Adam DeGroot

Founder/CEO of DeGroot Logistics. Produce trader. Obsessed with Ag Commodity/Transportation markets. DeGroot's Vegetable Farms | FreightSOS | Dock411

[Adam DeGroot @adegroot88]

As wild as we think the current economic regime is (in light of the 4.2% inflation print today), it's a good time to remember this country was built in much crazier times.

There was a 25 year period where banks issued their own currency in the mid 19th century.

[Steven Sinofsky @stevesi]

@tomwarren Have you heard of the three envelopes parable?

[Adam DeGroot @adegroot88]

🐐🐐🐐

[FreightCaviar 🚛 @freightcaviar]

Jordan Graft shares his thoughts on the challenges and opportunities created by a hot market, and how Highway is working to bring greater transparency and truth to the industry.

Full episode on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify.

[Adam DeGroot @adegroot88]

@GrainStats Google David Ricardo ffs🤦‍♂️

[Chicago History ™️ @Chicago_History]

Jim Cornelison blessed Chicago & The World with The National Anthem ahead of the USMNT-Germany sendoff match this Afternoon.

As always, CHILLS!

#ChicagoHistory ☑️

[U.S. Marines @USMC]

Marines on D-DAY

#OTD, Allied forces launched the D-Day invasion of Normandy, a decisive turning point in World War II. Though frequently overshadowed by the Pacific campaign, the Marine Corps made vital contributions to this monumental assault.

Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, the majority of Marines were deployed to the Pacific. However, specialized cadres remained to provide crucial amphibious warfare expertise to Allied forces in Europe for the duration of the war. These amphibious trainings would eventually make significant contributions to major amphibious assaults throughout the European Theater of Operations, including Operation Torch in North Africa in 1942, Operation Husky in Sicily in 1943, and Operation Overlord in 1944.

Beginning in 1942, numerous Marines were embedded with Allied command staffs to advise on and coordinate major amphibious landings. Key figures like Col. Robert O. Bare served as leading strategists for naval gunfire and training and went ashore on D-Day itself. Marines actively supported the grueling assault on Omaha Beach, manning the 5-inch guns off warships like the USS Texas to provide critical fire support for the troops storming ashore.

Other Marines scanned the skies above while manning anti-aircraft guns ensuring the German air force was kept at bay. In total a little over 800 Marines participated in Operation Overlord on D-Day with approximately a squad of Marines landing on Omaha Beach itself, helping to transport the wounded and captured prisoners of war, and coordinate fires for the USS Texas’s 14-inch heavy guns.

✍️ (U.S. Marine Corps graphic by Lance Cpl. Kirsten Glaze)

#DDay #USMC #WWII

[Chicago Bears @ChicagoBears]

Statement from Chairman George H. McCaskey and President & CEO Kevin Warren:

[Sam @Dollarydoos_]

Bit of a pox on both your houses with this take. No, right wingers, Dem led American cities are not cesspools. And no, left wingers, America under Trump is not a dystopian nightmare.

[Adam DeGroot @adegroot88]

@BeaglTech Compute prices will be the tell. The keep rising, data center build out economics will improve, they crash and the build out will hit a brick wall.

[Nikita Bier @nikitabier]

Commentary is one of the most important pillars of X. And sometimes the best way to share your thoughts is with video.

Today we're launching a whole new way to make them:
React with Video

Tap the repost button and start recording with green screen, split screen, or picture-in-picture.

Now available on iOS

[Adam DeGroot @adegroot88]

Not weird, the list of BRK subsidiaries that benefit from the data center build out is substantial. Berkshire Hathaway Energy, BNSF, etc. Have to imagine they have an insane amount of quality transactional data on data center economics.

[Wild West Capital @BuffaloBillCo]

I’m a $goog bull, but Berkshire yoloing into an $80B capital raise during peak AI exuberance to finance more data center CapEx for a technology that may disrupt the core business and/or is structurally far lower margin is just too weird

[Adam DeGroot @adegroot88]

@FreightAlley This, but 6am

[Justine Moore @venturetwins]

AGI has been achieved externally

[Adam DeGroot @adegroot88]

"Japan tariffs Simplot's potatoes so he lobbies the Reagan Administration to tariff Japanese semiconductors (in 1986, they apply a 100% tariff on $300m of Japanese chips)"

Also the game 😂

[Adam DeGroot @adegroot88]

"Become the lowest cost producer of the highest quality product"

That's the game.

