Maxey makes agriculture-business combo work

By Marty Metzger
North Forty News

Compare the delights of a country lifestyle to a bountiful harvest and the barns and silos of Loren Maxey's life are overflowing.

The Fort Collins businessman began life as a country kid growing up on a general livestock farm in Freeport, Ill. Now a local legend, this year he is grand marshal of the Larimer County Fair parade.

Maxey's first college days stretched only one semester because money didn't. So, in 1951 he entered the Navy during the Korean War.

In 1953, Maxey's brother set up a blind date for him with the daughter of a man he worked for part-time milking cows. Unlike the stereotypical dreaded blind date, this one actually worked out. In fact, his date--Kathy --and Maxey married in 1955, the same year he left the Navy. The Maxeys have three children, Carl, Barbara and Anita.

The G.I. bill allowed Maxey to return to college, where he earned a degree in agricultural engineering. Post-graduate work at Colorado State University for Maxey, then 26, brought them to settle in Colorado in 1958.

Kathy Maxey is a second generation Coloradan from Greeley. Her grandfathers were businessmen there, and her father was a Kersey dairy farmer, so it was a homecoming for her.

Four years of employment as customer service manager for Forney Industries, followed by five as engineering manager at Heath Farm Equipment, further strengthened Maxey's agricultural and business expertise. In 1969, those two interests merged into Maxey Companies, which began as a turf grass pivot sprinkler-building venture. From that first contract, manufacturing proceeded to other farm equipment, equipment trailers, truck bodies and ski run snow-grooming equipment.

Maxey pointed to a somewhat vintage machine on the company's back lot and said, "That orange contraption is the very first snow-moving machine we built. We sent 100 of them all around the country and to Australia and Israel."

The land surrounding Maxey Companies' Airway Avenue location has both an ag past and present. Maxey began leasing the Airpark property to feed cattle in 1965 and still runs some there today.

Among the former airplane hangers, old tractors silently sit in a barbed wire-enclosed lot like patient draft horses awaiting the master's command to work. A single-wheel 1950 Model H Farmall that Maxey purchased at a 1958 farm sale nobly sleeps under a metal awning. The tractor still works and Maxey uses it to mow. Parked nearby is a 1953 Model C Farmall, similarly resting until its next job of harrowing pastures or pulling the fertilizer spreader. Maxey also frequently exhibits this beauty in parades.

These are just a few specimens of his noteworthy tractor collection, primarily comprised of International Harvester/Farmalls that he began acquiring in 1987 through auctions or ads. Maxey initially did much of the restoration work on his approximately 30 machines and is beginning to sell off others still awaiting renovation. The avid ag equipment hobbyist said that a 1941 Farmall B was the most expensive one to fix up and is now valued at $3,500. His favorites also include various 1940s International W series models. (Kathy Maxey prefers the 1941 Ford 9N that once belonged to her dad.)

Maxey drives his tractors at area events, including the Wellington Fourth of July parade, St. Patrick's Day and homecoming parades plus the Larimer County Fair. He also uses six of them in his farming operation.

Maxey's life itself has been like a farming operation: good years and bad, bumper crops and drought. In the 1980s, he was twice a victim of arson. An April 1980 plane crash left him with burns over 40 percent of his body and the inability to walk. When he'd recovered enough to get back on a horse, he and his daughter went out for a ride. They saw smoke, rode to it and reached the burning building at the same time as did the fire department. It was his own building, site of the first arson.

Maxey's community involvement is extensive. He's a current member of the Larimer County Fair Board and on three committees; board president of the East Larimer Water District and board member of North Poudre Irrigation Co.; board member since 1968 of the Community Airpark Association; past board member of the Fort Collins Chamber of Commerce; and past president and board member of the Fort Collins Jaycees, among others. Maxey also served on the Fort Collins City Council from 1987 to 1993. He's been actively involved in many youth groups, including 4-H and FFA.

Maxey Companies presently employs 45 people in the manufacture of specialty trailers, including generator trailers, Snow Cat trailers and snowmobile trail-grooming equipment. Carl Maxey designs some, such as a helicopter hauler.

In 1946, Loren Maxey worked 600 acres with two horse teams and two small tractors. From 1985 to 2000, he drove a farm truck for silage and in some years worked the area harvest up to six weeks at a time. He's rescued old tractors and brought them back to life. He incorporated the things he loves into a business that provides an income to many local residents. Loren Maxey is, like his favorite tractors, hard-working and highly-esteemed, with a bountiful past and a vigorous future. He doesn't credit himself, but rather his rural background.

Said Maxey, "A farm upbringing is a quality character-building experience. You have to deal with all types of people in the production and marketing of crops and livestock. FFA, in which I was active for three years in high school, is along the same line. It all helped me prepare for my business and its original product line."