QUIMBY, Iowa | Denny Rupp laughs about the notion his head has been on a virtual swivel while driving around Northwest Iowa the past three decades.
"I did scrapping the whole time I farmed," says Rupp, 68. "And you know what? It's never been a day of work for me."
Rupp, a native of Maryhill, Iowa, just west of Cherokee, served in the Vietnam War in 1968-69, a cog in the U.S. Army Artillery. Upon his return home, he farmed for a short time before moving near Quimby in 1973 to start farming on his own. He kept at it until 1990.
And the whole time, Rupp's eyes hunted the local landscape, searching for machines collecting dust in the groves around Cherokee County. There were times he'd simply pull in a driveway and ask the farmer if he'd like the grove cleaned up.
"My head was on a swivel for iron," says Rupp, a hunter of a different stripe.
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Most of what he found, he cut up and sold. Oh, he saved some of the more interesting components. He and his wife, Sherry Rupp, also hit more than their share of area auctions and sales. He collected old tools and tractor parts, for example. Her market involved plate ware and children's books, to name a few.
"I had a good name in Cherokee and then I moved up here (to Quimby) and I'd tell a guy that I could clean out his grove, and he'd ask, 'Will I get paid?'
"At first, it was pretty deflating," he says.
Rupp established his name and his Willow Road Surplus in a matter of a few short years. Soon, he was scouring the countryside in search of iron opportunities.
"Every piece of iron that has come through this place has come through these two hands," he says. "I separate the brass from the iron, the copper from the aluminum, you name it."
He'll sometimes toss a few screws or nuts in a bucket. And, in time, that bucket would fill to overflowing.
He never restores a found piece of machinery. That's not his thing. His brother, Roger Rupp, is in to restoration.
Rupp's sense of humor and his passion comes through on his business card. "Into destruction, not construction," it says.
Rupp's largest project came at Cherokee a few years ago. Rupp was challenged to tear out the old livestock receiving area at a packing plant. He chopped up the old rendering site at the plant and cut up 13 rail cars, each weighing 52,000 pounds.
Not only that, he tore up the rails and the railroad ties.
"I scrapped and sold it all," he says. "We cut it up in 18-by-3-foot chunks," he says.
Nearly 20 years ago, Rupp took a call from a businessman in Kingsley, Iowa, who sought to have a farm site cleaned up. Rupp traveled west and did the work. While he was there, a Kingsley farmer from just up the road stopped by and requested Rupp's salvage skill.
The word apparently spread about the man working solo with his John Deere 4020, carting away all these hunks of metal.
"By about mid-July, I was on a farm south of Moville, Iowa, still working," Rupp says with a laugh. "I finally had to tell people there, 'No.' I had to get home and I'd let things go around here."
Rupp is now letting go of his Willow Road Surplus southeast of Quimby. He and Sherry have decided to downsize and will move to Cherokee. Denny will open a smaller shop and call it Spring Lake Metals.
Rupp will "bag" his Willow Road Surplus following a retirement auction on Nov. 14.
