2,000-Bu. "Grain Station"

2,000-Bu. "Grain Station" GRAIN HANDLING Miscellaneous 24-2-19 Bob West has spent the past three years chasing a dream. Now it's reality û a grain handler with a whopping 2,000-bu. capacity. The "Grain Station 2000" looks somewhat like a giant liquid manure tank but has a 16-in. dia., hydraulic-powered unloading auger on front. It measures 12 ft. wide and 36 1/2 ft. long and rides on four axles, each equipped with dual wheels. Grain is loaded into an 8-ft. long opening on top and is delivered forward to the front unloading auger via a 22-in. wide drag conveyor. The unit also has three slide gates at the bottom. Fully loaded, the unit holds 61 tons and has 50 percent more capacity than a conventional semi truck. With that kind of capacity you might think it's the world's biggest grain cart. After all, the next largest grain cart on the market has a capacity of "only" 1,100 bu. However, it's not a grain cart at all, says West, of Vulcan, Alberta. "It's designed to provide in-field storage. The idea is to pull the empty Grain Station to the end of the field, park it, and unload grain from the combine or a grain cart into it. Then you use the Grain Station to quickly load the semi trucks that haul grain directly to an inland terminal or other location." West has built one prototype unit. He's willing to custom build units for about $50,000 (Canadian). The rig can pay for itself, he says, by making it possible to hire truckers to haul grain to market direct from the field. The rig can also be used after harvest to speed up loading out of bins. "You can unload grain from bins into the Grain Station and then load it from there into semi trucks. With an unloading capacity of 150 bu. per minute, the Grain Station can load trucks faster than they can be loaded out of bins. Truckers don't want to spend time waiting at the farm to get loaded. This way they can just pull in, load and go." West says the Grain Station could also be powder coated to be used with fertilizer during the spring. "The fertilizer supplier would fill the Grain Station at the end of the field, and the farmer would then load up from there." Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, R.A. West International, Inc., 285 Service Road, Vulcan, Alberta, Canada T0L 2B0 (ph 403 485-1998 or 888 972-9378; Website: www.rawest.com).

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