Feeling the need for a bin.

Nothing large. Maybe 5K bushel? Fan in the bottom and, if possible, something to move the grain around to keep it cold in the center until I can get it to the the elevator? It won't stay in there long. I do not want LT storage. Too wet here to dump on the ground. Here is my (corn) story...

At least half the week I am a one man show so I combine, load, deliver. Everything goes fine as long as my untiled and uncooperative land doesn't get too productive. County average for this type of ground is about 125 bpa and I came close to that number last year. It was hard. This year, the elevator starts having issues with being full. Shuts me right down during great weather. Elevator opens up, weather tanks on me. On weekends I have no place to put crop, so I wait until Monday. It would really help if I could just pick the crop and dump and then every few days run it up to the elevator in loads. I could get someone to help me with that a couple times a week. Interested in suggestions.

Wagons have been considered and rejected. Would have to be a used bin. I don't make enough to justify new stuff.

If I ever get 200 bushel corn it will probably kill me.

Geez, Dave, never complain about too much Crop! Lol. A used bin with a full air floor would probably suit your needs. I run a one man show here too, but we never had to wait for the elevator. You could probably get two 2500 bushel bins with floors cheap enough, just kind of Labour intensive to dismantle and erect, a job with which you will need help. 2 smaller bins does give you some flexibility if you grow more than one crop, plus probably a bit cheaper to buy, and a small 32 foot auger will fill them. Lots of that size bin around here just rusting away. Ben

Forget about a used bin. By the time you take one down, and put it back up, replace the bolts etc. You have nearly a new bin with less lifespan. And the cost for the concrete pad and electrical will be the same.

Build it bigger than you need. Then when you have another field in two years or you have aa good crop it will fit.

You are on the right track though, something with a good aeration floor will help you get done. And it will make you money- money that will make the bin not a cost, but a profit builder. Example: blending soybeans will even out moisture levels. Figure out what a load of 15% beans costs you in dockage. Or a load of 10% in lost bushels sold. I had some too wet last year and some too dry, but had them in two seperate bins. I was able to blend the loads to 12.5-13.0 with minimal hassle. You'll be able to pull some moisture out with a floor as well.

You'll be able to capture some basis gain as well, and you'll be able to market somewhere other than the local elevator. Odds are that will net you some even after paying freight. Current basis difference between the local elevator and the port is 45 cents. It costs we an additional 13-14 cents to get to the port. Having a bin earns me 30 plus cents just by having flexibility. And the elevator is full here, so I'd be screwed with that option if I had no bin.

Corn will be a bit fussier, but you could store 16-17 % corn for a couple weeks with reasonable aeration. Or you could consider a dryer.

Good luck.

My uncle used to store a lot of grain in one of those steel quanset buildings with a concrete floor. Loaded back out with an auger and a loader. When it was empty,he had extra machinery and truck storage.

Dave, the secret to getting grain through the elevator that you are hauling yours to is to plant early and harvest early you will have to bite the bullet and pay a little more drying charges but they move along pretty smooth until they get full....they were even taking grain most Sundays until they started getting full.......I know easier said than done....ha..ha

Dave smaller bins are being given away around here, just to get rid of the taxes on them. Mom gave away a 3500 bu bin 2 years ago with floor, man and wife took it down. good luck with your search

Your county Farm Service Agency is offering Farm Storage Facility Loans on new and used bins and handling equipment and offering very low interest rates. I bought some square bale handling equipment this past summer and interest rate was less than 1-1/2 %. Your loss due to weather would probably cover that.

Does your elevator refuse to accept all corn including dry corn or do they just refuse to accept additional wet corn until their dryers catch up? Check with your elevator.

Adding an on-farm dryer to your operation could allow you to store your corn on-farm longer saving elevator storage fees and would allow you to to deliver dry corn to your elevator late in the harvest season when you run out of bin space.

Different world here. I can't imagine not having enough grain storage for my entire cop. There is just no time to stop and haul grain to the elevator during harvest. Especially when I don't own a semi and the elevator is 20 to 30 miles away. Some guys are using the big plastic bags but they are not the ultimate answer either.
And the "big bin" on my farm is 2000 bushels.

