Managing a farm requires proper structures to house the machinery, animals, and other assets. Morton Buildings can help you set up these structures and accommodate various structural needs.
Let’s take a detailed look at their operations.
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Who Is Morton Buildings?
Founded by John Getz Sr., Morton Buildings started as a regular old hardware store in 1903 but transformed into a fence manufacturing company sometime after 1925.
With the farmer demographic family at the core of their customer base, they transitioned to manufacturing grain handling and storage products.
Soon after, in the late 1940s, Henry Getz – the founder’s grandson – felt it was a natural transition to add farm buildings to the business. The move started the transformation into the behemoth of a company known as Morton Buildings today.
The company is 100% employee-owned, resulting from the company’s employee stock-option plan structure. It means that customers have the assurance that the employees of Morton Buildings have the company’s best interests in mind.
The company practices vertical integration, which means that it controls every aspect of its supply chain as an entity. They have a manufacturing plant to produce the building components from raw materials.
Also, they use construction centers to serve as distribution points for logistical purposes and provide consulting services for their customers.
Morton Buildings Locations
Modern Buildings Inc. has construction centers in virtually every state. Here is a locator tool on their website that you can use to find a construction center closest to you.
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10 Reasons Why Morton Buildings Are Better Than The Competition
Morton Buildings stand out from their competition for various reasons, including their high-quality paint, post-frame design, and insulation. Every part of their buildings shows quality and expertise.
1. They Use Post Frame Construction
Morton Buildings utilize post-frame construction for all their structures. These are wood-framed buildings covered in various exteriors and have many advantages such as maximum efficiency, minor maintenance, speedy construction, and lower construction costs.
Post-frame buildings also handle larger weight loads than traditional stud wall construction.
Morton Buildings offers a variety of customization options, ranging from ceilings, cupolas, roof styles, doors, siding, and exterior steel panels. Clients can pick any of these options based on their desired style and budget.
2. They Pay Attention to the Details
The company uses exceptionally high-quality hydraulically compressed lumber for its primary construction, and the lower columns sunk directly into the foundation get treated with preservatives.
Due to the company’s confidence in constructing these columns, they offer a 50-year warranty which is a lot more than the standard 10-year builder’s warranty that most of their competitors offer.
They also roll-form their steel to make it 25% heavier than the steel used by most of the other builders. Their Hi-Rib design used in their panels also allows water to flow away from the fasteners and preserve the integrity of the building for extended periods.
3. They Have a Superior Paint System
Morton’s FLUOROFLEX® 1000 paint system ensures protection from the elements for your building. These layers will safeguard against red rust, ultraviolet rays, rain, and pollution that may otherwise degrade the quality of a building’s exterior paint coating.
Once again, Morton’s high consideration for aesthetics is on display as their paint system’s protection helps a building retain its curbside appeal.
Additionally, the company gives a 35-year warranty on the paint system covering fading, chalking, and peeling.
4. They Have an Energy Performer Insulation Package
Insulation systems for workshops and machine storage areas are not all built the same.
Morton’s energy performer insulation system ensures high energy efficiency, which will save money on your heating and cooling costs.
It allows for a 5 to 20-degree increase in internal temperature compared to the building’s exterior.
5. Their Morton Foundation System
You can build post-frame buildings on a monolithic slab, concrete columns, or over a basement.
The most common option for the Morton Foundation System is to have lower concrete columns in the ground. They utilize specially engineered concrete with more than double the compressive strength of typical concrete.
The use of concrete also eliminates the need for treatment, providing an eco-friendly option. These components come together to form the most durable building for your agricultural building needs.
6. They Source and Manufacture Their Own Materials
As a construction company, it would be tough for Morton buildings to stand behind their product and offer customers assurance if they could not guarantee the quality of materials used in construction.
Therefore, the company developed a vertical integration system, in which they produce their building components from raw materials.
Aside from quality control, vertical integration allows them to rein in their timelines and cost efficiencies. These savings pass on to the consumer, leading to lower building costs.
7. They Are Craftsmen
The implication with prefabricated buildings is that anyone can purchase a kit and put it together, but this is far from it. Craftsmanship makes a difference between a good building and a great building that would stand the test of time.
Morton’s foremen have 16 years of experience on average and work full-time constructing only Morton buildings. These seasoned professionals also undergo regular training to ensure they produce the best.
