May 5, 2008

View of the day-Al & Marilyn at the Grand Island CaseIH factory standing with their new combine, just prior to driving it off the line.

What a day!!!

Marilyn tried to stay awake for the Dallas Stars overtime win, but at 12:45am after three overtime periods, it was time to call it a night. Great news to wake up to, finding out the Stars had won in the fourth overtime...woo hoo!

We had an appointment to meet at the CaseIH building at 9:30am, and after loading up the truck and finding our way across town to the factory, we were ready for our tour. We met with Charlene, the tour coordinator and Dennis our tour guide and after drooling over some items for sale in the display cabinet-hats, shirts, mugs, toys, etc. we headed out to the floor to see some action.

Before we started the tour, Dennis took us over to see our combine...at least as much as had been assembled...and explained how much further it had to go and when we would be able to watch the final steps and drive it off the line. We were really honored when the plant manager came over, welcomed us and thanked us for buying their product.

Dennis took us around some of the 15 acres of manufacturing, explaining a lot of the history of the plant and showing us how the various sheets of metal were laser cut then formed into all manner of combine parts. When you have repaired a combine and have replaced some of these parts, to see them being cut, shaped and painted was really neat.

This factory is not unionized, so we were able to talk to a lot of the workers, and they actually came over to ask us questions about where we were from and why we had come for a tour. After a fascinating tour, we were invited to have lunch before we were to go out and watch our combine go through the last five stations of it's construction. We watched as the sheilds were put on at one station, then the striping and decals, the tires going on and at the end, the final testing before Al was able to drive it off the line and out into the yard. A thrill he says he can now cross off his list.

We went back into the main room to have a drink and cookie, and had a great visit with a couple of other tour guides that had been showing another group of "dignitaries" through the factory. After Charlene rounded up our Case Store purchases she returned just as the manager of operations was thanking us for purchasing their product and taking the time to come and see it built. He then presented us with a beautiful framed photo of us(that would be in the eye of the beholder)with a plaque on the bottom commemorating the date...what a fabulous end to an amazing day.

It was unbelievable to see the amount of combines being built, they put through 22 per day, and when we drove the combine out into the yard there must have been 250 of various colors (10 red to 1 yellow) and every one of them was sold. There must have been 50 on rail cars in the yard waiting to be shipped to Baltimore to go various places around the world.

Recently a custom harvester had bought his 100th CaseIH combine and we received the same attention that he did after only 8, which was really heartwarming. We also received a small laser cut plaque, available only from the factory.

We started back to Cherokee and go caught in a terrific storm, so we stopped in Pratt, Kansas for the night...just as well, it had been a long day.

Laptop issues means this will be somewhat short...we're at 1905km/1185 miles.

Today we make our final destination...