At 93, Sid Moller Considered
A Legend By Fellow Cattlemen

By Colleen Schreiber

AGUA PRIETA, Sonora, Mexico – At 93, Sid Moller refers to himself as "an old has-been that never really ever has been."

But anyone whose been in the cattle business for any length of time knows that isn’t the case. Instead, cattlemen of today’s generation often refer to Sid Moller as a legend, one who has earned respect for his honesty, integrity and knowledge of the cattle industry.

His experiences are numerous and varied. Moller has done more than most people think about doing in a lifetime, much less accomplishing. He worked on the screwworm eradication committee in California and also in Sonora, Mexico. He gathered wild horses off ranches all across Mexico, and wild cattle out of the Big Bend when they were in the process of making it into a national park.

"Those cattle would not drink out of a trough in a pen, and some of them starved to death right there in the pens," Moller recalls. "There were bulls that were seven and eight years old that didn’t have a scratch on them, as well as a lot of cows and grown calves without a brand."

Moller was a close personal friend of presidents Reagan and Bush as well as consummate politician Jim Baker. He worked on the Republican National Convention to help get Ronald Reagan elected to the White House, having become acquainted with Reagan before he was governor of California. Later in their friendship, Moller often hunted with Governor Reagan and later President Reagan on ranches in Mexico.

Moller has ranched along the Gulf Coast where he was raised, as well as in South Texas, far West Texas, in Oklahoma and in Arkansas, as well as on five or so different ranches in Mexico, but his cattle trading deals stretched much further and wider.

Perhaps most cattlemen know of Sid Moller because of his ties to a feedyard out west. In the 23 or so years that he ran Union Feed Yards in Blythe, California, Moller handled more than two million head of cattle. He figures he averaged $5 a head profit.

Though his lifetime accomplishments center around the cattle industry, Moller’s resume includes a stint as a spy for the U.S. government. It was during World War II, about a year after he and wife Jessie moved to Mexico. The couple had taken off to Mexico after becoming disenchanted with the government when condemnation proceedings took away the ranch they were operating near Lake Jackson.

It was no secret that Moller was not fond of his own government, and he let that be known in Mexico. Then one day on one of those rare occasions when he happened back across the border at El Paso, a lieutenant stopped him and told him that the head of Army intelligence requested a visit with him.

"I was scared, because I had cussed the government so," Moller recalls. "I agreed to see him. The first thing he said to me was, ‘Now Sid, you’re not near as mad at Uncle Sam as you think you are.’ I didn’t know what he was getting at, and then he showed me a telegram from General Bill Sterling, who was a personal friend of mine. He had suggested to the army to catch me and send me back into Mexico for Army intelligence."

His first assignment involved infiltrating the home of a German, Don Maximo Von Knoop, who was living in Coahuila at the time. German submarines were coming into the Gulf of Mexico right off the coast of Campeche for refueling, and the U.S. government suspected that Von Knoop had a part in this.

It was a perfect setup, Moller says. Von Knoop had heard through the grapevine how upset Moller was with his own government, so it wasn’t difficult to get the German to loosen his tongue. Under the guise of looking for a ranch of their own in Mexico, Sid and Jessie finagled an invitation to live with the German family.

Over a period of a month or so, Moller kept meticulous notes of all the conversations he had with Von Knoop. He got his lucky break one day while waiting on the German in his office. In the desk drawer there he found several rolls of film. Guessing that they were of some importance, Moller pocketed the film and immediately had it sent to the U.S. government. As it turned out, the film contained aerial photographs of U.S. military bases. Within a weeks’ time, the ranch was taken away from the German and he was imprisoned in Mexico City.

In another spy operation sometime later, Moller was commissioned by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to go to Mexico City and gather information about a Russian operation.

Sid Moller has lived through more severe drouths and bad breaks in the cattle market and in the economy in general than he cares to remember. Moller likes to say that he has over 100 years of cattle experience: 10 years with his dad, 50 years with Joe Espy, a long-time friend and West Texas rancher, and 45 to 50 years of his own.

