Cooper Dray, a business which has its roots in the I.E. Mills livery barn of 1891, is owned by Dennis Paintner, who bought it in 1968 from Oscar Hogie. At that time an important part of the work was hauling freight from the depot to the stores. There was also coal to haul. At present the services offered by the dray include garbage collection from homes and business places in Cooperstown, Binford, Jessie and Sutton, and a few farms; maintenance of a sanitary landfill; snow removal, demolition, excavating: a sort of lack of all trades business.

Oscar Hogie, who sold the business to Paintner, bought it in 1964 after the death of Gordon Olson. Olson had owned it a short time. He had bought it from Maynard Freitag, who went out of the business of local draying and continued with hauling freight from Fargo doing business as Valley Truck Line. Freitag had purchased the dray from Bill Detwiller in 1957.

Detwiller and his brother-in-law, Marvin Walen, bought the Stromme and Graby transfer business in 1948, from the surviving partner, Art Graby.

At that time they had the contract to haul mail from the depot to the post office. The other work they did was mostly hauling freight, coal, and some trash. There was also furniture to move, grain and gravel to haul.

He remembers that Ralph Chapman, Alfred Bailey and Oscar Bailey were also in the dray business at that time when people were still using a lot of coal.

Stromme and Graby and other earlier dray and livery businesses are mentioned in other articles.

Source: Cooperstown, North Dakota 1882-1982 Centennial Page 209