Hauling out the bin

Jpshostr · June 26, 2002

We've been hauling the corn out of our bin here at home that has been stored since last October when we picked it. We sold it for $2.15 a bushel at the river, where it is loaded onto a barge, shipped down the Mississippi to New Orleans and loaded onto oceangoing ships for export.

Each truckload here can legally haul up to 80,000lbs, which after subracting the weight of the truck means each load is about 950 bushels.

The bin is equipped with an auger which takes the grain out and loads it into the truck. As you can see, we don't load the truck as full as we can as that would grossly overload the truck. While the rig can handle it, IDOT may have something to say about it while going over the scales.

As the bin empties the grain slopes downward towards the middle where the sump that feeds into the auger is located. You want to be sure to never go in a bin while it is being unloaded as the grain will quickly suck you down and sufficate you. The force of moving grain is very powerful, even the strongest person in the world is no match for it.

Don't look down. When going in or coming out of a bin you have to be very careful to not slip and fall when going from the manhole to the ladder. A fall from this height could very well kill you. Last night I went up and down this in heavy rain to close the manhole, the rain didn't scare me as much as the extreme lightning did!

Zane · June 27, 2002

Very cool JP! I love those shots, really gives some insight to running a farm.

sincityZ71 · June 27, 2002

Cool pics Jp. Those bins look familiar. Do you guys have someone truck the grain/corn out to the river or do you do it yourselves? A few years back one of my uncles and a cousin bought a rig and hauler and started up their own little trucking company to haul what they grow and then do some side work during the wintertime when there isn't any crops to take care of.

Keep the great pics coming Jp.

MountaineerTom · June 27, 2002

As you can see, we don't load the truck as full as we can as that would grossly overload the truck. While the rig can handle it, IDOT may have something to say about it while going over the scales.

Cool, I've seen a lot of that stuff in action out in Bloomfield, Nebraska whe I was younger.

How do you judge how much fill her up with so she's not over the weight limit? Is it just know about how much from experience, or do you have some scales close by? What do you do it you overfill it?

Jpshostr · June 27, 2002

Glad to see I'm not boring everyone with my pictures of farm life. Since I got my digital camera I'm having a good time taking pictures. As I'm painfully aware, the general public is very out of touch with today's agriculture, so I hope I'm helping explain things to those of you who have an interest.

No, we don't haul our own grain as of yet. We don't yet have a semi or large straight truck, but I'm hopefully going to try for my CDL later this summer. Once I get that we may think about getting a large truck to do some of our hauling.

As for the overweight questions, the guys that are doing the hauling have done so much they have a good idea just by looking when enough has been loaded. With the trailers we've been loading out, two piles front and back, with each pile going up to about the bottom of the tarp supports puts her pretty close to legal weight. It is a bit of a challenge to load trucks with commodities such as these, but with luck you can get close. If we go over, not much we can do. All the truckers around here know alternate routes to take around the permanent scales. The guy that was hauling today and I were just talking about the way we loaded him out of the field a couple years back, corn was spilling off the sides, weight at the elevator, 96,000lbs. :0

sincityZ71 · June 27, 2002

Glad to see I'm not boring everyone with my pictures of farm life. Since I got my digital camera I'm having a good time taking pictures. As I'm painfully aware, the general public is very out of touch with today's agriculture, so I hope I'm helping explain things to those of you who have an interest.

Yeah your pics rule Jp. The pics you post of your farm and everything that you do are some of my favorite pics that are posted on the site. I love seening all of these things, reminds of Nebraska a whole lot and all of the things I love about going back there. And you do a really good job of explaining everything too. Keep it up.

MarkD · June 27, 2002

Cool pics dude! We are just starting to haul our own grain. We went with a 24' trailer to make sure we stayed under the axle limits.

Here in SC, you don't have to have a CDL as long as your trip is less than 150 mi one-way and you don't cross the state line. We are making sure we get plenty of practice b/4 droping the coin for the CDL.