Combine acres

So, If I buy a $500,000 combine how many acres can I realisticly run over in a years time? 20,000? I'd start in the south in early spring and finish up after the first of the year in corn.

I think I know where you're going, I can't pencil it out even if I started in Cancun!

It'll pencil out if you can cover enogh acres. My dad used to tell me I would never amount to a damn. Mostly cuz I am too conservitive.

Are you planning for a complete harvesting set?
Combine. grain cart (800 bu.) tractor, pickup to pull grain head. At least two semi's ? Today most
people don't want JUST combine, unless you could hook up with another outfit.Your combine will need to run at least a 12 hour, with no stopping to unload.After stopping for the day is when you will need to fuel, clean and checking You will get very little sleep, but it can be done.gg

Theoretically a combine that size is capable of those acres with a 40 foot head in 30 bushel wheat running 6 MPH all day every day. You're going to have to find some 5000 acre farms to do that and they won't be satisfied with just one combine.

Practically, maybe 5000 when you consider rainy days, breakdowns, sitting with a full grain tank while waiting for trucks and eating up time sitting at a scale arguing with the DOT. They don't care if you're next customer drops you because you're late showing up all they want is power and money. (editorial opinion) Jim

5000 ac won't pay the bills. The way I figure it takes 10,000 to break even. On the other hand I could by an old beater for less than $10,000 run over 1000 ac and make good money.

That's why all the big farms trade them every year. They are basically paying for time used,plus some for wear and tear.Maintenance and depreciation don't enter the equation.
Local Case dealer has 3 1 year old combines a BTO traded in on 3 brand new ones before corn harvest,700+ engine hours an all of them,still have the factory filters on the engines.

They don't buy them they lease them.There actually pretty cheap to operate if you have enough acres.The cost is a deductable expense.

(quoted from post at 21:47:08 10/10/10) So, If I buy a $500,000 combine how many acres can I realisticly run over in a years time? 20,000? I'd start in the south in early spring and finish up after the first of the year in corn.

Click to expand...

Dear Cowman,
I think the answer is somewhere in the middle. If you have 1000 acres of corn yielding 200 bushel per acre and the price is $4 a bushel we are looking at $800,000. Often there is a small window of opportunity for a successful harvest due to moisture, mud, snow, and wind. These are enough variables without adding the unreliability of the $10,000 "beater." I think a reliable, high capacity used combine could be purchased for 150 to 200 thousand dollars.

Yep, this is what happens when we let the government get involved in the free market so's the big dogs can eat the little ones and we always gotta have 'more acres'.

Can't ya imagine spending the whole darned summer running all over he!!'s half acre trying to find enough acres to just break even on those machines?

Just my opinion, but I think the only thing dumber than that is to pay some jack-leg $30 an acre to harvest/haul my wheat in a single afternoon.

My old pee-brain just can't get around the "today's-world" silly scenario. :>(

Allan

Yep, this is what happens when we let the government get involved in the free market so's the big dogs can eat the little ones and we always gotta have 'more acres'.

Can't ya imagine spending the whole darned summer running all over he!!'s half acre trying to find enough acres to just break even on those machines?

Just my opinion, but I think the only thing dumber than that is to pay some jack-leg $30 an acre to harvest/haul my wheat in a single afternoon.

My old pee-brain just can't get around the "today's-world" silly scenario. :>(

Allan

Allan, you and me both know it's an unsustainable business. I ask for hard figures and all I get is a run-around and how cheap the machine is if you run it over enough acres. I'd like to see what the cost is in hard American dollars. And if I write a check for $100,000 or $200,000 or whatever the figure is to lease one for a year or trade my used unit in with 700 hours that I bought last year and I started out 30 years ago owing $10,000 on my trade and paying the intrest and now I owe 10 times that? WHAT DID I GAIN? And as long as I keep running over the acres and keep trading every year I keep the bankers happy it works. But what happens when I want to quit. Somebody is gonna have to pay the bills and I'm broke.

Just no substitute for 'bought and paid for'.

Iron doesn't age nearly as fast as men's ideals do. :>)

Allan

I glad my combine (1978Side hill 6600) did not hear you say that.I have been over 1300 acres with it the 70 years and all you got to do is maintain them and STAY IN THE SEAT.Oh yea its paid for

In the mid 50's my dad bought a 2 row JD combine and did custom work. Paid for the combine the first year. It ran 24/7 when it was corn time. BTY, It didn't have a cab, a/c, heater, radio, or GPS. Some place I have pics of it along with his grain dryer. Back then I think some called a combine a picker/sheller because it combined the picking and shelling process.

