Harvest Time

[Deleted member 10829]

Fun thread to follow! I've never seen a combine with saucy tracks before.

 

[Iowa Rider]

My son works for a CIH dealer and said they are the same tracks as a quad track tractor and CNH makes them in house.

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Bearrassler, thanks for sharing the pics and editorial !

 

[bearrassler]

While most of you have a lot of snow on the ground we are still combining corn. It sounds like we should finish up next Wednesday or Thursday. We only received about an inch or two of snow but did get the cold weather. The crew that was tilling the fields had to quit on Wednesday because the ground was frozen to deep to till. That means that about 8000 acres of corn stubble will not be worked this fall and if we have another late and wet spring like the last two years it will be hard to get it all seeded next year. We have kicked out a couple more moose from the corn fields along with lots of deer and coyotes. It is a lot more bumpy driving in and out of the fields in the semi's now that the ground is frozen (it was 0 this morning, and might be a few degrees below zero tomorrow. It would be a lot colder if we had gotten a little more snow. Here are a couple more pictures from Thursday near Larimore, ND

 

[groomerdriver]

My son works for a CIH dealer and said they are the same tracks as a quad track tractor and CNH makes them in house.

Those particular (Steiger) 4WD tractors are built at the CNH plant in Fargo ND. I'm pretty sure they are Camoplast tracks but could be wrong. As a supplier to CNH, I've often wondered why they don't make a smaller version of the Steiger (CNH) for trail grooming purposes. But Soucy is sure happy they don't!

 

[Iowa Rider]

Groomerdriver, I was actually referring to the undercarriage that propels the rubber (track) sorry.
I do believe the rubber tracks are sourced thru Camoplast.
I know Hardi Midwest. (they build sprayers) also use the Camoplast rubber on their pull type sprayers
One more thing CNH does make a smaller version of the Steiger Quad Track. It's called the Row Track. Much smaller, fairly new to the market.

 

[bearrassler]

The tracks on the tractors and combines and the carts all say Goodyear on them. They could be made by camoplast though

 

[bearrassler]

We finished the 2014 harvest yesterday afternoon. overall it went very well for them. The corn harvest took 20 days and although we had a couple of short days do to snow and rain we did not have a day off during the corn harvest. In the two and a half months I put on about 17,500 miles on the semi's that I drove and drove on I-29, I-94, US-2, US-81, US-281, US-75, MN-220, ND-18, ND-5, ND-66, ND-32, ND-46, ND-200, ND-15, and many different county,township, and minimum maintenance roads. I hauled potatoes to 2 different warehouses, wheat to one elevator, soy beans to three different elevators and corn to four elevators. On my last load to Crookston, MN yesterday the bin we were loading in was full and corn was coming out of the top of it just before my turn to dump. It was an experience to see how it is done and I may do it again. I put in a little over 700 hours in 78 days but had quite a few days off between potato and soy bean harvest so I only worked about 62 days. Someone had mentioned not wanting to pay the daily overhead and at one time during potatoes we had over 170 people on the payroll and they told me that during corn harvest the Grand Forks farm was using over 3000 gallons of fuel per day. Here are a few more pictures of the last couple of days of harvest 2014

 

[Iowa Rider]

bearrassler, thanks for the story and pics !
I enjoyed it

 

[gary_in_neenah]

Thanks Bearrassler, I also enjoyed the story and pictures, even learned some things about your part of the country.

 

[skiroule]

Thanks for posting this Bearrassler. This was a really interesting series. Without photos, it's hard to grasp the size of this operation.

It's surprising that some moose were actually flushed out of the corn fields. Now some guys might make a wisecrack about where else would a moose hide in ND but not me, no sir.