OT Trusting grain haulers that farm?

OK, Alot of guys haul grain on the side, that own their own rig, or haul mainly and farm on the side. I often wonder when your grain is picked up on off days and the rig will be sitting at their place for a day or so, or maybe even a few hours, how do you know you arent contributing to feeding their animals. You know, open the hopper let 40-50 bushels, or less drop out and then scoop her up with the skid laoder to feed. Also, how do you KNOW that your quality grain is being delivered under YOUR name, and not being delivered under another name, and subsequently having a load of lesser quality or test weight, or even less grain delivered under your name? Other than having your own rig, how do you know that what you load gets where it has to go on the up and up?

You don't.

Well if you don"t have faith in your trucker, you could always have him weigh empty before he loads at your bin, then reweigh after he is loaded. Then you will have exact pounds and don"t have to worry what he does over the weekend.

I am one of those guys who hauls grain on the side. I can't speak for others, but personally, I am not willing to sacrifice my honor for 40-50 bushels, or even a whole trailer load of grain. To put it bluntly, there probably is no way to know with absolute certainty that your grain is being delivered 100% on the up and up. You can ask others who may have used a hauler's services. If a guy has a shady reputation, you'll likely find it out pretty quickly. The only advice I can offer is that if you are not comfortable enough with a hauler to trust his honesty and ethics, then don"t use his services. I'm not sure this is going to be real helpful to you, but it's the best I have to offer. Good luck.

Follow the bugger if you're in doubt,make sure he drives straight to the elevator.

Dave don't take this the wrong way, but I heard a old gentleman tell a guy that was asking a similar question, If you are wondering that you must of done it to someone else. He also said you should never do buiness with someone you don't trust. I think that old man gave some very good advice.

you can make a note when he left you loaded and check the ticket when he dumped at the elevator you have an idea how long it should be

Can't offer any help on chance of short weight. About the quality & test weight, take a sample yourself to elevator & have it tested. Then compare with the ticket for the load. Also check the date/time stamp on scale ticket the hauler gives you with his hauling charges.

if you dont trust your trucker dont hire him in the first place, i dont haul grain but i have dumped a load right in the middle of a mans driveway when he told me how can i trust you? trucking today is hardly worth the effort proffit wise, and with the added pain of poorly trained dot the last thing i need is some guy having trust issues when ive done nothing to arouse his or any others suspicions, ive got over 30 years in the business, as added income and in the old days, full time, and simply dont need to work for a guy that dont trust me , a trucker doesnt just work for you he also hauls for others too find out who and call them and ask how the trucker treated them, a good reliable driver will not have any issues with providing a list of people he worked for for reference, its standard business procedure

Just say to the driver:
Let me know the before and after weight of the truck....So I know how much grain you picked up. Plain and sweet. ---if he gives you a Holy Schitt look then you know he is taking some for his livestock or something.
If he is honest then he has nothing to hide about the trip ticket, which may list the truck before/after weight.

My Nephew had a trucker steal a whole load of wheat. It was hauled from Southwest MO to KCMO. The truck said it was his wheat. terminal had no way to tell the difference. It took a while but he got the value of his crop back.

Kent

I wouldn't worry too much about it. If a trucker is doing that stuff the farm community finds out about it fast. Someone drives in the trucker's yard and sees multiple skid loader tracks going to where the truck is parked. Or there are truck tracks goiing to an auger that's on a bin. There's all kinds of ways the local farmers can find out about someone else's shenegans.

I've done a fair amount of trucking from one elevator to another, being weighed before I leave the one and weighed when I get to the other. There can easily be a 300-400 pound difference one way or the other between scales. Even if the truck was weighed at the farm and then at the elevator it'd be hard to prove theft unless there was a 1000 pound or more difference. I've sometimes had to dump a little to get down to a legal weight and opening the trap just a couple of inches can relieve the truck of 3000 pounds in a few seconds. Jim

