Longtime family business still growing

From rice and nut dryers to conveyor belts, storage bins and accessories to canal pavers, Kraemer and Co. Mfg. has served the needs of agricultural and other businesses for 25 years.

Ben Kraemer and his son, Jerry Kraemer, Orland's fire chief, started the business as partners in 1986 and work side-by-side, yet relatively independently of each other as they serve their own customers, Jerry Kraemer said.

Ben Kraemer said he and his son work as project engineers, designers, project managers and salesmen.

"We do most jobs right from start to finish," he said.

The company serve customers throughout California's farm country.

Among other items, Kraemer and Co. designs and builds rice scalpers, conveyor systems — including one over 700-feet long — and designs layouts and installs storage bins and manufacture accessories specific to individual requirements, Ben Kraemer said.

Now age 71, Ben Kraemer also serves on the Orland Unified School Board and still works everyday, though he is starting to think about cutting back and spending more time fishing, he said.

He already has started handing over more and more of the business operations to Jerry Kraemer.

Dad's goal is to "stay involved enough two help Jerry keep the thing going," Ben Kraemer said.

The younger partner said as his father moves away from daily operations, he plans to "carry on as we have," Jerry Kraemer said. "I plan to continue serving our customers and will try to follow in (Dad's) footsteps."

Building a legacy

Ben Kraemer was born

and raised on a 60-acre farm in Capay. After high school, he served three years in the Navy, then came home in the late 1950s intending to be a farmer, he said.

But crop prices dropped and after only a year and a half, he went into Orland to find work.

Following stints with Westside Sheet Metal and Ponci's Welding and Machine Shop, in 1966 Ben Kraemer decided to break out on his own.

He started with a specialty fabrication shop that mainly dealing with agriculture. He also installed conveying equipment for rice dryers as a subcontractor. He expanded into grain handling in 1968.

That year, Ben Kraemer and Ken Gilmore joined forces to create B&K Manufacturing and in 1970-71 built a facility on County Road 200.

However, they got caught with "lots of debt" in the 1984 recession and the business went under, Ben Kraemer said.

Not to be undone, in 1985 he and his son Jerry formed their partnership and built in their current location on Highway 99W.

The Kraemers have seen steady growth throughout the years. Kraemer and Co. started with 10-12 employees, Ben Kraemer said. Right now, they have 20 workers, including office staff, on the payroll.

Normally during the slower winter season, they have a regular staff of 15 or 16, he said. But rice is doing so well right now, they are working to get ready for the upcoming season.

"We have a lot of work to get done for rice," Ben Kraemer said. The bulk of the company's business this year will be rice. Last year, business was split fairly evenly between rice and nuts.

The company has already started the push to get contracts signed for the "big push in summer," Ben Kraemer said, noting it takes 60 days or more just to get the necessary permits.

He said that through the years "we have always been able to keep a core busy through the winter." And, he added, "we've never had to lay off a good supervisor and we've been able to keep our better fabricators" during the off season.

"We've been putting out a pretty good size payroll" all along, he added.

One of Ben Kraemer's most substantial contributions to his manufacturing business came during the B&K years when he created the Spiral E-Z Letdown for lower nuts, beans and seeds into the deep storage bins.

Using a "gentle touch," the spiral prevents breakage and other damage to harvested crops.

He is uneasy accepting full credit for his creation. When Nancy, his wife of 51 years, said how proud of him she is for the spiral, Ben Kraemer looked down, turned a little pink and humbly said, "I didn't come up with the whole idea."

"I just made the pattern. I just had to figure out how to look it."

Still, a crew of college-educated engineers could not create a solution that would prevent damage to the fragile crops as they are dumped into the storage bins. Plus, when Ben showed them his design, they swore it would never work. But it does.

He did not bother to patent it, he said.

Ben and Jerry Kraemer are happy with what they do and the business they have created.

A family business

Truly a family business, in addition to the partners, Nancy Kraemer takes care of the bookkeeping, payroll and government paper work; and, daughter Francis Alston covers purchasing, reception and helps with accounts payable and accounts receivable.

They admit that sometimes it can be a challenge working with family every day. But everyone does their part to make the business the best it can be.

For Ben, one hard part is accepting new ideas — like computers. He still does all his drafting by hand, he said.

Whether doing things with high technology or by hand, Ben Kraemer said he "taught my kids to look at the logic of things."

It's not that mistakes will never be made, he noted, it's that finding the logic behind the solution will create better products and better relationships with customers.

"We all make errors," the senior Kraemer told his children. "But you don't want to send errors out to your customers."

Contact Lydia Harris at 934-6800 or lharris@tcnpress.com.