(intense upbeat music) - Welcome to A Shot of AG.

My name is Rob Sharkey, I'm your host.

Hey, do you get through life, and sometimes maybe we need to pivot?

We need to find something else?

Well, today we're gonna talk with a very unique family that did just that.

We're gonna talk with Loren and his son, Luke Van Wyk.

How you guys doing?

- We're good.

- Good.

- Yeah.

Now you're from Iowa?

- Yup.

- Yup.

- God's country.

- So, have I been speaking too fast?

- Careful.

(Loren and Rob laughing) - Okay, Rob- - Careful.

- Let's get this off to a good start here.

- All right, what part of Iowa?

- Pella, Iowa.

So, 40 miles southeast of Des Moines.

- Okay.

They make like, windows there?

- Yeah, we have Pella Windows there, Vermeer Manufacturing there.

It's a really, it's a really cool little community.

- Why did that get so industrial?

- Just a lot of very industrious Dutch immigrants that came in and...

So, it's one of the most dense manufacturing counties in the whole state.

- Yeah, I would believe it.

- Yeah.

Okay, Luke.

You are the son.

Number one son?

The oldest?

- Yeah, the crash test dummy of the family.

- Yeah, Loren?

(Rob laughs) Nice.

You've got two sons here, also met your wife too.

So, thank y'all for making the trip over.

Now, Loren, you were a farmer?

- Yeah, yup.

Farming from the day I got outta high school.

Couldn't wait.

- [Rob] Really?

Just loved it?

- Absolutely.

Grew up with a father who loved farming, and very innovative, and just had the privilege of carrying that on.

- So, like you say, innovative, because a lot of farmers, sometimes their joy is getting out in their shop and just building stuff.

Was that the way it was on your farm?

- Yes.

If you want to hear something... My father used to buy brand new equipment, and we would take the torch to it, and we would revise it before we even went to the field to make it better.

And when I was growing up, for a while, that drove me crazy, and then I started to realize why, 'cause once you got to the field, you had to go.

- [Rob] Yeah.

- And he seen problems before we even got there.

(Loren chuckles) I learned that you're always looking and improving and fixing.

- [Rob] So he just had that eye for- - He did, yup.

- Some people got it, some people are like me.

- Yup.

(Rob and Luke laughing) And what's that?

- That we don't have it.

- We don't have it, okay.

- Yes, no.

So, when you got into farming, like timeline, when was that?

- I got out of high school in '75, and then I tried to start farming in '77, and we had a drought.

- [Rob] Okay.

- So then I jumped in a semi, my dad had some semis, and I did a lot of truck driving.

Because my dad didn't need me on the farm, so I drove truck, and I learned a lot about the trucking industry, and a lot of things like that, which paid off for me later in life.

- [Rob] Yeah.

- So- - So then did you go back and try to farm on your own?

- Yes, the next year.

Then I got started with hogs.

- [Rob] Oof.

- We had a farm and, well, it was the most economical way to get going.

- [Rob] They were the mortgage lifters back in the day.

- They were the mortgage lifters, and a lot of hard work.

And so, did hogs.

And then '79, got married, and then wasn't long, you know, we were starting a family.

And then you want to hear about the next thing?

- [Rob] I know the timeline, so yes.

(Loren and Luke laughing) Go ahead.

- Well, then came '80 and '81.

And just to say it, you know, loving way, it cleaned our clock.

- Those are iconic years in agriculture.

- Yeah, we were trying to- - Not in a good way.

- Trying to build our hog operation, you know, a lot.

So we were heavily invested, and we were borrowing money at the local bank.

And I remember 22% interest.

Now, 10% was normal back then, but it went to 22%, and hogs went to 12 cents, and I just couldn't make money fast enough to even keep up.

And corn was $3.

We were trying to buy corn to feed the hogs 'cause... Oh, it was not good.

So, we kind of got our clock cleaned, and then- - [Rob] As did most of agriculture.

- Yeah.

- It was a mass exit in ag.

- Yeah, yeah.

I remember a lot of... Well, we had had $3 corn, and that was big at the time.

That was like 6, 7, $8 corn now.

