A Family Business and a Community of Farmers

The basement was divided into holding bins and in the early years each bin would be rented to a different grower. Each grower would harvest his crop by picking the potatoes up by hand after a digger had passed by laying them on top of the ground. They would then haul the crop in burlap bags weighing up to 100lbs and dump the potatoes into holding bins.

Innovation

When it was time to take them out, crews with potato forks would shovel the potatoes out of the bins onto a conveyor belt  to go up into the sorting shed. Potatoes were a lot of work in those days. Most potatoes were sorted as #1's & #2's, going into 100lb bags. The rejects, or culls as they were called, were loaded onto trucks and taken to a starch plant.  The ones and twos were loaded into railcars called icebunkers, because they were cooled with large blocks of ice, and shipped across the country to the large population centers on the east side of the United States.

Steady Growth

As technology became available it was quickly integrated into the packing lines. FWS was one of the first to install a carton sizer machine and this became the forerunner to our present potato industry.

From that point forward, potatoes would forever be packed into increasingly sophisticated sizes and packages tailored more and more to the changing needs of the consumer.

in 1989 Leroy retired from the business, leaving things to Keith and his sons. As Keith approached retirement, he turned the responsibility of the business over to his sons.

Building Partnerships

In 1998 a new 88,000 sq ft. facility was constructed in Rexburg where the business is currently located.

In 1999, Wilcox Marketing Group partnered with Birds Eye to bring customers the popular line of "Birds Eye Fresh."

Company Expansion

By then it became apparent that the business needed to grow much faster and there just wasn't space to do so.

The new packing facility was added on to again to accommodate more growth.

A New Decade With a Bright Future

To prepare for a new decade and beyond, Floyd Wilcox & Sons has re-grown the Wilcox name and created the Mother Earth brand, which more fully displays the true position and nature of Wilcox. Watch a video to see where we will be in the years to come.