This job’s not easy. It’s a lot more labor intensive than a lot of people think.”

Tanner Knupp

Related

‘I can’t believe we can get this in Washington’

Related

Kalona's newest feed store: built on family

Let’s imagine you’re sitting down to breakfast this weekend and you’re about to enjoy a few strips of bacon. Before that bacon reached your plate, it made a seven-month journey from a piglet on a farm to the grocery store.

The chain of events began mid-April with the birth of a piglet at a breed-to-wean facility. Around the first of May, that piglet was weaned and transported to a finishing barn. By the first of October, it reached market weight and was taken to a packing plant where it was harvested. The belly was sent to a smokehouse to become bacon, and the bacon was boxed and sent to a grocery distribution center. From there it was delivered to a grocery store where an employee placed it on the shelf, and you selected it for purchase.

That, in brief, is the story of your bacon.

“On the transportation side, from the farm to the packing house, we are step one of the food chain,” Tanner Knupp, owner of Knupp Farms in Washington, says. “The farmer has to grow the animal. Once that animal is ready for harvest, they have to count on us to get it there.”

Knupp Farms specializes in livestock transport, mainly pigs. Established in 1977 by Tanner’s dad, Carl, with a single truck, today the fleet includes 21 trucks and 16 livestock trailers that move about 1.2 million pigs a year.

Every day, year-round, trucks haul loads of weaned pigs to nursery barns, feeder pigs to finishing barns, and market pigs to processing facilities. The trailers can accommodate anywhere from 160 market-size pigs to 2,400 baby pigs.

“The alarm clock goes off anywhere from midnight to 5 a.m. to 2 p.m. It’s all hours of the day,” Knupp says. “Driver gets up, gets dressed, gets changed, and he is in charge of his rig. He’s in charge of the pigs. He drives them safely and effectively to the plant, and then he has to also safely and humanely unload the livestock. All of it is on the driver.”

Drivers are at the core of a challenging business. This is not a sit and wait, no-touch freight world. This is a world of active, living cargo that must be loaded and unloaded with care.

“This is a farm job that you happen to be driving a semi,” Knupp says. “We’re in the trailer with the livestock, 280, 300-pound pigs. We’re in the trailer with them when we’re hauling three-deck feeder pigs, 50, 55-pound feeders. We’re on our hands and knees with those pigs, unloading and loading them. We’re just as much involved as that animal. When it’s hot out, we know it’s hot for the animal. When it’s cold out, we know it’s cold for the animal.”

The day begins with a clean, disinfected trailer and an eye on the weather. If it’s a hot day, the pigs are dampened before departure using the trailer’s water system; because they don’t sweat, this is needed so they stay cool in the breeze while moving. And if it’s a cold day, extra panels are attached to the trailer, and bedding is added so they stay warm.

And then the pigs have gotta get on the bus.

“Some days are good, some days are bad. They have attitudes just like humans. When they want to cooperate, man, it’s fun,” Knupp says. “I truly believe a heathy pig moves a lot better. That’s pretty standard. Genetics – maybe it’s a pig that wants to move and run versus walk and lope – genetics definitely helps for what we’re doing.”

Once the pigs are boarded it’s time to head out. Where they’re going depends on the integrator, the business coordinating the supply chain.

“Sometimes they can sell them to Kansas City. Sometimes they can sell them to their backyard. Anywhere from one loaded mile up to 500 loaded miles, maybe more,” Knupp says. “For us on the livestock transportation side, we get a schedule. We go where we are told.”

The pigs could be on a five-hour ride to St. Louis or Chicago. How do they occupy their time?

“They’re not jumping and doing cartwheels by no means, but they’re up and moving, and they’re squealing and they’re playing,” he says. “If they go on a two-hour ride, then you probably find them laying down, relaxing.”

Once they reach their destination, the driver unloads the pigs, cleans the trailer, and picks up another load for the return trip, maximizing time and efficiency.

If that sounds like a lot of work, it is.

“This job’s not easy,” Knupp says. “It’s a lot more labor intensive than a lot of people think.”

“I believe that we have a good foundation, good teammates that understand that some days are good and some days are less good,” he continues. “As long as you can always look at the glass half full and say, ‘I still have more in me. I still have more energy. I can still do it,’ we’re good to go.

“There are tough days. There are mentally, physically exhausting days that you just don’t know what you can do to be better, and it happens. But as long as you can get through that day and know tomorrow’s a new day, it’s a good day.”

And it’s rewarding. When Knupp considers those million-plus pigs they deliver every year, he thinks about how much food the business helps put on the table.

“We are part of feeding how many people?” he marvels. “You break it down on how many slices of bacon that is, and how many pounds of sausage. Once you look at it on a global scale, on a large scale, it’s like, wow, we’re actually being useful.”

Knupp doesn’t lose sight of the purpose of all those pigs.

“It starts on the farm. It ends with your fork,” he says. And his fork is “50/50 pork and beef, hands down.”

“I really love all aspects of it. I love a good ol’ ham. I love a good steak. I love pork chops, I love ribs, I love bacon, I love sausage. I’m definitely a fair share guy on meat and meat,” he says. “I don’t mind turkey, it’s just not what we haul, right? I don’t mind chicken, but it’s not what we haul.”

Although Knupp Farms is a family business, seven years ago Knupp didn’t see himself here. But he saw the door open, and “if you have good teammates and good employees and good coaches along the way, you can make a really, really good business out of it,” he says. “So that’s what we did.”

Let’s get back to that breakfast in front of you; you don’t want it to get cold. Go ahead and enjoy that bacon; it’s taken a lot of hard work over the last seven months to bring it to your plate.