McCoy Grain Terminal Open Soon

McCoy Grain Terminal LLC outside of Rosalia is nearly complete. This is a joint venture of two Palouse cooperatives -- Pacific Northwest Farmer’s Cooperative and Cooperative Agricultural Producers. The terminal will include a 100-car shuttle loading facility, access to three barge loading facilities, and nearly three dozen country elevator origination points handling the production from the combined 1,500 grower-members of the two cooperatives.

Palouse grain grower Chad Denny explains the importance of the transportation system keeping up with other aspects of agriculture.

Denny: “It is pretty representative of what we are doing on the farm as far as production. When I learned to drive it was in a ’51 Chevy truck and it held 150 bushels. Today, we are hauling 1100 to 1200 bushels on our semi’s. We need a facility like this to accommodate what we’re doing. Our yields are not going down, we are producing more and the world population is getting bigger -- it’s a very necessary thing. The public and private relationship between the rail and this facility is huge.”

Bud Riedner is McCoy Grain Terminal, LLC’s manager. He shares the timing of their opening.

Riedner: “Currently we are shooting for hopefully dumping grain from our two owners in mid-August but probably not shipping any shuttles til late August -- maybe September.”

Riedner shares the difference this new state-of-art facility will have on the area’s wheat growers.

Riedner: “Having a shuttle loading facility like this, doesn’t replace moving grain to the river but what it does is enhancing and opens up the marketplace for all of the farmers in the Palouse.”