Moller first became acquainted with Joe Espy in 1923 at a meeting of the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association. Moller was just 17.

"Mr. Espy was already getting some age on him, but he liked to visit with young people," Moller recalls. My brother, Adrian and me got interested in talking to him about that West Texas country because we always wanted to leave the Gulf Coast area."

When Espy invited the two young men out for a visit, they readily accepted. The problem, Moller says, was that they didn’t have money for a train ticket, not to mention that they didn’t want to go off and leave two good horses. The solution was an "immigrant" car; the Railroad allowed passengers to ride in freight cars free of charge.

"We put our horses in one end, and we slept in the other end. It took three or four days to get there," Moller says.

They got off in Alpine and rode their horses the rest of the way across Kokernot country to Powell Mountain Ranch, where Espy resided. It took a good three days of riding.

He and his brother went to work for Espy for $1 a day breaking horses, building fence and doing the routine ranch work. His brother went home after a short spell, but Sid stayed on.

Espy heard about 300 steers for sale across the mountain and he suggested to Moller that he might want to buy them. Knowing he had no money, Espy offered to put up $3 a head for them and then they would receive them the following spring. In the spring they received the cattle, turned around and sold them, and made $10 a head profit, Moller recalls. That was the start of their friendship, which spanned well over 50 years. Espy died in 1975 at the age of 95, "and he was still bright as a silver dollar," Moller says.

He worked for Espy for a year before the call of his heart brought him home to the Gulf Coast. He married his long-time sweetheart, Jessie Stevens, in May 1929.

Born September 28, 1906, at Danbury, Texas, in Brazoria County between Angleton and Alvin, Moller was given birth in the cattle business, so to speak. His father and his father’s father had an extensive operation along the Gulf Coast in the day when it was still all open range.

Moller was just a young tot, but he remembers that there wasn’t a fence from the Santa Fe Railroad north of Alvin all the way to Freeport. At one time he and his family were running some 1500 head of mother cows, which he referred to as "common" cattle.

"It was open country, so we never paid any attention to how many acres it takes to run a cow," he says.

The cattle grazed the high country, what Moller called the sage grass country, during the spring, summer and fall months, and then they were herded down to the coast for the winter.

Moller never strayed far from ranching in all his years. In his early days he partnered with his father and some with his brother, and he always had more than a handful of his own deals going. Even after Espy offered him an opportunity to run a feedlot in California, ranching was still in his blood and he never totally left his first love.

Moller went to work at Union Feed Yard in Blythe, California, on September 28, 1953. Espy had become involved with the feedlot when he bailed out Adolph Miller, then the owner of Union Packing Company and also the owner of Union Feed Yards; Miller had run into some legal problems during the war.

Espy told Miller to put the feedyard in the hands of someone who could make some money. A corporation was formed which included a few of Espy’s compadres, old West Texas cowmen like himself, Jerry Puckett and Worth Evans. The man he had in mind to run the show, the man who could make the operation some money, was his long-time friend Sid Moller.

Moller started out at the bottom, but within four months, he had replaced the manager, and after another six months he was made president of the company. Moller was told that all he had to do was buy cattle, and for 10 or 15 years he did just that — in a big way.

"A feedlot is hungry for cattle," Moller remarks. "It needs them, and it’s a constant need. When you’re not buying, you’re looking."

There was a constant flourish of building going on in those first couple of years, and in no time at all the capacity at Union had increased from a mere 3000 head to 50,000 head. It was the biggest feedyard in the world at that time, Moller says.

One of his greatest assets was his wide array of contacts. Just as soon as word got out that Sid Moller was in charge, cattle began pouring into Blythe from every direction. Moller bought anywhere from a carload of cattle to a trainload at a time, generally from 250 to 3000 head in a shot. The biggest one-time purchase he remembers was 6000 head of Mexican steers.