They make scales that arent real expensive that fit on air ride trucks.If he doesnt have scales he can weigh it .If his weight and the other ends weight is different by over 500 LBS like 1000 pounds light,you can probably have a talk with him about it.I dont know how much difference between scales there would be.Also some will probably stay in the trailer,but he ought to look and try and get as much out as he can.Some trailers empty better than others.
You know he wont get exactly the same at the selling end,but he should be close.If there is a lot of difference then what you say might be going on.It would seem like he wouldnt want to take any off of a truck if he has to weigh it at both ends.
Another thing is,how do you know if the other ends scales are accurate or not?How much are they allowed to be off?If they are allowed to be off any,on the buying end they will probably be light.
Tell him before he hauls any of yours to weigh the truck and give you the empty weight.There are grain elevators practically everywhere.Besides that there are Cat Scales and others.Tell him to weigh it as close to your place as he can.Then on the other end he will be lighter because of fuel burned,unless he buys fuel along the way.So you figure how many miles and how many miles per gallon the truck gets and subtract that at 8 pounds per gallon.100 gallons of fuel should go 600 miles and 800 pounds less on the total weight.Subtract the empty weight from the weight at the end,minus the fuel if he didnt buy any,or add by weight back on how much he bought,and you should be real close.
You wont get exactly,but you can probably get within 20 bushels easy enough.
I would think a difference of 1500 pounds at the selling end,depending on how much fuel he used,is probably alright.If he bought fuel,and he is way more than 1500 pounds different,then Id say you might have a problem.
Either his trailer is leaking it out,or he is pobably letting some out,or the buying end could have rinky dink scales cheating you.

Ya know,I wouldn't give this too much thought,but I did have a livestock hauler that I know darned well took me for a ride one time on weight.
I had a young holstein bull here that wasn't doing his job and it took a few months to figure it out. The hauler had one about the same size and said he'd trade with me for the difference in weight at market price. About all I cared about right at the time was getting some dairy cattle bred. Just wanted to buy some time til I could find another GOOD bull,genetically speaking.
Well,he weighed his at the elevator,brought it and dropped it off,then went back and weighed mine. To tell you the truth,I wouldn't have even paid any attention to the heavier weight being at the bottom of the slip,but he made a big deal of how the printer had skrewd up and had mixed up the weights. There wasn't a whole lot of difference and I paid him,but when it came right down to it,if he'd have just fessed up that mine was heavier,I'd have told him to just forget it,that he didn't have to give me any difference.
He shot his own credibility on that one.

Ask the driver if he has insurance to cover any losses and/or if he's bonded. You could also ask for referrences from other local farmers. If he acts funny when you ask him, I'd get somebody else. A reputable hauler wouldn't take exception to being asked and might even offer up the information to give you piece of mind. Dave

I have a friend/neighbor haul my wheat to a mill about 60 miles from here. Never considered that he might be unloading some for himself. We load it one day and he takes it up early next morning. Parks truck at his farm over night. He feeds some steers and has some mules for pleasure. Thanks, now I have something else to worry about.

Measure his truck bed and do the math won't be 100% accurate but you can get close.Nothing surprises me used to know a milk truck driver that made a very good profit raising baby calves.

If you read the articles about what they say about these scales,they say they are within 300 pounds of State highway scales.Im thinking thats a good tolerance since most states will let you slide a little heavy.Not every scale and not every state,but a lot will.Now I dont know what the laws are regarding a grain elevator,Id say they had to be less than 300 pounds off,but I havent ever heard anybody say anything about it.All Ive ever heard is people claim they weighed light.Anything that I hauled they weighed it light if I was paid by weight.Of course they weighed you on their own scales.The other end weighed you on their scales.Id say they are allowed some difference but not sure how much.Then if you give or take 1000 plus 300 on the scales its getting right around 1500 pounds,which is around 20 bushels it could be off and nothing is wrong,depending on how far he is hauling.That would work for a days running or 600-700 miles if he didnt buy any fuel. Take 20 bushels off of every truck at a grain elevator and thats probably how they pay their help.Just guessing and I have no way of proving that,just a suspicion.Id say I would trust the trucker more than the grain elevator,but thats just me. http://www.air-weighscales.com/

I'm a trucker and I always worried about the people that didn't trust me. Figured that there was a reason they were thinking that way. You know a crook never trust anyone.

Jim

You don't.

Oldironman, I was going to make a post and I had to LOL when I saw yours. That is what I was going to say.
Short and simple.

You don"t know for sure. I would say if you don"t trust your grain hauler than get a truck yourself and get rich. LOL

I did have a kind of similar thing happen a few years ago. I help haul some grain in the winters if I am not busy. This one real big farm setup had just got a son home from college. He is a real a$$. First thing he had to do was install a set of scales. He wanted to weight everything in and out. That is not a problem. I have found cattle loads that drifted too much that way too.