I"ve moved at least 6 bins, from 1400 to 5500 bu. Not that hard to do. Some were intact, largest one I split horizontally, half ways up, then one vertical split on the lower section, pulled it inside a bit, and lowered the top half around it...backed a low slung trailer underneath, and drove it home. Largest I moved intact was 3200 bu.

I know! Sounds kinda like I am going against the flow, don't it!? That 2015 harvest was so hard on me. That November snowfall...something in the teens for accumulation...then the melt and mud after. When I got to January with tax season looming ahead of me I was just about spent. I ran those last six rows and my wife and I cheered...I took a lap around the field in the combine just so I could make myself believe I was done. Lucky I didn't get stuck! I was dreading 2016 harvest while still planting the fields. No need to worry there. I'm nowhere near the same volume this year. I like the idea of two smaller bins. If I go with used they will be that much easier to handle. Gonna see how much a new one is though. Might not be worth the trouble to move the old one.

Interesting info, thanks! Nice to know there is a reason to do it other than making life easier. I can't keep doing things the way I now do them. No flexiblity. Crop being lost to weather and critters while the elevator goes hot and cold on me. That last load before the combine elevator jammed was nearly refused by the elevator. It rained on the way back. I was glad to be rid of it.

Yeah, but what is a Quonset hut but two grain bin halves laid end to end?

My boss was always into something, in addition to his four car dealerships he started buying farms. He had an extra 6 or 8 acres next to the Chevy dealership so he built a huge steel building to store the corn in, don't remember the dimensions but the size of a football field or bigger. Walls must of been 25 feet tall and they filled it to the top the first year and wasn't long it and started making noises and taking the shape of a pumkin, and the west end started going out. He backed a big 4x4 john Deere up against the wall and it pushed the big Deere out like it was on ice. They hauled it out, the big steel up rights were bowed out until the bolts sheared off in the cement, all the wood it was lined with looked like kindling. They rebuilt it all but the roof and drastically reduced the capacity.

I think I did that year one. Not intentionally, it was more like I did not know any better. That was a small field and I had moisture over 30% on one load. More like 24-25% by the time I finished. Corn was about a buck cheaper that year and I really took a hit. My check ALMOST covered my inputs. Last year I had no trouble either, but I was well into December and early January. He had plenty of room. I was at 15-16%. He is less than 10 miles away and we have a good relationship. Even if he would take every load I had, when I had it, I would still want to end this cycle of harvest/dump/deliver/repeat. Seems like I am always pushing the end of the day to get that last load up there.

Is that my specific county or are we speaking generally? Because I would probably do that. I have no debt to speak of. Farm has a LOC tied to the prime rate but I don't touch it other than to help the kids with college expenses and then I pay it down pretty quick. I will look into that.

I've looked at those and I am not there yet. I have natural gas so drying is cheaper for me than those on propane. If I can get things streamlined I could take on more. I am pretty sure one of the local BTO's is going to bankrupt himself soon. He does some adjacent fields I would be interested in. But I have to get my current tiger tamed before I even think about it. Almost there. I have most of the equipment issues under control.

They auctioned off a 3000 bu. bin near here at a farm estate sale a few months ago for $250.00. I have a neighbor that has several used bins that he uses. Any where from 3000 to 12000 bu. I don't think he gave any more that $650.00 for any of them.

This was just one of those free standing arch type. Fill it in the middle and it would peak up in the center without putting much pressure against the bottom. The bottom was cemented in anyway,so there never was any danger of putting too much pressure on it.

I figured I saved about a week with the bin to unload into last year during beans last year. I wish we had a dryer for corn so I could Save the time of going to the elevator. I have to work as a one man band most of the time in the fall. My wife will help when she can. Mostly just with guiding to back up to the auger and such shuffling equipment.
I also figure I lost 2 weeks with hauling to the elevator this fall. As everything for my brother had to go to the elevator for contracts.
We have been going to Grand Ledge as I don't have much of a wait there. It is 40 miles from the farthest point though. Weber- ville can't be to far from you and doable verses leaving it in the field when it is time and weather cooperative to do. Yup it is farther but still not that far.
Like said about the used bins though I have been looking for a medium sized one about 10,000 bushel. Get one bigger than you think though.