8. They Have the Industry’s Best Warranty
Morton warranties provide unparalleled peace of mind when compared to the competition. They offer 50 years snow warranties with no weight limit, five-year wind warranties with no velocity limits, and a 35-year paint warranty.
In addition, these warranties have easy-to-understand wording to inform the customer directly without causing any confusion.
9. They Are National but Have Local Expertise
Morton Buildings combine state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities with national reach. However, every building situation is unique, and natural conditions vary from state to state. To specialize their service offerings at the local level, Morton operates over 100 employee-owned construction centers spread across the US.
The local integration allows them to listen to your business needs and help you craft a building that suits your company’s style and budget. On top of that, the local integration allows them to provide financing options locally through their relationships with different financing institutions.
10. Full Staff from Beginning to End
Morton understands the value of having genuinely invested employees in the company’s well-being.
The culture of ownership (the company is 100% employee-owned through an employee stock option plan) means that everyone from construction crews to plant employees and delivery drivers work to exceed customer expectations.
The company couples this with excellent compensation packages for all their workers at different levels.
What Types of Buildings Does Morton Offer?
Morton Buildings offers various types of construction including rugged metal buildings, from residential to equestrian to commercial structures.
Farm
Morton’s agricultural farm buildings cover a broad spectrum, including farm storage, machine storage, insulated workshops, dairy & livestock facilities, hay storage and seed dealerships.
Farms, both large and small, typically require a combination of different heavy-duty machines to handle cultivation, spreading, plowing, raking, and other tasks.
Morton’s sound construction practices ensure a machine shed that is high quality and protects its expensive contents.
Morton’s dairy farm buildings allow the customer to have a self-contained unit with freestyle barns, calving barns, milking parlors, feed storage, sales barns, and an office area.
The company considers unique customer requirements to ensure that milking equipment placement results in the most efficient layout.
Like dairy buildings, Morton constructs livestock buildings with the health of your animals in mind.
In addition to building brand new, Morton offers their customers the option to add to existing facilities. As is the case with all their offerings, sales consultants plan pre-construction visits and help you choose a layout that works for your business.
Storage and Hobby
Garages make up a large percentage of Morton’s buildings constructed for customers. They range from small backyard car storage areas to more expensive mini-storage buildings.
The company typically constructs hobby buildings for a customer’s specific activities, interests, or past times.
Past customers have used them to house all sorts of collections such as antique motorcycles, vintage snowmobiles, military regalia, hunting trophies, and model trains. Families also use hobby buildings to have separate activity spaces for meditation, exercise, pottery, and art.
Morton’s workshop buildings have customizable layouts to account for the intended activity, and the company is well conversant with and has in the past built spaces for woodworking, taxidermy, auto mechanic work, welding, and restoration.
Also, the company has the expertise required to construct airplane hangars at both the hobby and commercial levels if you have an airplane.
Due to their large size and expansive, mostly bare interiors, aircraft hangars are notoriously tricky with climate control. The steel construction further complicates the equation, making it challenging to maintain constant temperatures inside.
Traditional hangars are also susceptible to condensation, which risks forming rust on your aircraft and its components.
Morton’s exclusive Energy Performer® insulation system coupled with naturally insulating wood-framing and high-quality steel exteriors work to mitigate these harmful effects.
Home & Cabin
Morton’s unique construction techniques carry over beautifully when constructing exquisite metal homes. Their clear-span construction eliminates load-bearing walls, resulting in high ceilings and open interior spaces that the customer can customize to their liking, including the very popular barndominium style homes.
A key advantage of using steel for your exterior is reducing maintenance costs. Morton provides this for the customers by using their proprietary Hi-Rib™ steel.
Many homeowners have had negative experiences during construction where they get blindsided by costs once the construction project is well underway.
The homeowner is usually at the mercy of the contractor since these changes are generally unavoidable depending on construction progress.
Morton strives to give the customers peace of mind and discusses how various factors impact the total cost at the very start of a project. These factors include building size, material cost, location, features, and site accessibility. Additionally, they provide financing options through pre-approved banks.
They even offer the customer an option to become their own general contractor and manage the home’s interior finish. The opportunity comes after Morton constructs the shell of the house or cabin.
Equestrian
The company constructs equestrian buildings with the priority of animal safety maintenance first. In addition to safety, Morton considers the horses’ comfort. If you like being closer to their equine companions, Morton Buildings offers the option to add living quarters to the stables.
