[SWFarmService]

This week Rob passed away fighting pancreatic cancer.
As far as I am concerned Rob is a legend in the harvesting community, he came here for as many years as I can remember and even had some locals that went along on his harvest run.

Always had a clean well put together operation and was a very great guy to work with. My best memory of him will be when the ECM in his truck went down, I don't think he really thought I knew what I was doing because I am very fussy making every detail has been checked to make sure we were not wasting money on something that wasn't broken.
Couple days later it rained and just before it rained I had a Macdon flex Draper that had a yard sale inside of the auger. He stopped by asking to settle up and I told him I would trade him for a bit of a walk through on how to pull the adapter off of that header.
He said, I've got to run but I'll be back. Before he got back he must have sent the whole crew over my way and by the time he got back the adapter was off! I couldn't get these guys tools fast enough! I bet that thing was completely apart in under 20 min!

Very good guy to have known, he will be missed in my community!

 

[361turbo]

Sorry to hear that. It always seems the better guys get taken to soon.

 

[johndeere4250]

May he rest in peace.
I was part of the 2010 crew with Rob and Sue.
Rob ran a very detailed and organised operation, the crew accommodation, equipment and workshops/yard were second to none.
They were very honest hard working people, cutting for the same farmers from Texas to Canada year after year. Rob gave a lot of people from all over the world a chance to do the us harvest run.
He was a good, well respected man and will be remembered by all who worked for him through the years.

 

[Haystack]

These slide shows say it all.

Copied from the comments in the 2009 slideshow:

Thank you to the dedicated guys that can keep up with us for our harvest season.
.

 

[Haystack]

This one is from a moving day.

.

 

[SWFarmService]

These slide shows say it all.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=x3fEHsyh3u8

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1J1EmBEX2Sk

Copied from the comments in the 2009 slideshow:

Thank you to the dedicated guys that can keep up with us for our harvest season.
.

That is really cool of ya to post the first video of the crew in regent, as soon as I get the link working properly I will be sharing it with Robs customers where them pics were taken!

 

[Haystack]

I'll try reposting the first link. Sometimes when you put more than one link in a post YouTube will disable one or both links. Hopefully it will at least work if you click the YouTube bar above the photo.

.

 

[SWFarmService]

Thanks Haystack!
I was only able to copy and paste into Google originally for some reason but couldn't get it to open up in YouTube but searched and got it!

I got a reply back from one of the growers, pretty excited to have seen it as he had a great crop that year and was close friends with Rob and Sue. His son even made a couple of runs with Rob.

Brings back some memories of 13! I think we only cut 3 or 4 qtrs without some varying amount of hail damage that year. First son was born during that harvest, heII of a hail storm went through while he was being born. Early hail left us doing a lot of preharvest burn down that year because the hail really brought on the pigeon grass, pretty easy to notice in plenty of the pics how green it was behind the combines.

Still a good crop overall, kind of interesting that I can pick out nearly every field in the slideshow but there was a couple I think taken by Mott.

Pretty cool, and a neat representation of my area!

 

[361turbo]

Is the his harvest crew still running?

 

[SWFarmService]

Is the his harvest crew still running?

Ya know I really don't know.
Last year we were in contact regularly and with the poor run and the health battle he sold off a few machines and last year was the first time he hadn't been here in close to the 30 years hes been harvesting here.
Tried to contact him a couple times after we heard the cancer came back, think maybe my dad talked to him one time but didn't sound like harvest was something discussed.
Even a long time customer of his only was able to contact Sue.

Friends will be back tomorrow from the funeral, I'll know a little more than if what's going on.

 

[johndeere4250]

The grower you speak of in Regent must have been Anderson. Their son Aaron and his friend worked with us for a while when we were around the Dakotas he helped them out a few seasons. We cut for the roths in Mott aswell that year among others.

 

[SWFarmService]

The grower you speak of in Regent must have been Anderson. Their son Aaron and his friend worked with us for a while when we were around the Dakotas he helped them out a few seasons. We cut for the roths in Mott aswell that year among others.

You got it! One season I believe he went along and Derek S also

Mikey and Rob were kinda opposites but shared more in common than meets the eye

You must have also cut on Stangs and maybe Boltie's?

 

[johndeere4250]

Yes Derek was the fella. The crew kinda split in regent and I went the half that cut in Mott, I do remember the regent crew mentioning the name stangs a few times but can't recall boltie's.

 

[jute]

This is something really sad to hear. It seems that the best guys are always taken away too early. My deepest condolences to the whole family.

I had the privilege to work for Rob for a couple of seasons in the early 2000’s and he ended up having a bigger influence in my life than he probably ever knew. I’m not aware of how the operation continued or was during the last few years since I lost contact with Rob & Sue while going through some tough times myself, but he was one of the people giving me the inspiration with his example and history to just go on no matter how difficult the situation was, and just pull through.

The operation he had was second to none and the way to run it was nothing but legendary. He was very good to work for and with, and always took care of his employees and customers. Yes, he was hard on you if you weren’t doing your job right, but also always fair. Being a hardass sometimes was just because he was always aiming for nothing but perfect. The way to maintain the equipment, not only the combines, but everything was impressive and I think not only the quality of the work, but also the quality of the whole operation was the reason why the customers wanted him back year after year.

May you rest in piece in the cab of the heavenly combine up there. You will be missed.

 

[knucklebuster]

SWFarmService, so sad to hear this news. I rode around with him and picked his brain back during the 93' fall harvest near his home base. I remember the yr. because it was 1st year of 1688's. Said to come by the shop any time which I did later that winter. Never got up the gumption to go on a run but his crew seemed like a well oiled machine and you could tell the attention to detail and they way things were maintained that everything was top notch. I wish I had known him better or gone on a run with him.