I don't blame you for wanting to put up a bin....we have a small one that we put soys in when the elevator isn't open.

I've got four bins that size with drying floor but no stir. I don't do corn but have one full of milo and one full of beans from this year - they were full at the elevator. It's a nice option.

Augering it by yourself isn't. My advice? Invest in a few 650 bushel auger wagons. Your big tractor can handle that easy. Roll the tarp and only keep them in use long enough to get it to town. I've got one that size and it has been invaluable this year. I wish it had a tarp on mine but I have shed space to get it in. Next year it will have a tarp. I paid $2500 at an auction and then had a guy reinforce the auger trough with stainless sheets I had around here.

A bin is such a pain when you are a one man show. Not much better when there are two.

Consider moving distance and logistics carefully on used. As you are employed off farm consider professional bin movers. A local bin say 24 diam. can often be moved in tact, consider width on route carefully. Costly as it sounds possibly helicopter moving, its not as crazy as you might think. Do not rule out new as tax advantages and deep discounts out of season are often offered. Do have more than one unloading gate in unload auger.This can make life good if center happens to be obstructed. PLEASE never get in bin when unloading unless VERY close to empty. Never run a sweep auger alone.Just to risky should something go wrong. Consider newer side ladders on used bins. The old ladders were literally killers . A safety belt is not a luxury, not anything slicker than a wet bin ladder or bin roof .

Sounds like you have a sorry excuse for an elevator that can't handle a grain harvest they know is coming year after year.
I'm with ss55. Find out what their bottleneck is before you do anything. Is it storage capacity? Drying capacity? Shipping capacity? Short on capitol for buying grain?

For anything 5,000 bu or less a bin is more trouble than it's worth versus hauling it in right off the combine. Also, whatever dollars you put into it you'll never get but a fraction of it back again if you want to sell it. But if you insist on on-farm storage then consider a hopper bin. You won't need any cement, no electricity if you have a pto auger, no shoveling, no dust and you will have something you can resell anytime you change your operation. You could also move it across the yard or to a neighboring farm anytime its not handy where its at. I've seen some guys park them right in the corner of the field and set up a gravity box at the auger. Dump the grain cart right into the box and no wasting time hauling with a truck at all.

You can get them with an aeration tube option if you want to put a fan on it but it's more for holding the condition of a crop, not drying. I wouldn't suggest putting real wet corn in it.

That said, you need to find out from your elevator if storage capacity is the issue. If so, you could see if they won't take your wet corn as a priority if you offer to take a load of dry corn out at the same time to put in your hopper bin. Might be you could be the only one harvesting while everyone else is sitting still.

OK, Here's my 2 cents worth. I have a small farm that was my grandparents, 70 acres, 65 tillable. I'm in NW Illinois. The first 2 years, I had 2 200 bu. gravity wagons and a auger. I had to sell to the only local elevator that would pick it up at the farm, 15 to 20 cents lower price than the other elevators. Fill the wagons and combine and when the semi showed up in the evening, I would unload wagons and combine till I got a semi load. Then I bought a used 500 bu. holding bin and set it up. Then I could fill the holding bin and the wagons and combine and have a semi load. Call them when I was ready and they would come and I would load them up and then fill everything again. Worked OK till it stormed and then I was 13' in the air on a ladder in the wind and rain trying to tarp it. I then bought a used 5000 bu. drying bin with a aeration floor, dryer and a Shivvers unit in it in Iowa. I hired a crew to move it about the time my job disappeared, so I helped them move it and then worked for them most of the summer. Cement costs the same whether for a new bin or a used bin. We disassembled the bin to move it. We left the roof in sections of 3 sheets, put it back up here at home. Then I could combine corn and dump it in the bin, but I didn't have electric to it yet, so I had to wait until the corn was pretty dry. After I got it wired up, I could run the fan and I would start when the corn was about 19% and run air on it to dry it. It worked so well that I bought a used Gov't bin(3000 bu.) and added 2 rings and homemade stiffeners to it. Then I added a used drying floor and a 12" fan. Now I can combine corn and beans and dump into the bins. I farm by myself after work and weekends. I would be lost without the bins. I can fill all 4 wagons and the combine after work and if I don't get them unloaded, I unload tomorrow afternoon when I get home and then combine some more. I have only used the heater 2 years out of about 10 years of use. I always sell in the spring before warm weather arrives. Look real hard at the FSA storage loans, it will pay you in the long run, prices are better after harvest 8 or 9 years out of 10. You will be able to combine when you want to instead of when they will take grain. Used bins set up are about 1/2 price of new unless you go with 3000 bu. or smaller bins. Around here, 18' bins get loaded on a trailer sideways and pulled down the road and set back up in a day. I sincerely doubt you will ever regret getting some kind of bin . Good luck with whatever you decide to do. Chris

