Got A Small Taste Of The Agricultural World.

Today might of been the most entertaining day I had on trucking. A dairy plant we service suffered a lengthy and costly breakdown. And because of the length of time that they were not able to produce product, they had to dump all their whey.

This resulted in us bringing our tankers to get loaded up and taking them to a farm for slop. I won’t bore with all the details but I brought two loads. One was back up to a concert pad and simply opening the top cover and the end cap and valve and letting gravity do its job.

Second wasn’t as easy as I had to pump it myself into a silo. Nobody was around so all I had was a low res picture of how the valves were supposed to go. So I had to take of the end cap off hook up an elbow, than those hose, and then flip a switch. All in all each load took about a half hour to unload. Something I hope to do again soon.

It's sad to see dairy products go to waste but I've seen it happen a couple of times. One time all milk produced by many dairies in the California Central Valley was being dumped when Knudsen went bankrupt.

Michael has hauled cheese from Hilmar Cheese Company a couple of times, they are located in the small town of Hilmar and it's the largest cheese plant in the world. It's owned by 10 dairymen who decided to vertically expand and was a huge success. I worked with the lender of some of the owners at one time and got invited to an meeting they held once to explain their expansion progress. Sorry, long way to explain my point...it happens. A figure that amazed me was that they explained that they were unable to simultaneously unload four raw milk tanker trucks in five minutes. Those drivers don't sit around long.

It's sad to see dairy products go to waste but I've seen it happen a couple of times. One time all milk produced by many dairies in the California Central Valley was being dumped when Knudsen went bankrupt.

Michael has hauled cheese from Hilmar Cheese Company a couple of times, they are located in the small town of Hilmar and it's the largest cheese plant in the world. It's owned by 10 dairymen who decided to vertically expand and was a huge success. I worked with the lender of some of the owners at one time and got invited to an meeting they held once to explain their expansion progress. Sorry, long way to explain my point...it happens. A figure that amazed me was that they explained that they were unable to simultaneously unload four raw milk tanker trucks in five minutes. Those drivers don't sit around long.

When Chobani first opened their largest yogurt plant in the world in Twin Falls Idaho, the whey was being trucked out to the desert and dumped in some holding ponds. Unfortunately, the holding ponds weren't that far from some residences. In the summertime, the whey gets pretty nasty smelling.... I know from making goat milk cheese and using the whey as fertilizer on my plants.

The people complained, and Chobani made other arrangements. I'm not sure what they're doing with the whey now. If they were smart, they would process it and sell it to health food stores or even grocery stores will take in whey products.

Laura

What a waste to see dairy products just dumped like this!

Yeah not much can be done about it. Strict guidelines have to be met for dairy consumption. They had a breakdown so this what they had to do. But again it’s not a complete waste. It’s mixed in with feed for the cows. You’d be surprised how many dairy products are returned from grocery stores. Those also go to the farms for slop.

What a waste to see dairy products just dumped like this!