And so a lot of farmers stretched themselves out, bought farms and did things that maybe they wouldn't have normally done, but things were looking pretty good, looking like we were gonna hit a a good period.

- [Rob] Yeah.

- And then when this all happened, I know a lot of people that we looked up to, they got taken out.

They just literally lost the farms.

They had to sell their equipment, which had no value.

I remember my dad selling a 1086 at the time, and what we paid for it and what we got for it, it was about half as much, and that alone hurt tremendously right there, you know.

- Yeah.

I think if people get a chance to watch the movie "Country".

- Yep.

- Jessica Lange.

- Yep.

- That kind of told that story.

- It does kind of tell that story, yep.

- Do you remember that, Luke?

Or were you too young?

- I was just born.

- He was just born then, yeah.

- I wasn't very old, but I remember our TV broke.

And we went without a TV for six months.

That's how I knew it was bad as a kid.

- You knew it was bad.

- Yep, yep, yep.

(Rob chuckles) - So, what'd you do?

How'd you pivot?

- Oh, man.

Well you're gonna laugh, but I still got the stairway that we sat on and contemplated what to do in life. '

Cause we had two choices.

- [Rob] Just you and your wife?

- Yeah.

Well, Luke was a baby.

So, we had Luke as a baby.

But we had to contemplate, you know, it's that point where you go to town, get a job.

Which a lot of our friends were doing.

Or you give it one more hurrah and try again.

And so I don't know if I wasn't too smart or what, but I wanted to try it again.

- Let me ask you about that, because I think a lot of times, farmers, and maybe it's in other businesses, I just don't know it, but you get that identity that, "I'm a farmer."

And I think in the early 80s, that's what most people struggle with, because they looked at going to town and getting a job as actually, that's your measure of failure.

Did that play into it at all?

- Sure did, sure did.

None of us wanted to be tied down at that.

Farming was a free spirit.

- [Rob] Yeah.

- And you could go as far as you could go farming if you wanted to.

And in town, you know how it is, you're gonna get a job, and you're gonna have to wait it out till you can move up the ladder and work your way.

Well, farming, if you could rent the next 200 acres, you could go another 200, and you could keep going.

- Okay, so you came to the conclusion that you were stubborn.

(Loren chuckles) - Yeah, so, I can remember going to FHA.

- [Rob] Uh huh.

- Going there, and we went numerous times.

We came across an opportunity to rent 1200 acres, which was- - [Rob] Ooh, that's big back then, yeah.

- Unreal.

It was unreal.

And I kept getting turned down by FHA, and I kept going back and asking, and finally the state guy came, from the state, which I thought, "Wow, he's either gonna tell me to stop coming back or something."

But he came and he said, "You know what, son?

I'm gonna take a shot."

- [Rob] Really?

- Yep.

- That probably meant everything to you.

- Yep.

Bought a tractor and a planter, and a few other pieces of the equipment, and no-till was the only way to go.

So, then that's where the innovation stuff really grew.

- [Rob] Yeah.

- Because no-till was really tough then.

In fact, we worked hard, and got really good at it, and the ASC offices took pictures of us, and made "this is how it works" and- - [Rob] Really?

- And how you do it.

Yeah, they were presenting that.

'Cause back then they were wanting to get a lot more farmers into no-till.

Because even, probably more than... Well, where we live, the ground is more rolling.

It's very important to save that soil more so than on some of the flatter land.

- Now, Luke, were you old enough to remember this?

- Yeah, I do.

I remember as a kid, you know, the old bags of Lorsban.

Putting the Lorsban in the planter.

I thought it was so cool, 'cause my dad had a 4840, which was his pride and joy, and it was mine too.

And I still remember this vividly.

On the bag of Lorsban, I think it was, there was a picture of the back of a 4840 going through the field, and as a kid I thought, "Man, they took that picture of my dad."

(Rob laughs) Yeah, I remember it vividly.

I mean, the people would come out and take pictures of the equipment, Dad would go and put on...

He'd teach at seminars for NRCS about how he was doing no-till, and challenges he was facing and successes he was.

And you know, we didn't farm like most people- - [Rob] Yeah.

- Back then.

And I remember that was different.