"There wasn’t a cowmen in the state of Chihuahua, Sonora or Coahuila that I didn’t know," Moller says, "and I don’t think there was a single ranch that I didn’t buy cattle off at some point in my 25 years at Blythe. I crossed cattle at every crossing from Tijuana to Matamoros."

Moller had a contract with Manuel Cubillas, his ranching partner since 1963, to receive all of his steers and others, some 21,000 head a year, and that was just one of the big deals he had tied up.

The ranch, which Moller had interest in up until a few years ago, is located at Selma near Hermosillo. One of the first things he and Cubillas did was rootplow the mesquite and reseed the area to buffelgrass. That, along with an intensive grazing system, allowed the partners to increase their carrying capacity from 1000 head of 350 to 400 pound calves to 4200 calves.

Mexican cattle, he says, were good to feed because they could be bought so cheaply, mainly because the ranchers down there didn’t have anywhere else to go with their cattle.

Looking for a quality feeder calf, Moller says, is a story in itself. "It’s just like looking at a gal," he explains. "When she walks in, you know what kind of girl she is. There’s a little bit of difference, of course. Horses and girls run together. A man who can tell a good horse can pick out a good girl, and a man who can tell a good horse can pick out a good calf."

Then he adds, "the best kind of cattle to feed was them that made money."

He preferred or at least liked a little better a crossbred Hereford with a little Brahman.

There’s skill in negotiating a trade as well, and Moller obviously had that skill.

"First thing, be darn sure you have the money," he remarks. "There’s a lot behind just borrowing money. You have to know how to approach a banker. Once you have your money, then you have to know how to talk to that rancher. You want to train yourself to be liberal and not cheat that rancher, and then he’ll call you back for another sale. If you cheat a rancher one time, you’re through unless you’re both cheaters."

During his heyday, Moller received cattle from 16 other states across the nation, as well as from Mexico. Feeder cattle came from Texas and fat cattle were loaded back. When Moller first came to Union, the feedlot industry hadn’t yet made its way to the Panhandle of Texas. Back then, most Texas beef was still grass fed, and Choice beef had to be shipped into Texas, either from the Midwest, Iowa or Kansas, or from out west. At one time Union even shipped fat cattle to Canada, Moller says.

One of the best decisions that Moller made early on was to buy several thousand acres of irrigated farmland around the feedyard in the Palo Verde Valley. This enabled them to raise a lot of their own feed, both milo and alfalfa, which was used in their green chop program for lightweight cattle. The corn and grain had to be shipped in from the Midwest. The feedyard had to put in their own spur line off the Santa Fe, which allowed them to have grain and cattle shipped right to their back door.

The ensilage pit was made by placing two 825-foot long stacks of hay 25 feet high and 90 feet apart. After curing for several months, the silage turned a golden brown.

"The way we knew when a silage pile was ready and cured was when we could ride a horse off of it without sinking in," Moller explains.

Ranches back then didn’t have access to scales like they do today, so they had no way of knowing what their cattle weighed until after they arrived at the feedyard.

During his tenure at Union, Moller initiated what he refers to as the "scale system," which entailed buying cattle by the pound instead of by the head.

"I could pay more for a 300 pound calf than I could a 600 pound calf because I could put cheaper gain on him before he went into the feedyard," Moller explains.

Calves weighing 300 to 400 pounds went to the growing yards first, where they were fed green chop for four to five months or until they reached a weight of about 600 to 650 pounds. Generally, calves were expected to gain a pound and a half to two pounds a day on this particular ration, Moller says.

From there they went to the feedyard, to what Moller refers to as a "tonnage" yard where they generally gained up to three pounds a day. The cattle were shipped at a finished weight of 1000 to 1050 pounds. In those days cattle could be fed for about 35 to 40 cents a pound. When at full capacity, Union would sell some 1500 head of fat cattle a week.

Because of the extreme summer temperatures, most of the work was done in the morning and late evening hours. All shipping was done during the morning, and shaded pens were a must. Cattle were fed once a day. Initially, six feed trucks were in use at the yards, but Moller eventually switched to trailers because his hands didn’t like to get in and out of air-conditioned cabs.