Dave a Grain bin will pay for itself in several ways.

1) Speeding up harvest. You can harvest when your ready and not worry about an elevator taking delivery.
2) Even just a fan will allow you to air dry corn that is under 18%. Thus saving drying charges. Drying charges and shrinkage are MAJOR profit centers for grain elevators. They always charge more than the dry cost and shrink the weight more than it actually shrinks during drying does. They make money on both ends of the equation. I have not shipped wet corn in over 30 years. I figure just doing that alone will gain you $.10-15 per bushel year end and year out.
3) The ability to market your corn rather than just dump it at harvest. There is just about always a bonus to selling after the harvest glut of corn.
4) You can match sales to expenses over a wider time range. You a tax guy so you well understand the advantages of deciding when the sell rather than just having to take what you can get.
5) You can widen your market area. I do not know your exact local market but usually there is advantages to shipping in semi load lots to the same merchants your local elevator is shipping grain to. IRC you say he ships little to non on rail. So he is depending on trucking the grain too.
6) Deprecation!!! A bin is a piece of equipment so it has a deprecated life span. You can do your tax voodoo to maximize the advantage.


With interest rates at low levels the cost of a bin would easily be less than the expense of a delayed harvest and the poor local marketing opportunities you get by not being able to take advantage of market trends. Very rarely does the local market basis not exceed the hauling cost to a more major market.

Example here today. Local market price, $3.19, River market 70 miles away, $3.40. Hauling cost local $.14 to the river $.30. So you pay 16 cents more to get 21 cents more for the product. Also the dockages are usually less at the river market.

Another example: Some late harvested corn here has cob rot. So there is some damaged kernels. We hauled a load from a neighbor to the local market, 19% damage and high dockage cost. Load taken to the River market nothing done to the corn other than drove another 70 miles, Damage 6%. So he got more money plus 13% less in dockage. 1000 bushel load. 13% equals 130 bushels at $3.25= $455 Plus another nickel on the entire load, 1000 less 6% dock by weight, 940 bushel x $.05= $47. $455+$47= $502 more money on one load of corn. Moisture dockage will yield similar numbers.

The ability to market to a wider area is a major advantage. We sell less than 5-10% to the local markets. There just about always is a money advantage to going to the river markets.

Also if your going to look at a bin of any size make sure you have at least an eight inch unloading auger. This way you can load a semi in 30-45 minutes. Even if you buy a used bin with a smaller unloading auger in it replace it with a larger one. Truckers are not going to want to wait around on a six inch auger to load a truck in an hour. We have ten inch unloading augers and 13 inch transport augers. A semi is loaded in under 20 minutes.

It depends on the area. At the beginning of harvest my local elevator was the only one not full in a three county area. By the end of harvest there were guys trucking from two hours away to dump. I'm not big - 1000 acres - but I have been loyal to that elevator. Just as soon as a semi hauled out he would call me and have me bring a semi in. It was a slow process but he was 10 times better than my Co-op the next town over. They are worthless. Just before they were full I sat in line for seven hours just to fill out a contract with them. They don't have grain legs with enough capacity for their storage.

I was just trying to float a few ideas for him to get the most bang for the buck to (A.) Keep initial costs down (B.) Hang onto the equity in the cash spent (C.) Keep long term options open for changes in the operation (D.) Keep labor needed at a minimum (E.) and most important...keep the combine moving.