- One of the farm magazines, one of the very popular ones... - You can say it.

- "Successful Farming".

- Never heard of her.

- Yep.

(Luke chuckles) They came out every year, Lori did, and would take...

They had this little section in there with a light bulb called "Best Ideas".

- [Rob] Oh, yeah, they still got it.

- Yeah, well, we got in there a lot.

And I laugh now looking back, I should've started building these ideas and selling them.

But we were doing stuff to our planters.

I mean, I had every contraption you could imagine to make the no-till work better.

- So you just had like a fabricating... - Yep.

- Gene?

- Yep.

- I mean, has he always had that?

- I think what he has is... Just a lack of fear to try something.

- [Rob] Okay.

So you're stubborn and fearless.

- He's stubborn and he's fearless, and there's just nothing... You know, I think that was born out of that season.

Right?

You couldn't go buy things.

You know, there wasn't a lot of the companies who helped make no-till possible today weren't there.

And so you just had to go out and try it.

And I think it was that fearlessness and that stubbornness that probably served well in that season.

- Okay.

- You know, I laugh.

I made tractor front fenders.

I built them from nothing, sheets of steel when I was 16.

- [Rob] Like to cover the front wheels.

- Yeah.

That was the thing back in the day, when everything was rear wheel drive, and no front wheel assist.

- [Rob] Yeah.

- And I had the privilege the other day, I had one set that I had saved all these years now, that I had had on my 1206.

And of course I fixed that up here last year, and I was able to put them on there.

That was a neat moment, you know?

Something you had built when you were 16, you gotta carry it forward.

But that's just how it worked back then.

You made everything yourself, 'cause you couldn't buy it.

- [Rob] Yeah.

- And so, you know, we sprayed chemicals in a 15 inch band with the nitrogen over the road to cut the chemical cost in half.

- [Rob] Yeah.

- We cultivate it out with a no-till cultivator out the center, where the weeds were.

- That's new technology now.

Seriously, that's what they're teaching now that... Yeah.

- But that was all the things that we did to save money to make it then.

'Cause it was just tough.

The prices weren't that great.

And so, anyway.

- Well, let me go back to like when you and your wife were sitting on the steps, right?

Because one of the things you brought was your Bible.

- Yeah.

- I mean... You've relied, you've leaned on your faith.

And you're not shy about talking about that.

- No, I'm not.

- Yeah.

- Nope.

I think, to be honest, if you're a farmer, you have faith of some sort.

And of course, we had our faith in God.

But you can't put that little kernel in the ground, and have it make thousands of kernels unless you believe.

And I don't know another person on earth but a farmer that will go out and invest everything before he knows what he's gonna get for it in the end, but he still does it every single year.

He don't say, "Well, I'm not gonna do it this year."

You know, in manufacturing you have a choice.

You can say, "Well, I'm not gonna build that product anymore 'cause it's not profitable."

Well, you have some choice in farming, but yet something has to be done with that land.

You have to make money off of it.

You can't just say, "I'm not gonna farm it this year."

And so faith plays a really important part for us.

We still incorporate that in our business every day to day.

We believe that, you know, everything comes from God, and we look to him for our strength and courage.

And the two words that sum it up for us are "trust" and "obey".

I mean, you gotta trust, and then you gotta get out and get 'er done.

You can't just sit back, you gotta do it.

So, that's the obey part, so.

- It is definitely something that is invaluable when you're going through tough times.

- It is.

Yes, sir.

- Uh, I'm looking at what we gotta talk about, and I know how much time we got left, so I'm gonna jump way ahead.

Tell me about the fabricating and LDJ Manufacturing.

When did that start?

- Well, I've never been fond of livestock, but- - [Rob] Good call.

- Yeah, good call.

(Rob laughs) But it was a necessary evil.

And I loved machinery way more, because I could build and do much more with it.

So '95, we either had to get with the livestock, build huge confinement buildings, or quit.

It was just to the point where raising hogs outside wasn't profitable enough because the volumes weren't there.

- [Rob] And what year did you say that was?

- That was right around '95 for us.

- [Rob] And you got out?

- I got out.

- Whew!

- And- - You did well.

