Left: Graduating high school in 1958
Right: Approximately 1979, includes Joe LoBue, Jr., Fred LoBue, Jr., seated, Robert and Philip LoBue, standing
come back to the San Joaquin Valley and start his citrus industry career in earnest. “In 1965, I went to work in the office learning all the clerical things from the bookkeeper.” He soon took over that slot and spent many, many hours taking pencil to “reams and reams of paper” doing the all-important grower accounting work. LoBue Farms had many independent growers bringing fruit in every day during the season. It was a monumental task to log in every box, record the sales price, back out expenses and make the payments. “We did everything by hand. There were no computers.” By this time, the company was called LoBue Brothers, with Fred Jr.’s father, Fred Sr., in charge of farming, Uncle Mario running the business side and Uncle Joe doing a bit of both. Fred Jr. actually worked under Mario and longtime company executive G.A. Wollenman, who ran the packing facility in Lindsay, CA. Fred’s brother tragically died in the mid-1960s, though several of his cousins and his brother-in-law joined the family business over the next decade or two. By the mid-1970s, this third generation of the LoBue Farms family
tree began buying their own citrus groves separately and in partnerships. Eventually, the family holdings grew to 1,000 acres. Fred Sr. died in 1980 with his nephew Robert LoBue taking over the farming side of the business. Fred. Jr., who already was CFO, officially became the president of LoBue Bros. Inc. in 1996. He credits the other members of the executive team for helping him tremendously and bringing the company to new heights as the new century dawned. “You couldn’t replace G.A. (Wollenman),” Fred said. “After he started slowing down and then eventually retired, we took more of a team effort approach.” In the early 2000s, LoBue said the
citrus operation was at its peak, always second or third in size behind Sunkist. LoBue Bros. had three packing facilities by then as well as a robust export business and represented many different growers. “Our average grower had 40 acres,” he said, proud of the family farm legacy that LoBue Bros. helped to perpetuate. “At our peak, we packed 4.5 million boxes a year. We were an important factor for quite a few years.” He said the declining popularity of the Valencia orange caused LoBue Bros. to start to downsize. “We lost about 1.2 million boxes of Valencias,” he said, adding that corporate ownership of citrus acreage was another factor leading to the company’s decreased influence. The advancing age of the partners as well as external issues such as higher labor costs and increased competition made for a tough decision a few years ago. LoBue said no member of the fourth generation was interested in talking over the operation and the partners did not want to invest the millions needed to upgrade and automate their packing facilities. In 2017, after more than 80 years as an independent citrus packer and marketer, the LoBue family merged these operations into a
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NOVEMBER | DECEMBER 2020
Western Grower & Shipper | www.wga.com
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