Erasmus R. Burt E.R. for short. Born in Gadsden Ala., in 1882, he trained as a professional musician. He first saw Riverside while playing trumpet for the Great American Circus, in 1908.He played in the Riverside Military Band, and used to take summer dance band jobs at Lake Tahoe, before settling down. In 1913 E.R. opened Riverside Tent and Awning Co. in a two-story building that he built in downtown Riverside. In those early years, E.R. Burt designed a revolutionary orange picking bag that quickly became the type most widely-used in the business.

California growers developed a new interest in picking bags finding that earlier ones contributed to fast picking at the expense of bruised fruit. They had steel bands to keep the top open. Pickers learned to drop fruit accurately into the bag from high-reaching hands, but bruising caused fruit to spoil in shipment.

E.R. Burt designed a bag with smaller opening so that pickers had to lower their arms. Also, his bag had a bottom that opens handily and dumps the fruit gently into bin.

After 56 years in the business E.R. Burt retired the world’s biggest manufacturer of citrus picking bags. Today many companies make citrus bags. Some multi-national companies make more picking bags than we do. We believe, as a result of research and development over a 90 year plus span in the Burt family citrus grove as well as major groves in California, our picking bags handle the most brutal conditions picking bags are exposed to during harvest.

In 1970 the company was incorporated with son Chilton Chili Burt as its president. With him as stockholders in the corporation were his two sisters. Chili then went about expanding the agricultural division to include a number of new fruit picking bags and buckets. Tarps were next on the expantion list. Truck tarps soon became our top selling tarp. Today picking bags and specialized tarps make up a large part of what we sell. We invite you to spend a little time looking over our catalog,if you don’t see what you need give us a call and we’ll do our best to make it the way you want it.