- Well, we got out, and of course we had had stock cows, cattle.

So we sold that whole line of equipment, and decided to try to build things in the shop.

And these two things have been happening at the same time.

And my wife worked at the Pella Window Company.

- [Rob] Yep.

- Because of course you gotta have a job to get insurance on the farm.

Otherwise that's a huge out-of-pocket expense.

And so, an opportunity came to build display racks, because box stores were getting started.

The Menards, the Home Depots were all getting started.

- [Rob] Yeah.

- And they gave me the opportunity to bid on that project.

Well, pretty soon we're building a semi-load of racks every month, and Luke and his brothers, and we had a couple of hired men, were doing this in their spare time.

So when we got a rainy day, they would build a bunch of racks, and we'd try to get it, so we had our semi load them down every month.

So that's how we got started, and we had no intention of not farming, at that particular point.

- [Rob] Yeah.

- Farming was who we were, this was just a sideline.

So, but yeah, God had a different plan.

- Yeah.

So that, again...

I mean, I don't even know how to like go about this chronologically, but I mean, LDJ Manufacturing, probably people won't know what it is, but Thunder Creek fuel trailers?

- Yeah.

So, let me see if I can talk us through.

So, LDJ Farms was the farm corporation at the time, so LDJ Manufacturing came about in the 90s, and we started that.

We got into biomass furnaces in the late 90s, started manufacturing those, 'cause corn wasn't worth anything.

And so we started using it as a fuel source for heating in homes and shops.

We did that.

And then when commodity prices rose in 2007 and 8, people didn't wanna burn their corn anymore.

And it wasn't economically viable.

And so, the manufacturing business grew to the point where we chose to step out of farming as a family in 2000, after we took the crop of 2005 out, we said, "We can't do it all anymore."

And so we made some choices with the farming operation, focused on the factory.

And then in 2009, we created the first fuel trailer with Thunder Creek equipment.

And that's- - Which, this is...

It probably didn't look quite like this.

- Didn't quite- - No, not quite like that.

- Nope.

When we got out of farming, most of the acres that we had, we moved into partnership with some friends of ours who we'd farm next to forever.

And it doubled the size of that operation, and so handling fuel was one of the big challenges.

And so, we sat down literally with a napkin and said, "Hey, if we wanted to design a fuel trailer from the ground up, what would it look like?"

- [Rob] Yeah.

- And because we were building boilers before that, we had a unique skill set as a tank manufacturer.

And so we knew how to build tanks, we knew how to build trailers.

So we said, let's build something low profile and well baffled so we can go up and down the highway quick and safe.

And then when we get to the field, we wanna fuel fast like a pit stop.

And so that was the original concept of the fuel trailer.

We still use it on the farm today.

And we took it to market, and God has blessed that.

The market has received it well, and so we get to build tons of different solutions for agriculture and industrial markets with Thunder Creek now.

- Yeah.

I bought one.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- And then your marketing people said, "Hey, let's do something together."

And then it became literally the coolest one you guys ever made.

(Luke laughs) - That's right.

- It is.

I don't know if we could say badass on PBS, but it is the most- - Well, you just did.

- The most badass trailer you'd ever see.

- I love it.

- It's gorgeous.

It's amazing because as a farmer, I'm going like, "Do I really need all this for a fuel trailer?"

But you're right, in the spring and the fall, you're running and gunning.

And yeah, you need to get there and you need to fill up.

But it's become something that we hook on all the time 'cause it has an air compressor, it has the tools, it's basically, I don't know, kind of an all-in-one type of thing.

- You know, I've been at hundreds of farm shows and trade events and talked to thousands of customers who've bought and used our product, and that's the universal sentiment.

"I can't believe I bought it, and now I can't imagine living without it."

It's kind of that hurdle to get over once they get it, but boy, once people get it and use it and understand its convenience, its efficiency, its safety, all that's with it, it just becomes one of those fundamental tools they can't live without.

- You can either buy this, or you buy like, a tool truck.

- Yeah.

- Or the whatever truck, you know, to go fix things.

All right, so... With LDJ, with the Thunder Creek, I mean, who owns that now?