[Trung Phan @TrungTPhan]

J.R. Simplot had the craziest career pivot ever. 

Born in 1909, he made billions with Idaho potatoes (1/2 of McDonald's fries) then helped build the now $1T Micron Technology in 1980 (a peak stake of 40%). 

> Leaves home at 14 years old
> His mom gives him $80
> Takes the money and buys interest-bearing paper ("scrip") at 50% of face value from local Idaho teachers who need cash
> Borrows $600 from the bank using scrip as collateral 
> Buys 600 pigs 
> Finds a new way to make pig slop (boil potato scraps and horse meat) that make his pigs fatter than other farms and earns $7,000 in 1923
> Never graduates high school and goes full potato entrepreneur
> Pioneers potato-farming technology including automatic sorters in 30s (makes his first million), dehydrators in 40s (adapts onion dehydrating tech for potatoes and feeds US army in WWII) and freezing in 60s (develops new method and provides Ray Croc with 1/2 of his frozen french fry needs for McDonald's in mid-1960s)

Makes his first billion with McDonald’s and drives around Boise with a license plate that reads "SPUD" (incredible).

Then pivots:

> In 1980, he's approached to fund Micron Technology, which wants to build a DRAM memory chip fab in Boise
> Simplot know nothing about computers but realizes that DRAM -- due to Japanese competition -- has become a commodity market that requires massive capital investments with razor-thin margins...just like potatoes 
> Invests $1m for 40% of Micron and spends millions more building a fab
> The only way to win = “become the lowest-cost producer of the highest-quality product”
> Micron capitalizes on Idaho's cheap energy/land and innovates manufacturing techniques to efficiently produce chips at scale 
> Japan tariffs Simplot's potatoes so he lobbies the Reagan Administration to tariff Japanese semiconductors (in 1986, they apply a 100% tariff on $300m of Japanese chips)
> By mid-1990s, the three largest players in DRAM are Micron Technology, SK Hynix and Samsung (South Korean firms entered market after Japanese firms exited)
> Simplot owns ~20% of Micron and becomes a semiconductor billionaire 
> He's asked about PCs during the Windows 95 launch but turns out he's never owned a computer and says "Hell, boy, I came before the goddamn typewriter.”

Today, Micron Technology is a $1 trillion firm and one of Boise's largest employers (Micron, SK Hynix and Samsung still own >90%of the memory market).

Simplot passes away in 2008.

Lived almost a century going from potato chips to semiconductor chips. Unreal.

[Adam DeGroot @adegroot88]

@maybedanielleee @LauraLoomer @SOSDiegoMorales How do you derive the ethnicity from USDOT registrations?

[Adam DeGroot @adegroot88]

@trengriffin Mauboussin is a proper guide these days 👌

[Mitchell G. Klingenberg @MGKlingenberg]

“We’re fortunate in being Americans. At least we don’t step on the underdog. I wonder if that’s because there are no ‘Americans’ — only a stew of immigrants; or if it’s because the earth from which we exist has been so kind to us and our forefathers; or if it’s because the ‘American’ is the offspring of the logical European who hated oppression and loved freedom beyond life? Those great mountains and tall timber; the cool deep lakes and broad rivers; the green valleys and white farmhouses; the air, the sea and wind; the plains and great cities; the smell of living — all must be the cause of it. …

“And yet, with all that, we can’t get away from the rest. … For each of us who wants to live in happiness and give happiness, there’s another different sort of person wanting to take it away. Those people always manage to have their say, and Mars is always close at hand. We know how to win wars. We must learn now to win peace. Stick our noses in the affairs of the world. Learn politics as well as killing. Make the world accept peace whether they damn well like it or not. Here is the dove, and here is the bayonet. …

“If I ever have a son, I don’t want him to go through this again, but I want him powerful enough that no one will be fool enough to touch him. He and America should be strong as hell and kind as Christ. That’s the only insurance until human nature becomes a tangible thing that can be adjusted and made workable.”

Letter of LT Thomas Meehan III, CO, E Company, 506th PIR, 101st Airborne Division, to his wife, May 1944.

KIA 6 JUNE 1944

[Delicious Tacos @Delicious_Tacos]

“It’s my honor to announce that the true pope is working with us from Avignon”

[Danny Deraney @DannyDeraney]

Every year, I share this video of French caretakers who take sand from Omaha Beach in Normandy, and scrub them into the letters to give them the gold coloring.

They do this for all 9,386 US soldiers who died.

France also gave us this land as American soil. #MemorialDayWeekend