Family ownership of Lamar Fertilizer ends

For nearly 45 years, the family-owned business of Lamar Fertilizer served the needs of farmers in Chase, Perkins and Dundy Counties in Nebraska and Phillips and Sedgwick Counties in Colorado.
    That service will continue but under new ownership. As of Nov. 9, Crop Production Services (CPS) purchased Lamar Fertilizer from Pete and Paulette Dillan and son Brad.
    Brad Dillan will stay on with CPS-Lamar as location manager.
    Pete and Paulette said they’d been approached a couple years ago about the possibility of selling. They admitted they hadn’t even thought much about it before that.
    They warmed up to the idea and decided the time was right to sell.

Dillans come to Lamar in 1972
    Lamar Fertilizer was originally started in 1969 by Wayne Allen of McCook. At the time, he was a part-owner of Perry Grain in Perry, which also had a fertilizer division.
    Dillan got his start in Perry,  working for Allen in both the grain and fertilizer divisions.
    Allen was looking for someone to run the Lamar operation and gave Pete and Paulette the opportunity to buy into the operation. That was 44.5 years ago in 1972.
    Pete and Paulette worked side-by-side with Pete man-aging operations and Paulette doing books and whatever else was needed, including making deliveries.
    For son Brad, his start in the business came early,  accompanying his mother in delivery trucks at the age of
two-and-a-half. She noted he had a keen sense of direction even at that age.
    Brad grew up learning how to work. By age 13 he’d learned to drive truck. By age 15, he was running one of the operation’s row-crop sprayers.

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