I have a hard time imagining what some of you guys put up with, with the elevators in your area. I don't know why any elevator would be full at the beginning of harvest. Shouldn't all of their bins be empty?????? I have a half dozen 3,000 bu bins but never use them. It only takes me two truck loads and two hours to harvest 3,000 bu. by myself. Trying to move augers around by myself and the time to fill them would be a colossal waste of time in comparison to the rate of harvest, especially when I have an elevator within 5 to 10 miles depending on the field. I don't know of a single neighbor who has built a bin recently that wasn't at least 30,000 bu. 50,000 bu bins are starting to be more common.

But if a guy wanted to haul to the elevator, they are geared up to take it. Harvest hours are 8:00 am to 8:00 pm. Our local co-op can dump 4 to 5 semis at a time if taking beans and corn at the same time. 250 semis a day is an easy day. 60% of those trucks are pulling pup trailers hauling anywhere from 1500 to 1800 bu. Very seldom is there a waiting line. There are two scales, one to weigh in, another to weigh out, so it's all one way traffic over the scales.

We wave a card in front of a sensor for identification and weighing, all automated so no human error. No getting in and out of the truck. No chattering over a loud speaker or visiting. The elevator employees open and shut your traps. If you get out of your truck, your likely to just slow everyone down. Pick up your ticket at your window again without leaving the truck. Un-tarping the truck and probing the truck for a sample takes the longest time but half the guys have electric tarps so never stop moving until they're under the probe. Ten minutes max in and out to dump a semi and pup if there's no one in front of you and the guy opening your traps is paying attention.

We have 1.2 million bu capacity in the cement elevator. I'm guessing the three steel bins hold another 700,000 ??? Two grain dryers which I don't know the capacity of but they are the round silo looking dryers that are almost as tall as the elevator itself. There are two outdoor piles over pavement with underground unloading conveyors that hold 1.5 million bu each and are filled directly from the elevator. These can both be tarped. And 4 bunkers over pavement that hold 750,000 each. Those get filled with a drive over conveyor and also get tarped. That's a total of 7,900,000 bu. not counting dumping a pile on the ground over dirt if they get desperate.

Add to that, they fill at least two if not three 110 car unit trains a week during harvest. That's nearly half a million bu every time a train leaves town. Then there's another elevator about half as big in the next town 4 miles down the road and an ethanol plant 20 miles south and another ethanol plant 20 miles north along with five or six other large elevators also within that same 20 mile radius. Most of these are co-op elevators. The independent guys are long gone and for a reason. A strong co-op with good leadership will address your needs. An independent guy don't give a hoot if your combine is moving or not so long as his bins are full.

Appreciate the advice. I am pretty crazy about safety around here but never having been around bins, I like to be told how they can harm me...so I can be prepared.

As a side note, I looked into having a local company with helicopters move a building for me two years ago. Seemed like the perfect idea. Guy told me I was right, except it would blow the shingles off of everything within 500 feet. Amusing picture in my head, but I had to pass.

Thanks, Chris...that is really good info! I like and appreciate the advice of the bigger guys because they really know their business and have a lot of good insight. But it helps to hear from someone who is closer to what I do. Because I have a bunch of acres in hay scattered around the area and have only been doing grain three years so my acreage in grain is still pretty low. I could not do any more than I have now using my current system. Your story is very helpful.

Thanks Ronnie! Probably no surprise to you but I find the numbers fascinating. Farming is like a lot of businesses in that what would appear to be insignificant unit costs can add up to a lot of money. I am not a cost accountant professionally, but I did teach it at the college when I was involved with that. The relationships with volume and variable costs, the effects of fixed costs, and the use of all this info to make decisions in marketing, equipment and land acquisitions, etc...well, that kind of is what floats my boat. I think about these things daily. It is one of the reasons I am able to make a little money even with an operation that, by today's standards, is pretty darn small. We are going to hit the numbers on this pretty hard around here. We had a dinner out last night and it was a big topic. Everyone here is in favor of adding a bin.

Should be available in every part of the USA. USDA Farm Service Agency.