“The card reader frees up the person in the grade shack,” Sethre explains. “This system gives the operator more time for the next customer since the previous driver can take care of himself. The person running the probe doesn’t have to worry about it; the card takes care of it and eliminates the problem of making sure you’re weighing the right truck.”

Eight employees serve a growing number of local wheat producers.

Unique reclaim system

The Headrick facility features Gavilon’s first 20,000-bushel/hour McCord Conveyor Systems belt conveyor with track-mounted tripper system, an application familiar to other industries, but unique to grain handling.

To reclaim grain from the Union Iron Works-housed ground piles, the tripper’s arms lay flat and a hopper is fitted over the end. A pay loader dumps grain into the hopper and onto the arm, where it falls onto a 1,200-foot-long belt, and is brought into the elevator’s ground tunnel where it hits a 60,000-bushel/hour Hi-Roller reclaim belt conveyor. It is then elevated back into the bins.

To load the ground piles, the system is reversed: Grain exits the elevator, hits the belt, leaves the tripper arm and is dropped onto the ground pile.

The tripper’s 1,350-foot-long track runs between the two 2-million-bushel piles and is permanently fixed into place.

“The ground pile reclaim is much more efficient than loading grain on to the trucks and bringing it back to the elevator that way,” Sethre says. “The benefits to this investment have been a combination of time and dollar savings. I estimate we save about 4 cents/bushel.”