Piece by piece, VanMarter disassembles R&G grain elevator

Though he has been in and out of Malta, working, for the past 12 months, chances are good that you don't know who Paul VanMarter is, but you have, almost for certain, seen the work he has been doing.

Starting around this same time of year last year, VanMarter started climbing the stairs of the old grain elevators due west of R& G Quality Feed Supply on the north side of Malta with the sole purpose of dismantling the great, gray beast, nail by nail and board by board.

VanMarter said that he estimates the price tag on knocking down the buildings and hauling away all the material would be in the neighborhood of $50,000.

"But I come in and do it just for the reclaim," VanMarter said. "That saves him a lot and I get the wood."

VanMarter said that aside from pigeons and a little bit of graffiti, the buildings are mostly just wood and metal. VanMarter specializes in tearing down grain elevators and the R&G structures are the tenth he has disassembled (six of the 10 have been in Montana, the last located in Wilsall, 50 miles northeast of Bozeman.) VanMarter said that each building generally takes about a year to tear down, adding that the beginning of the deconstruction is the most labor intensive and time-consuming.

"It's harder at the beginning because of the head house and not only the height that we are at, but also all the augers and pulleys, and fire suppression equipment and electrical that needs to be dealt with," he said. "That stuff takes us months."

VanMarter said that the building he is taking apart now is, by volume, about halfway done. That said, VanMarter thinks that what currently remains of the building will all be taken down and shipped out of town within the next 60-days.

"At the most," he added. "It's probably more like 35 or 40 days. Once I get to this point, it starts to come down a lot faster. After that, I will start the next one. I will be here at least another six months."

R&G's Ric Lamb said he sold the building to VanMarter because it was no longer cost effective to keep it upright.

"By selling it to him, I didn't have to pay anyone to tear it down," Lamb said. "I know what Saco paid to get rid of theirs and that was not something I wanted to deal with."

Lamb said R&G is going to begin building a 60x90-foot, flat storage building near where they recently tore down an old building used for fertilizer storage (in fact, the trusses for that project arrived a few weeks ago). But as far as the land beneath the elevator Lamb thinks it could ultimately become a parking lot.

"We are still figuring out what to do," Lamb added.

In November of 2015, the grain elevator in Saco, built in 1951 and standing nearly 110-feet high, was knocked down because it was no longer in use and was becoming a safety concern to its owners.

"I didn't want to deal with the environmental part of it, the liability part of it and the fee that went with tearing it down," Lamb said of the Malta grain buildings. "It's an expensive deal."

Lamb said he was approached by VanMarter about the possibility of selling the building and Lamb said he thought it was a sound deal. Since the building has started to be disassembled, Lamb said he has been approached by a few people and told the buildings are historical and shouldn't be torn down. While he agrees with the structures being a historical part of Malta, he said that he is also liable for anything that goes wrong with the building and added that they haven't been used in at least six years following a problem with the main leg in the elevator.

"It was just not worth the kind of money it would take to make it functional," Lamb said.

VanMarter said through his research he decided the bin he is now tearing down was built sometime in the 1950's and the original elevator, which he will disassemble next, was built in the 1920's.

VanMarter currently lives and conducts business out of Bozeman, Mont., but is originally from Heppner, Ore., a town similar to Malta, he said. He moved to Montana in 1992 - living in Dillon and Kalispell for years before moving to Bozeman.

On this Wednesday morning, (July 12) VanMarter was in the process of taking down the tin panels that protect the valuable wood underneath. VanMarter - who employs two part-time workers at times to assist him - tears down materials and recycles it all, in one way or another.

The choicest pieces of wood are taken and given lounge and groove notches and then laid as flooring in homes. Some of the wood is used to make beveled siding. VanMarter continues to grade the wood until, at last, the least desirable pieces are used for such projects as corrals or fences.

"It goes from really good to not so good, but we try to do something with every bit of it," VanMarter said. "We salvage everything and we will even use the tin in people's wainscoting and for decoration purposes."

VanMarter said he really enjoys his work and came to the profession about 16 years ago after years of being a logger. He said he was working at his sawmill in 2001 when he was approached by a man who asked him to saw up some old lumber beams.

"I finished the work and said 'wow, those are better than brand new'," VanMarter said. "Since that time, I only work with reclaimed wood. We repurpose and reclaim."

As for spending the last year in Malta, VanMarter said it makes him think of old times when he was growing up.

"They were even called the Mustangs where I grew up," VanMarter said of the town of Heppner. "I live in Bozeman now and it is just booming, but I come up here and realize just how citified I have become. It's nice here."