"Best Buy" Seed Vacuum

"Best Buy" Seed Vacuum DRILLS 33-2-13 "We came up with the idea for customers but it works so well I use it on my own farm, too," says Carter Barker, Pratt, Kansas, about the Kwik Kleen seed vac for cleaning out planters and drills (Vol. 31, No. 1). Barker has been selling farm equipment for 50 years and also farms. "We sell tailgate augers for filling grain drills and planters, and our customers kept asking us for a vacuum to clean them out. I called all over the U.S. about five years ago, but I could only find big ones that cost thousands of dollars," he explains. Barker's employee Norman Forssberg decided to try to come up with something and came up with a 30-lb. wooden box that holds a gas-powered leaf blower/vacuum. "Today's big drills, which can be 45 ft. long, are a real pain to clean out," says Barker. "In many cases farmers can spend hours. With this unit you can clean it out in minutes." His customers pay $200 for the wooden box and supply their own leaf blower/vacuum (4 1/2 to 5-in. vacuum tube and a minimum 200 mph velocity). They like that it's easy to handle and can sit on the edge of a hopper or mounted on a simple stand in the back of a pickup. "We've had people come 100 miles to pick them up," says Barker, adding that they can be shipped anywhere. Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Carter Barker Equipment Co., Inc., 118 S.E. 25th Ave., Pratt, Kansas 67124 (ph 620 672-2490; www.shop.kwikkleanvacuum.com).

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