Reprinted from Grain Journal July/August 2016 Issue
The Andersons, Inc., one of the most well-known grain companies in the eastern Corn Belt, dates back to 1947. That year, Harold and Margaret Anderson founded The Andersons Truck Terminal in the Toledo suburb of Maumee, OH as an operating partnership between the couple and their six children. Maumee remains the company’s headquarters to this day.
The family built a grain terminal with nine truck bays designed for fast turnaround for farmer deliveries. The operation also included rail transfer to shiploading facilities on the Maumee River, just a few miles upstream from Lake Erie.
When the St. Lawrence Seaway opened nearly a decade later, The Andersons’ location on Lake Erie put it in an excellent position to serve both North American and export markets. Early in the 1960s, the company opened the first deep-water grain loading facility on the U.S. side of the Great Lakes in Toledo, OH.
Also in the 1960s, the company opened a terminal elevator in Champaign, IL as the first elevator in the United States capable of loading 100-car unit trains, a capability that now is almost universal in the grain industry. The Andersons also built what was then the largest steel tank complex in North America that decade on Illinois Avenue in Maumee.
Acquisitions and Expansions
In the 1970s, the company built a grain elevator and cob mill in Delphi, IN, the first in a series of grain elevators built or acquired across Ohio, Michigan, and Indiana.
In 2003, The Andersons made a strategic investment in Lansing Trade Group, LLC, an independently-owned ag merchandising company. Together, the two companies acquired Thompsons Ltd. in 2013, a grain and food-grade bean handler with 11 facilities in southern Ontario and one in Minnesota.
Acquisitions have continued in recent years, adding locations in Iowa (which were divested in 2016), Nebraska, and Tennessee. The new rail terminal near Humboldt, TN is The Andersons’ sixth grain facility in that state.
