Recent Work
Silo & Farm Demolition Gallery
Real silo, bin, and farm demolition jobs from around central Illinois.
Concrete-stave, poured concrete, tile, glass-lined and steel silos — cleaned out, brought down in a controlled sequence, hauled off, and the pad and footing graded smooth. Mattoon, IL — serving a 60-mile radius.
📞 Call (217) 809-0779 Free EstimateAn out-of-service silo is the most dangerous thing left standing on most farmsteads. The hoops rust and slack, the staves crack and bulge, the roof hood works loose, and a tower that stood sixty years starts dropping chunks in the lot where the cattle and the kids are. When it's time, you want it down, hauled, and the ground left clean.
Brohez Trucking LLC handles silo demolition and silo removal across central Illinois — concrete-stave silos, poured and slipformed concrete silos, old tile silos, glass-lined sealed silos, all-steel silos, and everything hung on them: unloaders, chutes, blowers, pipe, roofs and hoods, and attached silo and feed rooms. Plus the pad, the ring footing, and the mass foundation underneath.
The Komatsu PC150LC handles the heavy work. The JCB mini and Takeuchi skid steer get into tight farm lots and clean up after. Dump trucks haul the concrete, tile, and steel to the right place. Silo standing to clean dirt is one job, one contractor.
Everything is mechanical demolition — no explosives, no implosion, and nobody climbing a cracked stave wall. On a farmstead with the house, the barn, and the bins all inside fall distance, controlled mechanical teardown is the only way to put the tower exactly where you want it.
If you're comparing silo demolition companies in central Illinois, here's what actually moves your number: what the silo is built from, how tall it is, how much room there is to drop it, whether there's spoiled feed still in the tube, and whether the pad and footing come out. We'll walk it and tell you straight.
Insured — Certificate of Insurance emailed before we roll in. You'll have it in writing before any equipment shows up on your ground.
Older silos and the rooms and chutes attached to them can carry asbestos in transite board, siding, roofing, gaskets, or pipe insulation. A silo is an ag-commercial structure — there's no single-family exemption here, so the survey and the IEPA 10-working-day notification are required. We coordinate both, and a licensed abatement contractor handles any removal before we demolish. We don't cut corners on it.
Talk to Levi — the man running the machine, not a call center. Text a photo of your silo and he'll get you a straight number.People use the words interchangeably, and it matters more than you'd think — because the two come down completely differently and price completely differently.
A grain bin is the wide, squat corrugated steel tank sitting on a concrete pad. It stored dry grain. It's bolted sheet steel with an aeration floor, and it comes apart fast — and because it's almost all steel, the scrap value takes a real bite out of the job.
A silo is the tall narrow tower. It stored silage or haylage wet, under pressure, which is why it's built heavy: concrete staves ringed in steel hoops, slipformed poured concrete, glazed tile, or glass-lined steel. It's taller, it's mostly mass rather than sheet steel, and on a concrete one there's far less scrap to offset with — most of the work is breaking it down and hauling it off.
Got both on the place? Take them in one mobilization. Bin work in detail is on our grain bin removal page →, and a country elevator is its own animal entirely — see grain elevator demolition →
The construction sets the sequence. It's the first thing we look at when we walk the job.
Concrete stave. The most common one in central Illinois — curved precast blocks stacked into a tube and squeezed together by steel hoops running up the outside. The whole thing depends on those hoops staying tight. Once they rust and slack off, the wall loses its compression, and that's when you get the cracking, the bulging, the lean, and the chunks coming loose. A stave silo is unpredictable, which is exactly why it gets taken down in a planned sequence and not shoved with a loader bucket.
Poured and slipformed concrete. A monolithic wall, heavier and more predictable than stave, but a lot more mass to break out and more truck time to haul. The hoops come out as scrap; the rest is concrete.
Glazed tile. The old ones. Hollow clay tile in a steel-hooped tube — brittle, often already failing, and they come apart in pieces. These are usually the oldest structures on the place and the ones most worth checking for asbestos in the attached room or chute.
Glass-lined and all-steel. Sealed oxygen-limiting silos and steel silos are more scrap-heavy, so the steel value offsets more of the job — we're straight about that in your number. A sealed silo needs extra care on the front end: it can hold spoiled feed and bad air, so it gets opened and cleaned out properly instead of just knocked over.
Every silo is different. The basics don't change.
We look at what it's built from, how far it's leaning, what's still inside it, and what's standing within fall distance. Then a straight number. No pressure.
Utility locates called, power to unloaders and blowers killed, and — because a silo gets no single-family exemption — the asbestos survey and IEPA 10-working-day notification handled first.
Spoiled silage and packed haylage cleaned out, then the unloader, chute, hood, blower, pipe, and any attached silo room come off and get set aside as scrap steel.
The Komatsu works the tower down in a planned sequence and drops it where we want it — away from the barn, the bins, and the fence line. Mechanical only, no explosives.
Staves, tile, and poured wall broken down to haulable size, hoops and steel separated for the scrapyard, and the debris loaded onto dump trucks for proper disposal.
Pad and ring footing out if they're part of the job, hole backfilled, footprint graded flat. Clean dirt — ready to farm, build, or seed down.
