“When you are paying someone to haul the grain, you are doing little more than renting the truck and trailers for the day and paying the wage of the driver. It’s hard to get a great deal more efficient than that.”
grain, you are doing little more than renting the truck and trailers for the day and paying the wage of the driver. It’s hard to get a great deal more efficient than that.
“The question about the grain cart interests me. I have had two different farms with lots of tandem and highway tractor power tell me that if they are within three miles of the storage, they can haul faster to the yard with the grain cart but it has to be a grain cart that can lower the unload and dump directly into the auger.”
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GET THE GRAIN CART
Cory Bourdeaud’hui, Grainews ad sales manager, wrote about this topic when he was editor. He’d go with option No. 1 with this change: “I’d buy a grain cart, not a gravity wagon because a gravity wagon is slower to unload and I don’t think they’re built as beefy as a grain cart.
“I think some gravity wagons come with a hydraulic auger, but most use the gravity chute and a regular auger to load trucks, which is still much slower than a grain cart’s auger and not nearly as handy for a bunch of different reasons.
“To me, the harvest window can be very small, so the most important thing is to get the grain in the bin as quickly as possible (to maintain grades.) From farmers I spoke to over the years, a grain cart is like buying another two–thirds of a combine for a fraction of the price.
“This increase in harvest efficiency would easily make up for the increase in cost to custom haul everything because you should, in theory, have higher quality grain year after year if you can get it in the bin faster.
“You can also use the grain cart to help fill the semis that come in to do any custom hauling. And a grain cart makes it much easier to blend grain. How? I’ve heard of guys filling their cart with No. 2 wheat and running the auger slowing and sporadically up and down the semi trailer while the auger loads No. 1 wheat from the bin.”
AGREES WITH CORY
“Cory took every word out of my mouth,” says Dwayne Leslie, who farms near Portage la Prairie, Man., and runs www.farmauctionguide.com.
“Our 1150 J&M cart is hooked up to the tractor for 11 months a year. We use it to load trucks, whether our own or a custom hauler’s. You can add several more trips a day if a truck doesn’t sit for more than five minutes in the yard. Truckers can load exactly how much they want with the help of the onboard scale. The biggest problem is the 22-inch auger can load the truck faster than the air gauges can react.
“Even in the field, if there happens to be no one available to drive the cart, it can be used as a truck. If the farmer only has one truck driver and one “good” truck, he can load the truck in the field from the cart and be headed back to the yard in two minutes.
“An AgCam camera system is also a must so that you can load high-sided trucks without spilling over the far side. Another camera inside the cart shows the combine unloading on the go. It saves a sore neck at the end of the day if you can turn the seat to watch the combine header — so you don’t hit it — while the combine auger unloading is on the screen beside you rather than turning to look behind. A third camera showing behind the cart is a great safety measure when travelling down the highway.
“The best investment a farmer can make is a grain cart before adding a second or third combine.”
These are great comments. Thanks guys. If anyone has more
to add on this debate, e-mail me
at [email protected].I’ll post
your comments on my blog at
bloggn. grainews.ca.
Jay Whetter is the editor of Grainews.
