SUMNER FORK, Nebraska — Harland County Feed will stop using its outdoor shift horn for at least two weeks after former employees reported waking and preparing for an overnight shift that the mill eliminated nine years ago. The plant will use text messages and indoor lights to notify its 46 current employees while an air-system contractor inspects the horn.
The compressed-air horn normally sounds once at 5:45 a.m. and twice at 2:45 p.m., five minutes before the mill's two active shifts. Until 2017, it also sounded three short blasts at 2:10 a.m. for a cleanup crew that washed mixers and swept the pellet line before production. That crew was folded into the morning shift when the plant installed enclosed conveyors.
Retired maintenance worker Howard Rusk said he woke at 2:10 a.m. Thursday wearing his old work trousers and one boot. His second boot was beside the back door, and a lunch pail he had kept empty on a garage shelf was on the kitchen table. Rusk, 72, lives four miles from the mill and said he had not handled the pail since retiring in 2021.
Similar accounts came from eight other former employees over four nights. Two spouses said they heard no horn but woke when their partners turned on kitchen lights or began looking for work badges. A woman who left the mill in 2015 drove as far as the employee gate before realizing that her former shift had not been called. No crash or injury was reported.
Plant manager Corbin Hale said the mill's pressure log shows no air release at 2:10 a.m. Security video does not include useful sound, but the horn cone and supply valve remain visible throughout each night. Neither appears to move. Hale said the valve was chained shut Friday, and the same three-blast signal was reported early Saturday.
Current employees have not consistently heard the overnight signal. Of 31 workers who answered a company questionnaire, four heard three blasts at home and 11 slept through the period. The remaining 16 reported waking at 2:10 without hearing a noise. Several described checking the time before they remembered that their shifts began later.
Sleep can incorporate old routines when a familiar cue is expected, said occupational sleep researcher Kara Feld, who reviewed the questionnaire at the company's request. Former night workers may also wake at habitual hours for years after a schedule changes. Feld said that explanation does not establish why the episodes began during the same week among people who left the mill at different times.
The disruption has been practical as well as unusual. One retired worker missed a morning medical appointment after staying awake from 2:10 until dawn. Another used a personal day because he arrived at his current warehouse job four hours early. Harland County Feed has offered transportation costs to anyone who mistakenly drove to the plant.
An air-system contractor disconnected the horn reservoir Monday and removed the striker assembly. The company also asked former employees to record the time, whether they heard a sound and what they were doing when they became fully awake. Hale said the mill will not ask people to remain awake for a test and does not plan another outdoor signal until the inspection is complete.
Rusk slept at his daughter's house Monday night so she could observe him. At 2:10, she said, he sat upright without opening his eyes and called the cleanup crew by surname in the order workers once stood at the time clock. The list included men who worked different years and were never assigned together. Rusk lay down after the ninth name and did not remember speaking.
The last name belonged to Edwin March, who died in 2008. Mill payroll records place March on the day loading crew and do not show him on overnight cleanup. At 5:40 Tuesday morning, Hale found March's original brass badge resting faceup beneath the disconnected horn valve. The badge had been sealed in a framed retirement display in the front office when Hale locked the building Monday.