going to fit into their lives so she dedicated her time to maintaining the books for their investment. As a young couple just starting out, Chuck and Jan quickly realized that running the business was a big endeavor that would teach them many lessons over the years.
“If we would have had a clue for what it really entailed, we would never of had the guts to do it,” Chuck said. “It was sink or swim.”
“My opinion was, ‘what the heck we’re young,’” Jan said. “We both are college educated. If this doesn’t work, I’m a nurse, I can work anywhere.”
The move they made to buy the business indeed worked out, but not without presenting challenges to the Bobendriers.
“We sold fertilizer and chemicals and a lot of seed,” Chuck said. “I had never seen a flax field in my life before and I had a warehouse full of flax seed that had to be sold within about three months. Chemicals and fertilizers I knew nothing about as far as the technical side of it. Feed I had a little more background in.”
The pair relied on the men who had been working at the site previously to show them the ropes and how to operate the equipment they had.
In 1976, Chuck and Jan faced another challenge, Mother Nature.
“1976 was the driest year in the history of the county,” Chuck said. “The county average yield on corn was 18 bushels. So we had to ship in corn so we could keep making feed for the rest of the year. We had a banker that was willing to stand behind us.”
Pipestone Grain Company after a fire at the elevator in 1988.
A fire at the elevator in 1988, only 18 days after they had made their final payment on the contract for deed for the mill, brought heartache to the Bobendriers, but there was a silver lining.
“A big turning point was the fire,” Chuck said. “We had been here 13 years. The fire was very painful for about six months to get rebuilt but it was a blessing in disguise because we were able to do so much more since we updated the facilities.”
Within two years after expanding their capabilities following the fire, their sales more than doubled, Chuck said.
Raising seven children and running a business was a challenge, the pair said. However, the family worked together to keep the operation going, making Pipestone Grain Company a second home for them.
“The kids went here to school and participated in things they liked,” Jan said. “I was here in town after they got in school. When they were little it was kind of between here and home, but, this kind of got to be a second home. It was, ‘when you’re done come down to the mill or call me and I’ll come and pick you up.’”
Although Chuck has long since retired, he still helps out Tom and Shelly in running the family business, driving a fertilizer tender truck, delivering fertilizer in the spring and fall. Lisa Nobel took over for Jan in 2011 managing the books.
The transition from Chuck to Tom wasn’t an immediate process. In the spring of 1996, Tom returned to the Pipestone area and was employed by his parents at the mill. Chuck and Jan’s hope, they said, was that Tom would figure out if it was a good fit for him and if he had a desire to take over. In 2000, the first half of the transition of ownership began, Chuck said. Now, they are well into the second half of the transition.
Tom and his wife, Shelly, have four sons, Brady and Mitchell, who both work at the mill, Sam, who lives in Harmony, Minn., and Nate, who is in his third year at Iowa State University.
What has kept the mill and family business going, the Bobendriers said, was a supportive community, family and friends.
“We had the right people in our life,” Jan said. “It’s a good community, our customers became our friends and I think that is still true today to a large degree.”
Having the chance to pass the business onto Tom and Shelly was a relief for Chuck and Jan.
“It was comforting because he knew the business,” Jan said. “To have thought about just trying to hire or sell to someone you don’t know, like they did to us, that’s a scary thought. We put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into this. So we were very happy that he was interested in wanting it and that we could figure out a way to make that work.”
When the Tom and Shelly first started to take over the business, Shelly worked for Pipestone Artificial Breeders. Around two or three years ago when that company closed its doors, she started helping at the elevator on a part-time basis. For Tom and Shelly, having the opportunity to take over the family business was a blessing.
“It felt like it was a good opportunity for me,” Tom said. “I would say we were fortunate for the opportunity and we had and continue to have pride in being able to continue the history of that and to have the opportunity to keep a business like this available in our community and to serve our customers. I feel proud to have a vital business like this available for the area because it seems like the longer we go, the further we deliver into areas and do business with customers in an area that continues to expand. There are a lot of communities that don’t have a local feed store.”
Their customers come from all directions, Tom said, because often Pipestone Grain Company is the closest place they can find things like a block of salt and a bag of feed that is made specifically for their livestock.
“It kind of strikes me that this kind of business doesn’t exist everywhere,” Tom said. “They may have used to exist, there were a lot of communities that had elevators that have all kind of different feeds available but I think we are now in the minority.”
Pipestone Grain Company is able to offer specialized feed for a variety of livestock, Jan said, which further helps them to offer more to their customers.
“One of the advantages of this business is that there is something for everything,” Jan said. “One of the things that Tom brought to this business that we didn’t do as well is feed rationing. Customers could come in the fall and test their corn, hay and crops, and say ‘okay this is what the feed value is in these things, can you balance my ration for my cattle?’ And he has computer programs that he can plug that in and say ‘this is what we got, this is what we need, and this is what our end result should be.’ He brought that with him.”
Looking forward to the future, Tom and Shelly hope to be able to pass on the family business to their children.
“I would be naive to tell you that I didn’t hope that it would continue another generation,” Tom said. “We have possibilities of that happening. For the health of our community, the potential of our family continuing this business would be awesome.”