TWIN FALLS—Eight months ago, Kirsten Burns had never ridden in a tractor-trailer. Let alone driving one of the longest, heaviest trucks on the road.
But on a Monday afternoon in March, the 22-year-old former hotel clerk parked her car at Transystems’ project trailer just north of Amalgamated Sugar Co.’s Paul plant. Outside the trailer, Burns’ truck, No. 17071, sat while the prior shift driver squeegeed mud from its headlights and reflector strips.
Two other drivers walked into the office to check in — or out.
“Are you going to work or going home?” one asked the other.
“This is my home,” the other replied.
For more than a century, southern Idaho’s sugarbeet industry has supported growers and grocers, scientists and factory workers.
Over the past year, the Times-News has followed those who make their livings from Idaho’s sugarbeet crop. We’ve followed Murtaugh grower Ron Hepworth’s crop through planting, growing and harvest. Today, we finish the four-part “Sugar Bowl” series with the annual trucking and slicing campaign that transforms beets to fine white sugar, then sends it out the factory doors.
Every fall, sugarbeet growers have harvested their sweet crop and hauled it by wagons or 10-wheelers to sugarbeet receiving stations around the valley, where the beets chilled while waiting their turns to be sliced.
As the 2016-17 sugarbeet slicing campaign winds down—and while Hepworth waits for fields to dry out enough for planting—Transystems is hauling the last of the 2016 sugarbeets to Amalgamated’s three plants. The sugar produced there each year brings in $750 million to $900 million in revenue.