If it's old, out of service, and shouldn't be standing, we can probably help.
The classic hooped stave tower — cracked, bulging, or leaning — brought down in a controlled sequence and hauled off.
Slipformed monolithic silos broken down to haulable size, hoops and reinforcing pulled for scrap, concrete trucked off.
The old brittle ones that are already failing — taken apart safely instead of waiting for them to fall on their own.
Sealed oxygen-limiting and all-steel silos opened, cleaned out, and dismantled. More steel here, so more scrap offset.
Spoiled silage, crusted haylage, and years of packed feed cleaned out and hauled — before teardown, or on a silo you're keeping.
Unloaders, chute and ladder cages, hoods, blowers, and pipe disconnected, dropped safe, and pulled out as scrap steel.
The attached silo room, feed room, and lean-to cleared with the tower instead of left standing as a second job.
The dangerous ones. Don't climb it, don't push on it, don't let the cattle stand under it — call us and we'll plan it.
Concrete pad, ring footing, and the mass foundation under the silo broken out, hauled, backfilled, and graded usable again.
Silo plus a cluster of old bins and outbuildings in one mobilization — that's our farm building demolition work. One job, one contractor.
Real silo, bin, and farm demolition jobs from around central Illinois.
It depends on what the silo is built from, how tall it is, whether it's cracked or leaning, what's still inside it, how much room there is to drop it, and whether the pad and ring footing come out. A concrete-stave silo and a steel silo are different jobs entirely. There's some scrap steel in the hoops, unloader and chute that helps a little, though a concrete silo is mostly haul-and-dispose. We give free on-site estimates with a straight number. Call (217) 809-0779.
A grain bin is the wide, squat corrugated steel tank on a concrete pad — it stores dry grain and it's mostly bolted sheet steel, so it comes down fast and the steel carries real scrap value. A silo is the tall narrow tower, usually concrete stave, poured concrete, tile or glass-lined steel, and it stored silage or haylage wet. Silos are taller, heavier, built to different tolerances, and a concrete one is mostly mass to break out and haul rather than steel to scrap. Different sequence, different equipment time. Bin work is on our grain bin removal page.
Yes — concrete-stave silos are the most common ones we get called on in central Illinois. The staves are held in compression by steel hoops, and once those hoops rust and slack off, the wall loses what was holding it together. That's why old stave silos crack, bulge, lean, and drop chunks. We bring them down in a controlled sequence with the excavator, break the staves and the poured base to haulable size, pull the hoops out for scrap, and clean up the pad. Don't climb one and don't push on one with a loader — call us.
Yes. Glass-lined sealed silos, all-steel silos, and the older tile silos all come down. A steel silo is more scrap-heavy than a concrete one, so the steel value offsets more of the job and we're straight about that in your number. Sealed silos need a little extra care — an oxygen-limiting silo can hold spoiled feed and bad air, so it gets opened and cleaned out properly rather than just knocked over.
Yes. Silo cleaning and cleanout is part of the job when there's spoiled silage, crusted haylage, or years of packed feed still in the tube. It has to come out before a safe teardown, and we haul it off with the rest. If you want a silo cleaned out but left standing, we do that too — tell us at the estimate which one you're after.
Yes. The concrete pad, the ring footing under the wall, the unloading chute, and any attached silo room or feed room come out if the job includes them. We break the concrete out, haul it off, backfill the hole, and grade the spot so you can farm it, build on it, or seed it down.
It can. Older silos and the rooms and chutes attached to them can carry asbestos in transite board, siding, roofing, gaskets, or pipe insulation. A farm silo or any other ag-commercial or commercial structure does not get the exemption a single-family house does — an asbestos survey and the IEPA 10-working-day notification are real requirements, and we coordinate both. If there's asbestos to remove, a licensed abatement contractor takes it out before we demolish; that's not work we self-perform. We tell you up front what we find before anything comes down.
No. Everything we do is mechanical demolition — excavator, breaker, dozer, and dump trucks. No explosives, no implosion. On a farmstead with a house, barn, and bins inside fall distance, a controlled mechanical teardown is the safer way to put the silo exactly where we want it.
Yes, and it's usually the cheaper way to do it — one mobilization instead of two. A lot of our work is a whole farmstead at once: the silo, a cluster of old bins, the leg, and the outbuildings around them all cleared in one job, one contractor. Bin detail is on our grain bin removal page.
60-mile radius from Mattoon, IL — including Decatur, Champaign, Effingham, Charleston, Urbana, Sullivan, Tuscola, Shelbyville, Pana, and Terre Haute.
Brohez Trucking LLC delivers demolition across a 60-mile radius from Mattoon, IL — into Coles, Cumberland, Douglas, Shelby, Moultrie, Effingham, Edgar, Clark, Champaign, and Macon counties, plus over the line into Vigo County, Indiana. Pick your town below for local details, or call (217) 809-0779 for a free estimate anywhere in the radius.
Call us and we'll come look at the job. No pressure, no obligation — just a straight number, with any scrap steel value factored in.
(217) 809-0779 📞 Call For Free Estimate Send A MessageHours: Open daily, 7am–7pm · Mattoon, IL · 60-mile service radius