McGregor Company expands to new location

After five years of business on Highway 261 The McGregor Company is preparing to move.

The company purchased a large plot of land along Freese Road to expand its business in the area and now the first office building is nearing completion. The shop area is almost complete but the office spaces need to be finished before the company can begin to move.

After the spaces are finished it will take a few months for the company to move to its new location said Jim Weber, the service manager at the Ritzville location.

It will be a retail facility similar to the location on Highway 261 with office and shop spaces. However, the amount of shop space has been increased.

In addition to the shop the site has office spaces for the staff, a washroom and a conference room with a kitchen.

“We did a lot of changing around and stuff to make it usable as much as possible,” Darrin Fleming, the Business Unit Manager for the Columbia Plateau Team, said

Currently the company is waiting on dry storage tanks that were ordered for the new location in the spring. These tanks will provide approximately 100 tons of dry fertilizer storage, which is new for the Ritzville branch.

In the past dry fertilizer would have to be transported from Warden or Quincy. The new storage tanks are expected in October, but Weber anticipates production will resume at least by spring.

The new location will also allow the company to handle anhydrous ammonia for the first time as well as handling all of the liquid fertilizers the Ritzville location currently handle.

The new containment area is also large enough to allow for further addition liquid fertilizers including liquid urea if there is demand for it.

Each containment area has been treated so the chemicals cannot seep through the concrete and into the ground as well. The sealant had to be applied at night during the summer to prevent the compound from bubbling up because of the heat.

“We were working at night from eight to about 3 o’clock in the morning,” Fleming said.

With such a large parcel of land Weber expects there to be continued expansion with more stage facilities and tanks.

Originally the company planned to have a rail spur to transport fertilizers to the facility but the plan has been postponed.

The company also had many challenges with water. The new location will have to share well rights with the Snider Trucking Company. Along with the complications of sharing a well, the company had to address fire protection for location.

The well at the location could not provide enough water to adequately protect the location, and drilling another well was not an option as the bedrock is only a few feet from the surface.

One plan was to have a 250,000-gallon water tank specifically to store water for fire protection.

The new location not only gives the company the opportunity to expand, but also helps improve access. The current location is plagued by congestion being so close to Love’s Truck Stop.

“Right now it’s almost impossible to get out of our lot up there because of all the trucks and everything going into Love’s right there off the freeway,” Fleming said. “It’s crazy trying to get out of there.”

Though the increased traffic into Ritzville is good, Fleming said cars pull into the McGregor parking lot because drivers think they are at Love’s. He says they drive around trying to find a way out until they get back onto Highway 261.

Both Fleming and Weber are hopeful the company can begin to relocate to its new office locations within the next couple of months.