Aside from the horses’ relaxation space, an equestrian ecosystem requires other components, such as quality hay storage buildings.
The staff at Morton Buildings have extensive experience in this field and will build reliable structures for supporting the ecosystem. These structures guarantee the protection of horse feed from roof leaks, storm runoff, and excessive humidity that would otherwise compromise the quality of the hay.
Morton Buildings can construct a modern, stylish, and comfortable facility that allows for indoor riding at the customer’s request.
In a commercial context, an indoor riding arena allows for the year-round operation of the business without seasonal weather interruptions. These spaces can also be used for training, jumping, and riding therapy.
Other important considerations for equestrian stables are extra expansion room, loading and unloading access, water supply, and manure disposal, all of which Morton considers while planning for the structure.
Commercial
Morton buildings provide one of the industry’s most professional experiences when it comes to the construction of commercial buildings. They strive to build excellent physical structures while also integrating customer suggestions and customer satisfaction into these projects.
The projects are broken down into phases so that the customer isn’t overwhelmed and has the option to participate in, re-evaluate and commit to one construction phase at a time.
The most common approach for delivering construction projects involves the two steps of designing and building. Most contractors use this method, but unfortunately, it does not allow for much customer input despite it being crucial to the overall successful completion of the project.
Morton Building reimagined this approach and developed the designBUILD process, which places the customer at the center of the project. The method utilizes four phases: concept, design, build, and completion.
Another key differentiator between Morton and their competitors is that this extended, integrated customer-involved design process is not overpriced. Their design fees are nominal and part of the overall package.
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Concept Phase
The concept phase involves an initial site layout detailing the arrangement of rooms, initial code reviews, and renderings development to give a rough idea of the completed project. After this phase, the company sends a written scope of work and transparent cost estimates to the customer.
Design Phase
During the design phase, Morton conducts a geotechnical investigation to assess the soil quality and recommends the building’s best foundation. After that, the structural drawings and civil plans are detailed out and certified by an appropriate body.
Build Phase
Next comes the build phase, where responsibilities get divided, and construction management starts by coordinating different schedules while maintaining a safe working environment for construction staff. Testing and inspection occur in this phase to meet the customer’s quality requirements.
Completion Phase
The owner and the contractor ensure that previously agreed-upon specifications have been met during the completion phase. Closeout and warranty documents will be signed at this phase, signaling the end of the project.
Community
Morton has built thousands of large-scale community use buildings across the country. These include fire stations, EMS facilities, golf clubs, municipal buildings, libraries, markets, school recreational centers, churches, and park pavilions.
They offer end-to-end planning and logistics services for these projects, and in some cases, they will take a customer’s plans drawn by an outside architect and see them through to completion.
FAQs
Are you still having doubts about Morton Buildings? These answers should clarify everything for you.
What Is Morton Buildings Warranty?
The Morton Buildings warranty is clear-cut above the options offered by their competitors. They cover paint failure, which most other contractors do not.
The paint failure warranty lasts for 35 years, and during this period, Morton Buildings will replace or repair metal roofing and side panels where flaking, peeling, or chalking of paint occurred.
They offer an additional 20-year warranty for metal roofing and panels that exhibit corrosion resulting in red rust visible from casual observation.
Furthermore, Morton’s innovative truss setting techniques allow for a solid wall-to-roof connection with superior resistance to high winds. These techniques enable them to extend a 5-year wind warranty to customers with no wind velocity limit.
Lastly, Morton Buildings provides a snow load warranty to their customers for 50 years.
What Is The Morton Advantage?
The Morton Advantage is a combination of strategies that Morton Buildings has developed to ensure that all their buildings withstand the test of time. These strategies have been developed during their 100-plus years of learning and unlearning.
They manufacture their own materials to ensure the utmost quality and understand that a building is only as good as the people who construct it. Additionally, they invest heavily in the training of their staff.
The last component of the Morton Advantage is their transparent, long-lasting, customer-focused warranties.
How Much Do Morton Buildings Cost
The cost of Morton buildings is affected by the size, geography, materials, location, site accessibility, features, local codes, and construction timeline. Thus, a Morton building will cost anywhere from $75 to $125 per square foot to construct if you consider all these factors.
Does Morton Buildings Have Financing Options?
Although Morton buildings do not offer financing or lending internally, they have relationships with multiple institutions with financial plans available for different building styles.
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