Our Story

The Trader’s Dispatch was originally started as the Prairie Star by Brent and Joann Gaylord in approximately 1968. They began their business as an ag lifestyle publication in the basement of their home west of Valier, Montana. It was sent to a small portion of counties in Montana close to Valier. Brent was the salesman while Joann did much of the typesetting and layout. Their 4 children helped over the years. One of the original salesmen, Bill Carroll, went on to start his own publication in Washington state, The Grower’s Guide.

In the beginning things were done a lot differently than they are today. The computers were the size of an entire desk. They had to line up each individual letter of headings and sentences and press them into plates. Photographs were developed on site in their own darkroom. Pages were constructed on large layout sheets; everything was cut out and ran through a wax machine and then stuck to the paper. The pages were then taken to the printer so that the paper could be run on the press. The sections were returned to the office and stuffed (put together), hand addressed, and mailed out. The Prairie Star was printed in Shelby at The Promoter and mailed out of Valier. As the number of mailed copies increased, and the postal regulations began to require more sorting and bundling, that was all done manually at the office and then taken to the post office. Early on, many local Valier residents and many local retired couples would gather at Joann Gaylord’s mother’s home in Valier and hand address each and every paper that was being sent out.

Things have changed over the years and become much simpler. Our office is now located in Conrad, Montana, and we work on MAC computers with everything being done electronically. We have one employee that actually works from her home in Hobson, Montana, and is able to log directly into our server in Conrad over the internet. We create pages that are sent electronically to the printer in Iowa. They create the page images, print the paper, stuff the sections together, address every copy, sort and bundle the papers and then deliver them to the post office to be sent out to subscribers in 7+ states.
Over the years the paper has been printed in Shelby MT at The Promoter, Polson, MT at The Lake County Leader, Great Falls MT at River’s Edge Printing and The Great Falls Tribune, Bozeman MT at the Bozeman Chronicle, and now at White Wolf Printing in Sheldon IA. Due to the size of the Trader’s Dispatch printers are not easy to find; it takes a very large press to run a publication of our size.
The Prairie Star was sold to a couple in Polson Montana, Todd and Carmen Mobray, in 1989. During this time pages were still being created on paper. As the sections were completed, they had to be delivered to Polson, to the printer, in order to get printed. Curt Aaberg would take the box of pages and drive late into the night/early morning to deliver the pages to the printer as quickly as possible. This drive was usually a difficult trek over Marias Pass, through blizzard conditions and icy roads.

In January 2000, The Prairie Star was sold to Lee Enterprises and was moved to Great Falls. None of the employees were kept on the staff. Brent & Joann Gaylord and Curt & Jean Aaberg opted to start their own publication with the knowledge and skills they had, along with the staff that had been terminated from The Prairie Star. They started the Trader’s Dispatch in February 2000. They did not miss an issue between the Prairie Star, January issue, and the Trader’s Dispatch first issue in February.

Curt and Jean Aaberg took sole ownership from the Gaylords in 2008.

And don’t forget auctions! There are retirement auctions, farm & ranch reduction auctions, estate sales, antique and collectible auctions, gun auctions, and more, from all over the region we serve.

The publication has averaged 4-6 employees over the years and 1-2 salespeople. Many local Valier & Conrad residents have been employed by the Prairie Star, and later, the Trader’s Dispatch.

Currently we have 1 saleswoman/ad layout, 2 graphic artists and 1 bookkeeper/proofreader, ALL WOMEN.

The current ownership/staff:

Jean Aaberg went to work for The Prairie Star in 1978 doing typesetting and ad design.

Curt Aaberg joined the staff as a salesman in the mid 1980s. He retired from sales in 2016.

Kathy Peterson started hand-addressing papers, then helping to stuff the paper, eventually becoming employed full-time as ad layout and typesetter in the late 1980s.

Geri Aaberg worked many summers through Junior High and High School helping to type articles, cut out ads, articles, develop film, clean, etc. She joined the Trader’s Dispatch full-time in 2008 as the bookkeeper and proofreader.
Suzy Benzing began in early 2015 doing ad layout and began doing sales mid-2018. During COVID she opted to step away from sales but returned to our team in December 2023.
The paper started out just going to Montana residents, but we currently send out approximately 20,000 requested subscriptions to 7+ states.