CALIFORNIA MEMBER PROFILE
Growers Ice Salinas, California
Member Since 1978
Withstanding the Test of Time
I t is hard to believe that any technology applicable in 1936 is still viable today, but getting the field heat out of produce by topping it with ice is still in vogue. Growers Ice is offering the same service concept today that fueled its establishment more than 80 years ago. “Some of the equipment is 50 years old,” says Jim White, who is in charge of the operation these days. But that is not an indication that Growers Ice is stuck in the past. Even as its core business proposition remains the same, it has been moving aggressively on its strategic plan, which maps out a progressive future. In fact, White’s presence is a testament to the company’s forward thinking philosophy. But before exploring that, let’s go back to the beginning. It was in the middle of the 1930s that four pioneer Salinas farming families jointly established the cooling operation. “Some have called them the four horsemen of Salinas,” quipped White. “There was K.R. Nutting, T.R. Merrill, Bruce Church and E.E. Harden.” Those names were synonymous with western vegetable production and as demand grew for East Coast bound shipments of their products, it was necessary to find a way to help extend shelf life. Boxes of lettuce were harvested in the fields for these four companies and brought to the Growers Ice facility on Abbott Road in Salinas. “They would dump ice on the lettuce to cool it down quickly,” said White. “I understand it is where the name ‘iceberg lettuce’ came from.” The operation occupies the same Abbott campus today though it has expanded over the years. For the first 35 years or so, it chugged along as the private cooler for those four operations. In the 1970s, T.R. Merrill bought out the other partners and commercialized the operation, using it for his own product and also providing cooling and loading service for other Salinas Valley shippers. Over the years, Growers Ice Company expanded adding Growers Custom
Equipment, Central Coast Cooling and finally Post Harvest Technologies. Each of those firms was devoted to improving the logistics portion of the supply chain assuring that the crops harvested in the West arrived in the East in top condition with maximum shelf life. The next major change came in 1997 when Merrill Farms got out of the growing and shipping business. At the time, the Merrill family and its descendants, including the Gheen family, began leasing out their farmland to other growers and concentrating their efforts on Growers Ice and the affiliated companies. Though the future was not known, it was also in the 1990s that the current changes at Growers Ice had their genesis. It was about a quarter of a century ago when Jim White met Bill Gheen. White was a local businessman who made a name for himself as an
The four founders of Growers Ice: K.R. Nutting, T.R. Merrill, Bruce Church and E.E. Harden (not necessarily pictured in that order).
14 Western Grower & Shipper | www.wga.com JULY | AUGUST 2018
Made with FlippingBook flipbook maker