Thunder Creek Helps Largest U.S. Composter Save Time

Tue June 24, 2025
Thunder Creek

Now the largest composting company in the United States, with 174 locations, Magic Valley Compost (MVC) started business with a dozen employees and just a few pieces of equipment.

Today, the company provides soil amendment solutions to dairymen and farmers across Utah, Idaho and Nevada to enrich their land, support healthy plant growth and increase water retention. The aim is to improve the quality and nutrition of crops to, in turn, improve nutrition for individuals and the community.

"We work with smaller farms with a hundred acres, and we work with more corporate farms with 10,000 to 30,000 acres," said Ray Silene, owner/general manager at MVC. "But more and more now, we're dealing with the large dairy farms. And with that, everything's on scale and we need bigger equipment, which means more fuel and more labor."

Over the 19 years Silene has worked with MVC, starting as a production supervisor before becoming a partner and owner, the company has added to its original fleet of equipment, which included four loaders, two worn-out pickup trucks and some compost turners. They have since acquired dozens of bulldozers, excavators, semis, rock crushers and more with an operation supported by 60 employees.

According to Silene, it takes approximately 1.5 million gall. of fuel annually to keep that fleet up and running. Around 60 percent of that is off-road or red diesel for the company's heavy equipment, with the remaining 40 percent being clear diesel for their trucks. Since the work MVC does is off-site from its Jerome, Idaho, headquarters, it needs a mobile fueling and service solution.

"Packing and delivering fuel is a huge part of our operation. When we're on the road spreading compost, typically we're anywhere between a hundred to 200 miles away from our base operation," Silene said. "When we first started out, we'd find an old flatbed trailer and a bulk tank, get a couple ratchet straps and put it on there. We had mismatched oil jugs and stuff."

Recognizing this approach was inefficient, Silene took a proposed solution from its equipment dealer, Intermountain New Holland, into consideration. The sales representatives suggested fuel and service trailers from Thunder Creek.

"At first, we thought that it was too expensive. And then we tried one and realized that you get what you pay for," Silene said. "We have almost everything we need all in one trailer. So, we have eliminated trips to town and our equipment can stay running."

MVC decided to invest in three of the trailers, each of which can carry up to 990 gall. of diesel, auxiliary oil and 100 gall. of DEF. It is primarily using the trailers for its compost spreading operations and has introduced efficiencies that have led to time and cost savings.

Fueling, Servicing Decentralized Fleet

Like many other companies, MVC faces challenges with securing skilled labor and is always looking for ways to streamline its operations. That is especially important as it secures more work on larger farms, with greater demands for composting solutions.

"We're trying to do more with less labor and we're constantly getting larger equipment to do more," Silene said. "Our trommel screens, for instance, are 5 feet larger than they were six years ago. Since those are larger, they require a larger loader and we're burning more fuel."

The 990-gall. FST trailers are providing that streamlined solution. The trailers MVC purchased include diesel fuel, diesel exhaust fluid (DEF), along with hydraulic oil, plus light tower packages for fueling and servicing equipment early in the morning or at night. And they offer faster fueling so MVC can maximize its available labor pool elsewhere.

"When we ended up with our first Thunder Creek trailer, we went from taking 30 minutes to fuel up equipment to 15 minutes. DEF is a major thing for us, and we're reducing the risk of contaminated fluids going into the equipment. So, in return, we have less downtime for repairs," Silene said. "With nearly a thousand gallons of fuel, we can stretch it out to a week sometimes or at least three or four days before we need to refuel the trailers."

Kanan Silene, operator of MVC and Ray Silene's son, appreciates how easy it is to fuel up their equipment.

"My favorite feature of the Thunder Creek is the hoses on a reel. If you park all the equipment around the trailer, you can fuel up diesel, DEF, and everything in one go. You don't have to be moving machinery in and out," he said. "It's so much more efficient than having all the hoses in the back of pickups with the bulk tanks. That's a mess. This is clean and keeps diesel off you and out of the trucks."

Adding to the fueling efficiency of the FSTs are the convenience and versatility the trailers provide for MVC.

"One of the benefits of owning a Thunder Creek is the versatility. We have the two (auxiliary) tanks … we have hydraulic fluid and coolant," Kanan said. "If we blow a hydraulic line, we can fix it on the job instead of having to call someone to bring you hydraulic fluid or going to get it yourself. We don't have to be going back and forth for stuff like that. Since we are jumping all over the place for jobs, it makes it easy to go from site to site, too."

Silene agreed.

"It's extremely convenient because everything we need is on the trailers. It is just like one-stop shopping," he said. "Before, if we were running through 200 or 300 gallons of fuel a day, we'd have to make two or three trips back to the shop. That's time and money."

Based on Silene's calculations, they are saving themselves two hours a day by eliminating trips back to the shop and gas stations. It also saves time after work.

"Because we have all our fuel on-site, we don't need to go anywhere," he added. "It's just one trip there and then we have this trailer out on the site all week. Besides fueling it up, it doesn't cost us time at all. We can shut down at 5 p.m. just by having this trailer here. In comparison, with our bulk tanks and trucks, we'd have to shut down at 4 p.m. so we could go get fuel because we had to drive so far."

Silene also notes that the hydraulic jack is a time saver for MVC.

"A normal trailer takes 10 to 15 minutes to hook up. With the Thunder Creek, we just press the button, and it goes up. Press the button, and it goes down," he said. "With this trailer, I haven't had a single problem with the batteries like I've had on other trailers with hydraulic jacks. On those, you're always fiddling with the batteries. You're always hooking up jumper cables to it and they never stay charged. I have never had a single problem with this trailer."

When asked what else Silene and Kanan like about the FSTs, they agree on one thing: quality.

"We've had our oldest trailer for almost three years, and I haven't had to reach out to Intermountain New Holland," Silene said. "They stand behind the equipment they sell, and they always keep us up and running. With the Thunder Creek trailers, we haven't had to call them for anything. We still have all the original pumps. I think we even still have all our original hoses."

Kanan added, "We don't work in easy conditions. The trailers get beaten up and I haven't had a single problem with one of them. In the winter, we bring them out in -30 to -40-degree F conditions and still, no problems."

Silene also highly recommends Thunder Creek to other companies that need to keep their fleet of equipment fueled and serviced efficiently.

"I would say to them that whatever the price tag, and I don't feel that they're overpriced, it's worth it," he said. "At first, I couldn't believe I was buying this trailer. It has all this stuff on it. It's a tool that we didn't think would be used as much as we do, but it's changed the way we do business."