"We all get in here every day and sit and gossip," he said, laughing. Shafto, 65, said that's one thing that won't change just because he retired last week from Trotter Fertilizer after almost 38 years of hauling fuel to area farmers.

"It's been a really good place to work for. They've treated me really well," Shafto said. "I'm still going to work for Trotter some part time, hauling fertilizer and fuel in the summer if I can still hack it. I've got diabetes now, and I get so cold that this winter I won't do much of anything."

Shafto's co-workers are throwing a retirement party in his honor Tuesday at the service station.

"I just think of all the different generations he's gone through and all the farms he has hauled to. He used to haul to my dad, and now it's my brothers taking over," said Angie Baillie, bookkeeper and secretary at Trotter.

"I came here five years ago, and I'm not from here," Manager Dean Smith said. "He got me going and introduced me and made me feel welcome in the community. He helped get me established as a businessperson here."

Shafto said he started in 1971 when he was 28 years old, back when Agri Co-op owned the business. A gallon of regular gas cost 25 cents, and a gallon of diesel was 11 cents.

"I was working for Lammers Land Leveling, and this job come up. Lloyd Lammers told me I should take it because it would be a good job. When he told me to, I took it, and that's the only place I've been since then, is here," he said.

Shafto hauled an average of 900,000 gallons of fuel every year, and some years he hauled more than 1 million gallons.

"I've met a lot of nice people doing that job, hauling fuel out in the country," he said. "I know just about every one of them farmers for about 25 miles each way."

"This community will really miss him," Smith said. "During the ice storm, he monkey-rigged things to get people gas for their generators so they could stay afloat during that."

Shafto said he will remember the severe ice storms of January 2007 as the worst winter of his 38 years.

"I pumped a lot, over 1,000 gallons in 5-gallon cans, so people would have gas to go on," he said. "That was the roughest year of all of them. That ice was thick on the ground, and you couldn't stand up or anything, it was so slick."

"He basically kept the town lit during those few weeks," Baillie said.

Shafto said he is looking forward to his retirement party, which comes about a week after his 65th birthday.

"I kind of figured they might have one," he said. "That will be nice. I'll get to meet a few of the people I've come to know over the years."

He said he is also looking forward to retirement and plans to spend more time hunting and fishing with his grandchildren and attending their school sporting events. "They're the ones that keep me going now," he said laughing.

"And I'll still come in here to check things out and have my coffee," he said.