Typically, the establishments commonly recognized as country
elevators are small. Most of the establishments intended to come within
the exemption have only one or two employees (107 Cong. Rec. (daily ed.)
p. 5883), although some country elevators have a larger number. (See
Holt v. Barnesville Elevator
Co., 145 F. 2d 250.) Establishments with more than five employees are
not within the exemption. (See Sec. 780.712.) The storage capacity of a
country elevator may be as small as 6,000 bushels (see Tobin v. Flour
Mills, 185 F. 2d 596) and will generally range from 15,000 to 50,000
bushels. As indicated in Sec. 780.708, country elevators are equipped to
receive grain in wagons or trucks from farmers and to load it in
railroad boxcars. The facilities typically include scales for weighing
the farm vehicles loaded with grain, grain bins, cleaning and mixing
machinery, driers for prestorage drying of grain and endless conveyor
belts or chain scoops to carry grain from the ground to the top of the
elevator. The facilities for receiving grain in truckloads or wagonloads
from farmers and the limited storage capacity, together with location of
the elevator in or near the grain-producing area, serve to distinguish
country elevators from terminal or subterminal elevators, to which the
exemption is not applicable. The latter are located at terminal or
interior market points, receive grain in carload lots, and receive the
bulk of their grain from country elevators. Although some may receive
grain from farms in the immediate areas, they are not typically equipped
to receive grain except by rail. (See Tobin v. Flour Mills, supra;
Mitchell v. Sampson Const. Co. (D. Kan.) 14 WH Cases 269.) It is the
facilities of a country elevator for the elevation of bulk grain and the
discharge of such grain into rail cars that make it an ``elevator'' and
distinguish it from warehouses that perform similar functions in the
flat warehousing, storage, and marketing for farmers of grain in sacks.
Such warehouses are not ``elevators'' and therefore do not come within
the section 13(b)(14) exemption.