- Well, we have a lot of great people that we get to work with every day who've helped us build this company.

Our family has just played a small portion in it.

And you know, even though you've got great ideas, it takes an army... Just like you say, "It takes a village to raise a child."

It takes an army to get that all put together and sold and out the door and create a dealer net...

There's a lot going on.

So our dream was always, how could we take this from just family owned to employee owned.

And the ESOP created a great avenue for that, for us to do that, and the people that have worked so hard there now can be the owners of the company.

- Yeah, the ESOP is a transition to- - Yeah.

- Yes.

It's in a transition to an employee owned company, the employees build shares the longer they work there, and those shares have value, and then someday they can sell those shares back to the company when they retire.

- Say, okay.

Why don't we be a little selfish here for a second, all right?

Because you guys, I mean yes, everybody built it, but you know, if you could look at the family that was kind of the key.

You are giving up stuff.

Was that a hard decision?

- Oh, yeah.

- Yeah, there's no easy decision.

- I mean, it is.

- I think it goes back to what Loren said earlier, Rob.

When you recognize that God owns everything, then we recognize that the business isn't ours.

He's entrusted it to us to steward.

Just like in farming we steward the land, we steward the business.

And it became very clear through our faith that God's design for this business was to move to employee owned.

Now, that didn't mean we gave the business away, there was an economic value for the business that all transacted.

But now the employees own the business.

And now as they continue to grow the business and make it more successful and do well, they get to benefit from that really, really well.

- [Loren] Yep.

- Okay.

It would be hard for me to do.

I mean honestly, 'cause you look how much blood, sweat, and tear goes into everything.

I love your guys' attitude on it.

I think it says a lot about you as a family and as a father, honestly.

- It's kinda like... Let me liken it to this.

It's like the family farm.

You get to use it for a while, you get to raise 40, maybe 50, maybe you're blessed to raise 60 crops on that farm, and then you just don't say, "Well, we're gonna stop the farm."

The farm gets passed on, and hopefully to the next generation, or to another young farmer that will take it and do the same thing and keep growing it and raising more to feed this world.

I liken it to that, and that's how I view it, and so does my family.

So, the blessing was we were all on the same page together, and had the same, so that that made it really good.

- How long have you been married?

- Well, I gotta get this right here.

Goin' on...

I got married in '79, so we're going on 44 years.

- 44... How'd you guys meet?

(Loren laughs) You weren't expecting that one.

- Well, I can't tell the actual true story, but I can... (Luke and Rob laughing) - Okay.

- This is PBS, Rob.

- I was gonna say beforehand, I said, "Is there anything you guys don't want me to ask?"

You said, "Nope."

- No, I was blessed.

My wife, I knew her sister, and didn't even realize that my friend had such a beautiful younger sister, and one day I happened to meet her at a ballgame, and that was it for me.

- [Rob] That was it.

- Yeah, I kept bugging her till she finally married me.

- Persistence pays off.

- It does.

(Rob laughs) - Okay, the biggest lesson, I mean, if somebody comes up to you and says, "Hey, you know, I just feel like I've got skills and I want to do it real quick."

What would you tell 'em?

- Never give up.

First, you gotta have faith.

You gotta realize where everything comes from.

For me, you know, just to be honest, just like with family farm, you spend many nights on your knees.

Just saying, "Man, just help us keep this thing going."

Because sometimes things don't go good.

It's just life.

So, never give up.

If you got a dream, keep working to get it.

Learn to adjust and keep working forward.

- Luke, real quick, if people wanna find social media or in the internet, where do they go?

- Yeah, Thundercreek.com They can find us on all the major social media platforms, but thundercreek.com - Okay.

Is there a picture of my trailer on there?

(Loren laughs) - There will be.

- That's a good way to get it on there.

Honestly, I thought it would be cool to bring it in the studio, but they said no.

- It didn't fit through the door?

- Yeah, it's full of fuel.

(Luke chuckles) - Well, we got as close as we could with the little one here, so.

- Yes, we could.

All right, Loren and Luke Van Wyk.

Thank you guys very much for taking the time and the drive.

- Thank you for having us here.

- Everybody else, we'll catch you next week.

(intense upbeat music)