There were 125 people on the payroll at Union Feed Yard.

"The only thing I knew how to do was handle cattle, to buy and sell cattle," Moller says. "I hired the rest done."

In the 25 years that Moller was at Union Feedyards, the best year, he says, was the year he sold out. That was 1977.

"We could see the handwriting on the wall," he recalls, "and we got out of there just right."

The feedlot industry had reached the Texas Panhandle. They were raising the grain right there, the cattle were there and the big packing houses weren’t far behind.

"Cattle got high, feed got high, and it looked like we were going to stop making money," Moller says. "We couldn’t compete with the Texas boys."

Espy was ill at the time. He had already sold his interest to Moller and Evans, but Espy was still Moller’s confidante.

"We had 14,000 head of cattle of our own on feed, plus 35,000 to 40,000 in the feedlot," Moller recalls. "When I went to see Mr. Joe in the hospital he told me, ‘Sid if you don’t go to getting rid of those cattle and get rid of that feedlot, you’re going to be the brokest Texas cowboy in California.’"

After arriving back home and sharing the story with his wife, he immediately went to his office and started calling every packer, and within less than a week he had every steer, except 1600 steers that one of his partners decided to hold, contracted out of the feedlot for 75 cents a pound fat over their scales.

Two weeks after he contracted those cattle, the market started breaking, and in less than a month the market had broken completely. The cattle he had contracted for 75 cents were bringing 35 cents when the packers started taking delivery. The packers were good on their contract, even though it broke two of them, Moller says.

His partner, who could have made $25 a head if he had sold out, ended up losing $100 a head.

Moller says money never meant anything to him, but he worked hard at making the company money. The best deal he ever made was not on cattle but on wheat. He basically speculated on 30,000 tons of wheat, and in the end the dividends paid off in a big way.

"I had gone to a meeting where I heard from Earl Butz, the Secretary of Agriculture at the time, that Russia was going to come in and buy lots and lots of wheat. No one believed him, but it sure put me to thinking," Moller recalls. "Our valley was full of wheat, and none of it had been harvested yet, much less sold."

He caught a plane home immediately, and the next morning he went down to the café where 25 of the largest farmers congregated to drink coffee. He simply started offering to buy their wheat. He was making out contracts on paper napkins left and right. He contracted everything he could get, some 30,000 tons, for $74, and put it all in storage.

Luck was in his favor. Butz’s predictions came to pass. Pillsbury ran out of wheat and they came to Moller in dire straits.

"I told them I wanted $148 a ton, just twice what I had paid for it," Moller says. "They just laughed and walked out. In less than a week, General Mills came to me and I told them the same thing, and they laughed and left. In about another two weeks, Pillsbury came back and we struck a deal. They wanted to treat 50 bushels to see if it would work for what they wanted. It did, so they ended up contracting all 15,000 tons of the wheat, which was what I had left. I had fed up the rest."

After Uncle Sam, Moller netted the feedyard a check for $1,275,000.

In 1977 after Moller sold out, he and Jessie moved to Agua Prieta, where they lived out their retirement years and where Sid still resides today. Moller lost his beloved Jesse last year. She was his constant companion for 68 years, and Moller credits her as the key to what successes he’s had in his life.

Because money never meant much to the couple but helping the less fortunate did, the Mollers have been helping support an orphanage in Agua Prieta since moving there. With their donations they’ve been able to put in a dormitory, kitchen, dining room, electric water heater, and a big boiler, among other improvements. It’s one of his pet projects that keeps him going strong today.

Moller still follows the cattle market closely, though he doesn’t have his pulse on it like he used to. He keeps up with it mainly through old acquaintances and by reading trade publications. He often counsels some of his young friends who he’s watched grow up and who are now struggling to make their way in the ranching business.

As one such friend said, "People respect Sid Moller. He’s taught me about friendship, honesty, morality and a lot about life in general."