Combine drivers

South African labor for wheat harvest?
Wheat harvest

(quoted from post at 08:19:22 05/09/20) South African labor for wheat harvest?
Wheat harvest

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Been going on for years.

Is this the first you've heard of it?

They have been using foreigners for quite some time to staff the harvest crews. It will be an interesting harvest for sure. Most of the people here in the USA do not want to work that many hours in a day.

Yes first I have heard of it. We use Mexicans and
teenagers around here in Texas.

i did the harvest at 20 and it was a blast hard work yes pay was poor but it was still a blast seen a lot off flat land and them farmers daughters were well we better not say might get kicked off the fourm it was a blast

I live 30 miles from that harvester in the story. There are thousands of intelligent skilled airplane builders laid off here that will work for him if given the chance. They might require a few minutes training to run a combine, but they will do it perfecly with just a bit of time invested in showing them how. Most probably grew up near here farming anyway.

Of course the gooberment stupidly padding unemployment checks by $600 may cut into the number of those who want to work, but I know lots of these folks and they have pride enough to be ashamed of the unemployment and are more than willing to work. Any one of them can operate a combine with just a few minutes training.

Doesn't seem like there would be much left after paying airline fees, car rental, gov red tape...

Between making immigration near impossible and the double unemployment payments the government is making it very hard on many businesses.

The article is accurate. Two months ago I was concerned about how the harvesters will get help. I ran on the harvest for 13 years, long enough to rub elbows with a lot of harvesters and witness a lot more interesting happenings than anyone can imagine. When western wheat is ready to harvest it needs to be done NOW. Rain will lighten the test weight and hail coming up over the mountains can turn a good crop into shredded bare stems in minutes.

South Africans, Kiwis, Irish, Soviet Bloc, you name it there are all kinds of foreigners that normally work the wheat harvest. Many of them return year after year.

While there are people unemployed here, not many will want to spend the summer on the road. And what will happen if they are called back to their old jobs mid summer?

I have marching orders to spend the last 2 weeks of may in TX to support harvesters. My employer usually sends a crew of Canadians, but they are stuck north of the border.

Is anyone familiar with the organization called Farm Rescue. They are HQ in North Dakota and provide help to farm families in need due to medical or accident issues. Their area of operation is about 5 upper mid west states. Their mission is different than a typical custom harvester as they help in spring, summer, and fall if the need is there. I have considered helping them with harvest this year but don't expect to be called. They use nearly all volunteers who help for short terms of typically 1 or 2 weeks. They use equipment donated by RDO Equipment and (if I'm correct?) there is no cost to the farm family they provide help to. Expenses for the volunteers is provided once you get to the job site but you must provide your own transportation to and from your home.

Huh.... what do they typically pay for such an illustrious job in one of those fancy air conditioned cabs with the GPS so all you have to do is sit there & pick your nose? Seems to me a cushy job like that wouldn't have too many problems finding a hire with soooo many people out of work. They're either not willing to pay or advertise. On the other hand, if no one in the states wants to get of their duff & earn their keep, they get what they deserve i.e. they can eat what they reap.... & I don't know there's a whole lot of people that can consume greenbacks or their plastic cards to survive. Suppose crypto currency is for dieters. Bwahahahahahahahaha!

Mike

Your right about those farmers daughters. I married one. Still together after 44 years. Best thing I ever did.

Yup, those girls still talk about you Marlow, you were a legend in your own time ..... LOL !!!

Watched a documentary couple years back. Wish I could remember what it was called. Anyway the just of it was--they interviewed several employers who said, most job applicants were okay with working 8 hrs. a day but when they found out that was 5 days a week, every week, they walked out the door. Wonder how they would do on a harvest crew or road construction. If you ain't sleeping you are working.

You sure earn your name. well just the Crazy part. You do not have a clue.Went on a harvest my self years ago.

Large local Co-op has been hiring 40+- from South Africa on 10 month work visa to drive fertilizer delivery and sprayer support trucks and grain hauling semi's.