You will never know if you don't give it a try. You will need dependable help. Can't do it by yourself. LOL

I read about guys pushing over 3000 bph through some of those machines in corn... so that's 15 ac per hour in 200 bpa corn. Run that for 20 hours per day? Run it for 10 hours per day and it's still a lot of ground.
I'd also be willing to bet that were there no subsidies for anything they'd still be running much the same...
All I know is that all my life I've listened to talk about how these guys are going to fail... and today they're still going while the guys that forcast their doom are long gone. My guess is that they're doing something right.

Rod

Well, I'm not gone. And I have not had a "town job" since 1973 so maybe I'm doing something right too. I am not trying to be a doom-sayer. Just trying to put together some figures to satisfy my own mind. If a business looked profitable I might want to have some of the action too. My great grandfather bought wagons and hired teamsters to haul oil out of the oilfields. He made good money at it and that's where he got his seed to buy his first farm. I may be on the backside of 50 but I ain't dead yet and I don't want to fence myself in or limit my options. I'm not like those that whine about being on a "fixed" income.

The old beater will make you money where you're mechanically inclined. I really don't see any way to run enough acres through a new combine to pay for it. It used to work in the good old days but not today. It's the reason so many big custom harvesters are quitting. If they don't quit they sell the new machines, or get out of the rollover deal with the company, get rid of the 50,000 dollar service truck and come back with a couple of older machines and a pickup full of tools. Then they can relax and enjoy themselves. I don't think one human is capable of running a machine through 10000 acres a year so then you're talking hiring, room and board,the hired driver having too much fun at night, quitting and leaving you high and dry etc.Jim

If you don't have a clue on custom combining, and I don't think you do, you wouldn't want to start out with a $500,000 set up.

You would have to figure all your costs out. With a new machine with warranty, just worry about fuel and labor. Around here 3-4000 acres would justify a machine like that, but that is good iowa beans and corn.

And you aren't gonna pay for it in one year, no matter how hard you try....

There was a fellow here in wheat harvest this summer. 50+ and by himself out of IL with his older combine. I don't think he even had a head but begged or rented whatever he could get local. Slept in the truck or bunked with another crew. He told me in the old days he ran a big outfit himself but these days he pulls up and comes on the run alone, sons grown, married and doing their own thing. It was a rainy Monday morning and he hung around til lunch time telling stories and swapping lies. I don't think he was in it for the money but the lure of the road had such a pull on him that he couldn't stay home.

Kevin, I don't know where you went to school. No, you don't have to pay for it in one year. But you do have to make enough to pay for one year's use in one year. Otherwise you are like the darkies stealing watermelon, hauling them up north and selling them at a loss. They wanted their banker to help them buy a bigger truck.

All I know is, the less I farm, the more money I make.

Gene

3000 bph in corn is entirely possible with two 1000 bushel carts and a minimum of three semis if they don't have to haul far. We have combines available to us that will shell 5000 bph. The Lexion 580 is capable of that for a short time with a twelve row head if everything clicks right, and then there's the Lexion 590 which is even bigger. The new CIH 8120, I believe, is in that class too.

Lenders are very willing to lend money, so the more ambitious farmers will bid up on the rent to get more acres to justify the big new combine. They are not rich people at all, they just handle a lot of money and the loan papers they sign have more zeros in the dollar box.
If they sell out it's a pretty good guess they won't have much money to retire on unless they own a good amount of paid up land. Jim

And it was a hypothetical question. I have more than I can do as it is.

Ok guys you can answer a very old question I have. Why all the custom cutters? Here in the middle of IL everyone has a combine. Some big, some small, some new, some old and some have multiples but everybody has one. Seems like out in wheat country nobody has one, except allan and his gleaners. There must be something I actually dont understand about this concept. Help a simple IL corn farmer out and explain this to me.
bill

I have a friend who runs some cows like myself. His neighbor is pretty much into corn. Most all irrigated acres. My friend asked him how many dollars he handles for seed, fertilizer, fuel, etc to make it happen, $1,000,000? "try double that", the man said. Yeah, I hope to tell you. Handling two million dollars every year to keep groceries on the table for one family? That don't look to rosy to me neither.

Relatives used to have a big wheat operation in North Dakota and a lot of years the profit margins were too slim for ownership cost. Corn used to be different till the 1970's and the export boom. The immediate profits justified ownership and those that survived the 1980's had grown enough in size that they had enough acres to cover the more traditional profit margin per acre on corn. Seen more combines sold here in the last several years than what was sold from 1980 to 2000. The dealers that were here said 2 or more combine sales was a pretty decent year's business in those 20 years and that was in the prime grain area here in New York.

