By MELANIE PILTINGSRUD
Copy Editor
After the tornado that devastated much of downtown Hartland in December 2021, L & D Ag Service moved into a brand new building at 602 Railroad Street earlier in March of this year.
Matt Staloch of Staloch Construction began work on the new building in the summer of 2022.
During construction, L & D Ag was housed in an Albert Lea building, rented from Gary Budach of New Richland. “We started moving a couple weeks ago,” said Travis Routh, who bought the business from its founder, Larry Nelson, who retired in 2015.
The move came right as business is ramping up for the new farming season. “This is our busiest time, before planting,” said Routh. “We're very busy until the crops are planted, whenever that may be. Once the crops are planted, then we don't run at quite such a hectic pace.”
The new building on the south edge of town is more efficient and better organized than the one that had to be demolished due to tornado damage at 408 Broadway St. in Hartland. Not only that, it gives the business room to expand and hire more that the current 23 full-time employees if they need to.
“We sell equipment to haul fertilizer,” said Routh. “We sell sprayers to spray your crops. We sell fertilizer applicators to apply fertilizer.” Sometimes farmers want to be able to spread fertilizer with their corn planter. L & D Ag has just the right equipment to allow a farmer to do that. “We sell tanks and pumps and hoses, so that he can install that on his existing corn planter, and apply fertilizer while he's planting his crop. A lot of it is components and parts and pieces.”
Although their core business lies within a hundred mile radius, L & D Ag does business in every corn-growing state in the US, as well as internationally. Which just goes to show you don't need internet sales to run an international business today. L & D Ag is delightfully old-school; they handle their business primarily either in-person or over the phone. They advertise in agricultural periodicals across the US, and their business spreads via word-of-mouth, too.
As for the parts delays that were a national symptom of the Covid pandemic, Routh said things are improving all the time in the acquisition of goods. There's no waiting list for farmers needing equipment. According to Routh, “It just takes longer,” and that problem is diminishing, too.
Although Routh and his business partner, Matt Mithun, didn't have as much insurance coverage on the old welding shop as they would have liked, fortunately all of the equipment came through unscathed by the tornado, and it now has a new building to reside in. And unlike the original location, which they rented from Larry Nelson, and is now an empty lot, L & D Ag owns the new location.