Yes the cabs are cushy and nice but that is only the small part. They need drivers who don't run the unloading auger into a tree or a building or another combine's auger, drivers who don't run the end of the header into an embankment and bend the header back, and the combine driver does the same thing trying to avoid the first combine only to the other end of his head, drivers who don't run a row divider into a $5000 tire, who don't lose control of the combine on the road and run it into the ditch, or off a cliff, or into an oncoming semi, drivers who don't snag a 3 phase pole guy wire, spinning the combine around and bringing the pole down, drivers who don't wipe the reel off the header on a tree limb or take down overhead power lines, or cut the wheat too high or run too fast or tailgate the combine ahead of them or run into a parked combine while running in high gear. Then there are the truck drivers who crawl in the bunk to sleep off a drunk, or take off from the elevator with the trailer parking brakes engaged, or cut corners too short and ditch a loaded trailer that has to be vacuumed out before the truck can be pulled out, or the trucker who takes a corner too fast and lays the loaded truck over in the intersection. The truck drivers that bugged me the most were the ones who turned the truck they were assigned to into a pig sty. You get to bed at two in the morning and get back up at six for ten days in a row. I have seen all of this and have had to repair some of the damage. The average home town farmer has no idea what harvesting is all about until he spends a few years on a harvesting crew.

Wilson .... so you kept the girls busy too did you? Those sweeties never knew what hit them I'll bet.

The couple years I went on the run it sure wasn?t an 8-5 job 5 days a week but I sure enjoyed it.

Did I say ANYTHING about girls???????????????? Stick to facts not your imagination!!!

Sounds to me like you participated in a lot of boring harvests. Marlow obviously had more fun than you did.

I leave this ridiculous conversation on the grounds

one should not argue with a fool as the intelligentsia might confuse the one sane person. Good day to those reading this ,and to Crazy may you enjoy your stupidity!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Wait Duncan delivers a message about driving combines and also about safety .
How to drive a combine

I ran the wheat harvest 5 years with 3 different cutters. One for 3 years. I was older than most of the crew each time. The guy I worked for 3 years,I worked in the shop from March till we left to go south. Start at Kiowa KS go to Munday TX then worked north. Always liked it in the MT and ID areas best. Went as far north as Dubois Id then go back to Blanca CO to dig spuds cut wheat and pickup barley. Would get done about Thanksgiving. Then haul The machines back to either Kiowa or the dealer he traded with. 10 combines,3 grain carts 1840 and 2 1240 Kinze's. And the trucks to keep up. When we moved it was like a cattle drive first guy would be in TX and the last was leaving KS.LOL Not quite but close it seemed some years.
Another experience is digging sugar beets. Did that for 5 years also.

Darn it. I thought it was going to be a link to the combine demo's. Haven't been to one of them in ages.

Mike

That part of the movie didn?t get uploaded one day I?m going to get the dvd . There are 3 or 4 different versions of it but I can only find one

It is funny how guys on here can have it so figured out. What they got figured out sometimes makes me scratch my head...

I ran with a crew out of Scott city in 2000. It was the first year the STS combines were out. Deere spent a lot of time chasing us and tweaking our two STSs. The boss had split the crew with his son running the STSs and the boss running 4 conventionals. The boss was fair but ran a stricter crew, the son was more permissive and his crew took advantage of it. I started on bosses a crew but got transferred to the sons crew in trade for the troublemakers.

Anyway, we all ended up back together in Hamer and Dubois Idaho. The "farm" had 25000 acres of wheat and split it between two custom cutters and his own rigs. the other cutter was almost all Australians and New Zealanders. We were cutting 120 bushel wheat in what was basically desert. All pivots. 50 feet off the end of the pivot was scrub brush. The west was on fire that year, so just about every day was so Smokey you could barely see to the end of the field. The one day it clear, you could see the mountains. We ran every day sunup to sundown. Other places we had sometimes shown up before the wheat was ready and would have a few days to screw off. We spent a week or two in Ogalolla Nebraska cutting about 50 at a shot then getting the rest of the day off. Not Idaho.

Our crew was three of us from Wisconsin, a pair from Maryland, guy from Missouri, guy from Illinois, guy from eastern Kansas, boss, bosses son, bosses wife. I forget where some of the others came from. Only about five of us made it to the end. Boss likes to hire outta Wisconsin because we had all grown up on a dairy farm and knew how to wake up early. Not so much the case anymore.

Boss had said he regularly turned down married guys who wanted to bring their wives along. He said this was a single guys job. So yeah, those out of work airplane builders with a wife and kids probably are not as willing as you think to abandon their family and run off and cut wheat for five months. And the cutter crews are not likely willing to hire them because they could quit at any moment to go home if their factory fires back up.

I am sure that hiring foreigners is very appealing to cutters. The workers have invested a lot of time and money to come here and have to work in order to pay off their investment. They cannot just drop out and go home because home is 12000 miles away. It is basically indentured servitude. Wisconsin Dells is pretty much entirely staffed by foreigners from any country you can think of. Noah s ark waterpark even has their home country printed on their name tags. Why hire locals at a fair wage when you can import indentured servants who cannot easily go home?

You're right about that Willie, for once I agree with you !!