The availability of dependable transportation for frozen food, along with the new marketing concept of central warehouses selling to the new supermarkets, issued the final blows to the canning industry in Utah. During the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s the marketing concept for foods included local farms furnishing local canneries, which in turn furnished local wholesale grocers with canned goods that were sold at local "mom and pop" corner grocery stores. As more and more of the new supermarkets were built, the food growers began centralizing their growing operations, locating the canneries and frozen food plants close to the fields with the best production. The finished goods were then centrally warehoused and shipped as needed to the local supermarkets, completely shutting out the much smaller local growers, canners, and grocers. Although the Del Monte cannery in Smithfield remains in business today with only intermittent operation, much has been made of the 1980 closing of the Stevens Canning Company in Roy. This company was the last of the independent canners in the state and its closing brought an end to the independent canning industry in the West. As the canning industry in Utah died, so did a small piece of Utah's self-sufficiency.

Don Strack