The birth of Haas Warehousing was in 1900 when Charles E. Haas, Sr. in partnership with Anheuser Busch, constructed an ice manufacturing facility on North Washington Street in Neosho, Mo. This facility produced 50 tons of ice per day and delivered product to both industries and homes. It also provided product to the railroads to refrigerate thousands of rail cars of strawberries and other food products.
After Charles’ youngest son, Ralph Arthur (Bob), joined the business in 1941, refrigerated storage and blast freezing capability was developed. A blast freezer was constructed on Coler Street in 1948 which was expanded and became an egg breaking and processing plant operated by Kraft Foods in the early 1950’s. This facility continues to be an egg processing operation today.
Additional refrigerated facilities were developed and operated over the next several years serving numerous customers such as Blue Star Foods, Carnation, Cudahy, Kraft, Schreiber Foods and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. After Bob’s son, Ralph J. (Jeff) joined the business in 1968, a refrigerated facility was constructed on North High Street and expanded in 1978. That facility is now 67,000 sq. ft. Also, in the 1960’s the business expanded into non-refrigerated warehousing with the acquisition of a 88,000 sq. ft. facility located on Industrial Drive. That facility has been expanded and is now 187,000 sq. ft. Numerous customers have been served at this location including Carnation, Sunbeam, La-Z-boy, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Wal-Mart, O’Sullivan Industries and Nutra-Blend.