Two of the main tools the elevator agent used was a shovel and the "scoop".Shoveling grain is a primary job in the elevator. When elevator agents retired the farmers often held a pot luck in the community hall and presented him with a shovel that they had all signed. This picture is of a retirement shovel.
The "scoop" was usually made from a sawed off broom handle and a tin can screwed to one end
The handle was crudely flattened with a jack knife so the can would sit flat. When the farmer brought in a load of grain they would dump the grain into the pit. As the grain comes out of the end gate of the truck box samples of the grain are collected with the scoop and put in a pail. The samples are then gathered for each load the farmer is dumping, mixed in the pail and the grain is sent away to be graded. The grade represents the quality of the grain and the higher the quality the more the grain was worth. Farmers often would carefully observe the taking of the samples and would be quick to object if they thought the sample wasn't representative of the load. The sample was taken by the "scoop".
