Mr. Conrad: I would recommend that you access our annual report and the historical timeline located on our Web site, www.andersonsinc.com. The company was founded in 1947 by Harold Anderson, and Harold really founded the company with a vision of service, and partnering with the customer and the community. And that really has been the driving force behind the company from its inception. We think we're very good at listening to the customer and trying to meet their needs. Listening to the customer has led us to offer solutions that they needed at various points in our history. They wanted to have fertilizer after they brought in the corn, so we began to sell them fertilizer at the grain elevator, and they took it back in their trucks. So that encouraged more truck traffic, and truck traffic became a good thing for us. And the farmers were coming up so often, they were including their wives and kids. And so the wives and kids were milling around, and the farmers were saying, "Gee, there is nothing for my wife and children to do," and "What can you do for us?" And so we opened up a small general store. We started off selling toys, five for 1, pots and pans, work apparel. That was a success and, as such, was really the start of our retail business.
And then one of the companies nearby came down to us in the 1960s and said, "We would love to have some fertilizer that we can sell to our retail customers through our retail store. What do you think?" And we said, "Let us think about it," and we came up with a lawn fertilizer brand for a major retailer located nearby in adjacent Michigan. And that got us into what's our Turf & Specialty Group today.
And then in the late 1980s, we had a major customer of ours that we partnered with over the years come to us and say, "We are short 100 grain cars. We'd like to have you go find them for us." And so we went out and found some old cars. They worked perfect, but they had to be reconditioned. And so we reconditioned them for the customer. And then the customer wanted a lease, so we said, "Fine, here are the cars, and we will lease them to you at Ôx' amount." And we found after we did the transaction, we made more money on the lease than we did on the repairs, so we got into the rail leasing business.
And then in the early 2000s, we had some folks approach us about managing risk for different ethanol plants that were popping up in 2004, 2005, and we had one gentleman going out and selling those services. We had one or two customers. His sense was that it was a good complementary business to our core grain business. And because we're good operators, both of our grain businesses and our adjacent fertilizer business, we felt it would kind of be a sweet spot for us. So that's how we got into the ethanol business, with our first plant in 2006. So it's really been listening to the customer all along. We pride ourselves on excellent customer service.
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