I have read your responses and I agree with you 100%. Just say'n what goes through folks heads. Round here there ain't much ground come'n up for sale so to get bigger you have to rent ground. For some reason the little old widder women don't want to rent to folks with 30 year old equipment. Even though a 6 row planter will get around all them trees, fence rows, gullies, and seeps on her old hill farm she will rent it out to a BTO with a 24 row planter that can hardly turn around in half her fields way before she lets a good old boy have it. So with that said, landlords don't want to see old iron roll'n over their hills they want to see a specticle of modern machinery.

I'm in Minnesota where everyone owns a combine too.

My understandingf is in wheat country, you start in the south, and cut your way north, and you can use up a combine in a single fall, just cutting and cutting and cutting wheat. No need to ever go backwards, it's all wheat, just keep going north....

In our part of the world, you have minor crops of oats & wheat that need combining in the mid-fall, then soybeans, then corn. Need 2 or 3 different headers, harvest is a long drawn out affair. Just hauling away corn takes a whole lot more equipment & time when you are pulling 180-250 bu off an acre, harvest is slow compared to 30-40 bu wheat.

Wheat is a real low-cost affair, corn & beans can pencil out a combine on less acres.

All together, it works well for wheat to hire it done, the custom guys can be much cheaper than owning your own - they are very specialized in one thing and don't need any extra headers, carts, come back for a different crop, etc.

Our crop rotation takes more different stuff, and doesn't lend itself well to the specialized harvest of the West.

Might not have it perfect there, but kinda sorta anyhow.

--->Paul

Well when I ran with a harvest crew back in the nineties,I worked for a guy with 10 9600"s we put about 12hrs on the meter per day and around 1500 hours on per year.They were traded every year. We ran 2 1240 Kinze carts and 1 840 cart. We would split the machines up into as many as 3 crews depending on the size of the job and how far apart they were. We pulled the cars with a 4955,876 blue Versatile and a 1360 Steiger. We had 5 tandems with pups and 5 regular semis to keep up. The key is to not let the combines get full before you dump them. We also figured we ran over about 30,000 acres. This included Wheat,Corn,Barley,Milo,Sunflowers,beans and some peas. We started Memorial weekend in Munday TX and went through OK,KS,CO,SD,WY,ID,CO,NE,MS,KS.
I would start about March getting equipment ready and be ready to leave the end of May for TX. I would get home for Thanksgiving each year.
Some years we could cut between 25 and 28 days a month. One year we sat for 10days straight over by Dallas TX for rain.
We would end the season in CO,KS,NE,and MS with Milo,Corn,and Soybeans.
Some of the different heads were rented for the particular crop and some the farmer owned and some he owned. The pickup heads he owned for the southern Barley (San Louis Valley CO)Some of the corn heads were owned by him and some by the farmer. The Flex heads were rented or leased for the beans in MS.
Now if you cut a 100acres per machine per day on 30bu wheat on 3 12"s we figured we made money. Now this was almost 20years ago and things have changed. The 3 12"s were 12dollars per acre then 12 cents trucking to the elevator up to a certain distance then 12 cents per bu for the extra 10bu per acre. In MT and SD we would cut for $10.00 flat without a contract and $9.00 with a contract.He always got paid so it was done without a contract.ID was figured differntly yet I think something like 18-20dollars flat and they hauled it with spud trucks of they"re own. That was Irrigated wheat making about 100bu and always down flat. 30ft head moved at 1/2-11/2 mile per hour speed.some was sprinkler and some corrugated.
Since
I haven"t done it since 1992 I don"t know what the rate is now. Hope this sheds some light on it for you. Hail is the reason for getting done so quickly.

Three 21's is what I hear today. I started on the run 15 years ago, my neighbor has the combines. Spent a lot of time out there for the first ten years but now I just don't have the time for more than two or three weeks in the later summer. Started out as a trucker then was a combine driver for five years or so, then mainly did mechanic work while the young guys sat in their air conditioned trucks and combines. No need to tell you how hot it gets in Kansas the first part of July. They had 12 2388's at their peak but now retirement is setting in and they only run two now. It's a LOT more fun with only two machines. Yes, you are right about not letting the combines get full. Kind of irritates the combine driver if the cart pulls up when the combine is only half full, but that's the way to do it. This summer I ran the cart which was a first for me in wheat. Gets kind of hairy running that 1000 bushel cart a foot away from the end of a 40 foot head when there are no rows to follow. I can't judge distance worth a hoot! Jim

Mabey there isn't a hard and fast number? Mabey it's tied to separator hour, acres, etc... at so much per hour?
I'm sure there's a lot of creative schemes out there that work between some people and dealers/equipment companies.

Rod