So I go to haul the first load for that farm after their new scales. He acts all high and mighty and starts bitching about how he just KNOWs that the truckers have been ripping off his Dad for years. Their yields are much better than what they where getting paid for. Yea right, Sloppy farming five thousand acres and thinks he is a top farmer. Planting late and weeds head high. So I stand there and say nothing. He gets done and hands me a weight ticket. I go out and move the truck off the scale and block the drive way. I lock the truck up and go back into the office/scale house. He asked me what I am doing??? I tell him to go write a check for the hauling since they are selling at an ethanol plant that does not pay hauling. He starts raising he!!. I tell him how bad it is collecting the haul bill from a bunch of dead beat "BIG" farmers. While he is getting a check his Dad comes out and I tell him what went on. He is not a bad fellow but can get all high and mighty at times. I inform him that I will have a lot to talk about back at the Coop over coffee tomorrow morning. He turns white. He nor his son can pass the CDL test, they have tried many times. They have their grain hauled across state lines so you do need a CDL. I tell him that he had better get a driver hired as I doubt that anyone will haul for his son. Most truckers don"t like being called a thief. I was right no one would haul for them. We all wondered if their scales where off and did not match the elevators where they going to sue us truckers???? They have their own driver now. The father says that it is costing him about twice as much to get his grain hauled now. GOOD LOL

With 4 semis setting here we do a fair amount for other farmers. Just the same we have a dozer, scraper pan and two track hoes. We bill by the hour. I tell my operators and drivers allways be fair. As a farmer your just going to have to find someone you feel confortable with and trust or run up and down the road and check on him. In the 30 = years we have built a pretty good relasonship with the others we help. I guess they don,t worry about getting shorted and I don,t worry about getting paid. So far things are pretty good in Tennessee. Mean nothing by this realy but for sme rason I think it may be the part of the country or at least the type people you are dealing with..

I used to do quite a bit of custom grain hauling . I was hauling for a friend one day and he told me his sister sold 2476 .19 bu of corn . I said I would fill her contract first then fill his . A week later his sister came in to my shop and ask if I had delivered all of her corn . I said yes , why . She than ask if maybe I hadn't taken any corn out of hers to feed a calf ? I said no I delivered all of your corn , as a matter of fact I hauled over 5000 bu that day and told them to fill your contract first . She said for me to think about it and get back with her if I wanted to change my story . When she left I went straight to her brother and told him to get to the bottom of this NOW ! Come to find out the elevator didn't pay her for the 19 hundreds of a bu at 2.47 a bu . She called them & made them send her a check .

I made the mistake of hiring one of the local Mennonites to harvest my corn one of the last years I was in farming since I was working so much off the farm...

I can't prove it, but I'm pretty sure a lot of my corn didn't make it to the elevator in my name...

Howard

Didn't read all the posts but my friend hauls grain for a company.He told me (and he don't lie)the elevators are scrrewing you more than any truckeer will.He delivers corn and sunflowers.He was asked one day to call farmer back with dockage and cracs ETC.asks at the elevator after they checked and they say"why do you want to know"
friend says:farmer wants me to call him.
elevatore man:we won't know that for a day or two
Friend says:"BS. he left without knowing.
One other time he saw the dockage slip told the farmer next day,farmer was told 5% more on his cheque AND THE FIGHT BEGAN.

If you don't think you can trust him,then don't hire him.But if you asked me that question I would not ever haulyour loed again & we would settle up right then & part ways.And if you ever indicated that I had stolen your grain you would be getting new teeth.

My brother has scales on his grain cart...it protects him and also protects the driver from an overload ticket. During harvest you can see a pattern in the differences in weight from here to there...usually close to fuel usage on 60 to 80 mile hauls. One load we noticed a little pile of corn where we loaded out...and a trail down the road...two guys were hauling and the other guy said he saw corn on the road for 15 miles. That load was about 600# lighter than the average....truck owner paid for the difference and chalked it up to driver error (failure to shut the dump gate all the way)...that is how you keep customers.

a neighbor is in a dispute with an elevator over the same thing.The neighbor says he counted the loads as they were hauled out and there were 8 semi loads.The eleavator claims 7.The driver says he doesn't remember.

Its a risk of the game. The same with logs, cattle, hay, or apples. If I can prove someone is stealing from me, I'll prosecute them. If I suspect someone is stealing from me I wont do business with them any more.

I've had guys who got hay and kept their own count. Over the years I can think of two who I know, but cant prove, were doctoring the numbers. I just dont have anything to sell to them any more.

For that matter, I've had farm hands who padded their time. I havent needed them since I suspected it.