harvesting capacities

(quoted from post at 01:54:10 10/24/19) Those old Masseys had a couple of advantages over the new combines of today. First advantage was the ability to stay in one field for more hours between moves because of the small capacity of the combine. Second advantage they had was the header did not need to be removed between moves. When I was involved with the harvest we did very well to average 100 acres per day per combine with 2388 s. I would guess the yearly average was 80 acres per machine per day in wheat. We had Eight 2388 s and could whip out a quarter section in short order but when the field was done we spent too much time moving down the road to the next field. In the end it was counter productive. One lone 2388 in a quarter section with a 30 head could more consistently do 100 acres per day because it would spend more time in the field and less time moving to a new field. As a guess a new combine pushing a 40 head can do a quarter section per day on an overall summer average. It can do 200 acres on a good day but over the course of a summer s wheat harvest I would bet the average would be in the 160 acre per day range for one combine working alone. Then there is the problem of moving north into wet wheat and waiting days for the wheat to dry down. New big combines can whip out so many acres so fast they can progress north faster than the norhern wheat maturity can progress.

Keeping the grain away from big combines can be a bottleneck if the unloading facilities are not geared up to handle the higher bushels per hour new machines can put out. A big combine sitting still with a full grain tank waiting for a truck is not being productive. Somewhere I have a picture of five 2388 s with full grain tanks and one full grain cart sitting in a field west of Weskan Kansas waiting for trucks. The elevator at Weskan was 27 gravel miles away for the trucks and there was a line at the elevator. A few days later in the same area we went over 1000 acres in one day with the five 2388 s because the quarter sections abutted each other and the trucks could keep up. That was our all time record. We never came close to that many acres Again even with 6 Lexions with 40 heads. When we had the Lexions had to detach and trailer those 40 heads with every move to new fields in the area where before that when we had the 2388 s we usually could move a few miles with the 30 heads on. I won t get into our problems with mailboxes and road sighs. LOL

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