Destruction of a Saskatchewan Wheat Pool elevator at Mantario, Sask., has irked one farmer who had plans for the waste lumber.
Terry Dahl said he worked out a deal with a pool representative in Kindersley, Sask., to salvage lumber from the elevator, but ended up with a pile of “match sticks” when the demolition contractor delivered some of the cribbing.
“It was just destroyed lumber, it was no good, it was useless,” said Dahl. “They just totally destroyed a two and a half year dream of mine.”
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Don Abraham, Sask Pool regional operations manager in Kindersley, said he tried to accommodate Dahl, but in the end he couldn’t give the farmer what he wanted.
“Terry expected the whole thing to be hauled out in one big chunk and it just doesn’t happen that way,” said Abraham.
Dahl planned to use the lumber to build a two-storey, 3,200-square-foot house on his farm near Mantario, and then sell the leftover material to pay for plumbing and wiring.
In anticipation of building his dream home, Dahl had planted some trees and built a dugout to irrigate the site. His design plans included a 40 by 40 foot living room with open beams and rough wood walls on which the part-time taxidermist was going to hang his trophy heads.
“It would have been beautiful,” said Dahl, but he found the lumber delivered by the contractor to be unuseable.
Sized to fit
Abraham said his primary concern was that the elevator be properly and safely demolished. Once it was down, the demolition contractor tried to load large pieces into tandem trucks. In the process of loading the 20-foot trucks, the cribbing was broken into smaller pieces.
“We tried to break it into as many good chunks as possible, but it just didn’t work out,” said Abraham.
The verbal agreement between Dahl and Abraham was that the demolition contractor would do the salvage work and deliver the lumber to Dahl’s farm. The pool would give Dahl the lumber for free and he would have to work out a side deal with the contractor for delivery.
Dahl said he had no advance warning when the elevator came down and didn’t have time to organize flatbed trucks for hauling. He was in the hospital at Leader, Sask., at the time, and his father was on the farm when the contractor showed up with dumptrucks full of “kindling.”
After four or five truckloads, Dahl’s father told the contractor to stop hauling. The remaining lumber was burned on site in Mantario.
Abraham is disappointed with the way the whole thing panned out. He blames the unfortunate situation in part on a lack of communication from both sides.
“I thought I was trying to help and in the long run it ended up causing more hard feelings than it’s worth,” he said.
Abraham said Dahl can submit a tender to buy other elevators in the area that are slated for demolition, which might give him another chance at the lumber needed for his project.
But Dahl said the Mantario elevator was perfect. It was only one kilometre from his home and it was relatively new, built in the 1960s. Its spruce lumber was in good shape and would have been easy to work with, he said, in contrast to some older elevators made of fir and suffering from wood rot.
