Hopper, Dump O/O's & Drivers

when ya'll are harvesting,about how many loads/day can you get in,on just an average,in average weather and distance,and do you haul from feild to farm bins mostly or do you haul from feild to elevator? Most farmers around here only want trucks for field to elevator,not much demand for feild to bin cauce in my area most farmers don't have a lot of storage,so they fill the bins themselves.

 

Been staying busy except for the day we got the snow, we sat that day. Could've run by lunch, but didn't. Elevators here are closed Monday, so I'm going to try my luck at flatbedding. Do you wish you were at the farm show in L-ville? Or I would also settle for being at the Winternationals in sunny Pomona, CA!

6 loads a day is about average for us during harvest, depending on distance, wait in lines, farmer equipment speed, etc. of course. I pretty much just haul from fields to elevators, its very rare to haul into a farmers bin.

 

boy!,ya'll turn and burn during harvest more than me,i get 3 to 4/day at best,thats averageing 70 to 90 miles from elevator,we don't have as many elevators in central ky.as you 2 have in ya'lls area,so i don't stay as busy as ya'll talk about at harvest,maybe i should move to ill. or ks.,i'm sure ya'll would appreciate the extra competition.

I'd take sunny Pomona,CA.,right now,its 19 and cloudy.

 

70-90 miles one way? 3 or 4 a day of those is nothing to sneeze at. Our average distance is probably 25 miles. Come on up during harvest if you want, its winter, spring and summer when the competition is tighter.

 

Well, thats 3 or 4/day if i get loaded late the night before and i'm sitti'n in line when the elevator opens. I may take ya up on that next fall,work thru the week and bring a load of beanmeal back home,i'll buy dinner every night if you will let me and molly sleep in the barn,can't get much sleep in my daycab ,i might even pull nightwatch duty for ya if you have any cows calving in the summer,i'll bring my calf-pullers

 

On the way up there, I was thinking it was your old trailer - and from what PP has said about it I nearly headed back to the house. This isn't your old trailer, I could tell when I saw the body on it. It's a clean trailer, and I left the lot with it. James and Earl seem like good guys, and we chatted for awhile before I took off.

There's only a few (very few) minor dings and dents on it, the damage list didn't cover more than 10 lines on a page . It has Harley Davidson mudflaps that were meant for a dually pickup and hang about 7 inches off the road - so those need to go. It has a set of tall LP's on it, all aluminum except one inner wheel, and the tires are clean and about half worn. The tarp is brand new, and works just fine, and I'll find out how the traps work on monday .

The only issue I've had so far is that it rides about 6 to 10 inches right, and I'm not happy about that at all. Worn bushings, out of alignment, something. Issues are one of the biggest reasons I didn't want an old trailer - I don't lease a trailer to deal with someone else's problems. I've got enough to deal with on the truck tyvm.

That dogwalk really was a pain when I spent 2 hours loading last night. I waited 4 hours to load, and then find out their scale is busted and I have to go on an off-road adventure through their back country to their scale house. One thing about hoppers, they can't be out of line when you're trying to scale in some of these places - I had to nearly scrape my wheels on the left to line the trailer up.

Thanks to having a "new" trailer I didn't have an empty weight and they wouldn't let me guess (I told em it was probably 30,000 - and I was 29,220 without fuel). The outside display at the scalehouse was busted, and it was unmanned, so I had to pull the tractor on, run up and look, then the trailer, etc etc. Three times, of course, because they just guess the load and I was 7,000 pounds light the first shot. We finally got it to 49,000 of product and I called it good - I still have to figure out how this trailer sits on the truck.

So after a ridiculously long day, waiting to load, and going through the whole "broken scale" adventure, I was able to find a truck stop close enough to call it a night. Running this trailer down a narrow hilly 2 laner was not fun, and it almost pulled me off the shoulder and down a hill on one curve (had oncoming traffic). I was glad to get here, and made good use of their scale getting the trailer balanced for now. The nice part was not being charged for re-weighs, so 3 tickets only cost me $7 (initial, after fuel, after setting 5th wheel).

I guess it's good they had a trailer for me - better than not having anything! I wasn't happy about switching to a Wilson, I learned a Timpte and I like their trailers. Timpte's turn shorter - probably the difference between a 41' and a 43'. And for some reason the landing gear crank is on the passenger side?! The hopper door rigs look like an old come-a-long bolted to the trailer - a gear and catch..... I'd say overall if I can make this thing go for a few weeks (find an alignment or repair, and keep it in my lane) it'll do for now. I just hope I won't have to spin my wheels to pick up a new trailer now that "I already have one".

Thanks for the heads up, 5MTF, and I'm glad you're doin' all right out there!

 

Son has hauled a few loads of wheat to Enid with fertilizer on the backhaul. Paid pretty well. Things are starting to pick up a bit, with local elevators needing to move some wheat out

 

The big elevator here in Enid (ADM) said they will be shipping out a lot of wheat this next month on rail to make room for more.

I loaded at one of the weirdest places you could proablly load at this week. I went to Crescent Feeds in Springfield, MO. I was picking up six pallets of bagged feed which was loaded first on the rear and then loading bulk pellets on the front. This place was built in the 40's and has a scale that is about 35' long. After loading the bags I was told to back on the scale and drop my trailer so they could get a weight and then hook back up. He proceeded to load me and when he thought he was close I had to drop my trailer again and he checked the weight. He asked me what my trailer weighed empty and I told him I never weighed it by itself if he wanted to know he should have weighed it before loading and then he wanted to know what my tractor weighed. I am getting frustrated by now and told him not to load the trailer over 57k and we should be fine. He finishes loading and then I get the scale ticket and it shows 57,800.

What I determined is that you could take the IQ of everyone working at this place and the owner add them all together and they still wouldn't come close to an IQ of a single monkey.