JEROME — Dairies and feedlots in the Magic Valley won’t be left waiting for dried distillers grains thanks to a new feed ingredient handling and storage facility in Jerome.

The Scoular Company has been bringing DDGs and other feed ingredients into the area for the last 10 years. But the process was complicated by the fact that rail cars had to be unloaded directly onto trucks. And that process was spread out over five different locations across the valley.

With the completion of a new 12,000-ton ingredient handling and storage facility, Scoular can consolidate unloading rail cars and loading trucks in one location — and shorten the paperwork trail.

The facility is one of the few in the nation with the ability to unload 75-car unit trains of DDGs in less than 48 hours as well as 100-car, corn shuttle trains in 15 hours.

“We feel like this is a market to focus on,” said Todd Strayer of The Scoular Company in Idaho. “We want to grow with the dairies. We’re in it for the long term.”

A 90-by-165-foot, railcar-unloading facility was constructed along the Eastern Idaho Railroad. About 16,000 feet of track was laid to reach the facility from the main rail line. Single cars of other commodities, such as soy hulls or canola, can be unloaded at the same time a unit train is being unloaded.

“This offers versatility for us,” Strayer said.

The 120-by-350-foot warehouse will store both DDGs and other feed ingredients. A separate cottonseed dock and storage facility is planned just east of the main warehouse. If the feed business grows as Scoular hopes it will, there is room to build two more similarly sized warehouses between the first one and the main office.

The first unit train of DDGs was unloaded in late May, and Strayer anticipates deliveries will be made about every three weeks during the summer. Once harvest begins and ethanol production picks up in the fall, he expects the unit trains to be on a two-week delivery schedule.

“Our goal is to have inventory on hand to provide service to our customers and support our business,” he said.

Company officials expect to handle at least 300,000 tons of feed ingredients annually through the facility, which was built within Jerome’s industrial park. The Omaha, Neb.-based company partnered with Northside Devel-opment Company of Jerome to construct the facility.

Scoular is the exclusive marketer and distributor for Dakota Gold Marketing, the largest marketer of distilled grains in the United States

While taking advantage of unit-train efficiencies is an obvious benefit of the new facility, Scott Jackson, who will manage operations at the new facility, said he sees another potential profit point. Loading and unloading semi-trucks during an Idaho wind storm can blow away a large portion of the profit margin. Jackson has watched drivers park semis so the wind will help unroll the tarp to cover the load.

After one windy spring day, Jackson joked the road ditches were orange with DGGs all the way to Shoshone.

The new warehouse contains a truck lane so trucks can be loaded inside the warehouse or loaded directly from a rail car. That will greatly reduce the estimated one-half percent loss that can occur when DDGs are loaded or unloaded outside in the wind.

Jackson, whose company Scott Jackson Trucking has been hauling feed ingredients to dairies and feedlots for more than 25 years, expects to load 40 to 50 semi-trucks a day from the facility with an average load time of 4 min. per truck.

In addition to delivering semi-loads of ingredients directly to dairies and feedlots, Scoular will also custom mix DDGs and other feed ingredients for customers from the Treasure Valley in western Idaho to eastern Idaho and into northern Utah.

“We are trying to be proactive with the transportation side of the business,” Strayer said. “This will allow us to provide our customers with a more consistent and reliable supply of ingredients.”