Movement of L&D Ag

melanie piltingsuld

copy editor

After the tornado that devastated much of downtown Hartland in December 2021, L&D Ag Service moved into a new building at 602 Railroad Street in March of this year.

Matt Staloch of Staloch Construction will begin work on the new building in the summer of 2022.

During construction, L&D Ag was housed in the Albert Lea building rented from Gary Budak in New Richland. “We started moving a few weeks ago,” said Travis Routh, who bought the business from retired founder Larry Nelson in 2015.

The move was right as business surges into the new farming season. “Anytime, until the crops are planted, we are very busy.

The new building at the south end of town is more efficient and tidy than the tornado-damaged building at 408 Broadway Street in Hartland that had to be demolished. Not only that, but it will give the business room to expand by hiring more employees than his current 23 full-time employees if needed.

“We sell equipment for hauling fertilizer,” says Routh. “We sell sprayers for spraying crops. We sell fertilizer machines for applying fertilizer.” L&D Ag is well equipped for farmers to do just that. “We sell tanks, pumps and hoses so he can attach it to his existing corn planter and apply fertilizer while the crop is planting. A lot of it is components and parts and parts.”

Although L&D Ag’s core operations are within a 100-mile radius, L&D Ag operates in all corn-growing states within the United States and internationally. This shows that you don’t need internet sales to run an international business today.L&D Ag is an old fashioned and attractive product. They mostly handle business face-to-face or over the phone. They advertise in agricultural magazines across the country and their business is also spreading by word of mouth.

Regarding parts delays that have been a nationwide symptom of the Covid pandemic, Routh said the situation is always improving in terms of availability of goods. “It just takes time,” says Routh, and that problem has also decreased.

Routh and his business partner Matt Mithun didn’t have as much insurance as they had hoped for their old welding shop, but luckily all of their equipment survived the tornado. Done, now a new building is being built. And unlike the original location rented from Larry Nelson, L&D Ag owns the new location, although it is now a vacant lot.