At GEAPS Exchange 2025, Julio Contreras of Sweet by Behlen revealed the company’s newly redesigned QL 17 Series Flite-Veyor drag conveyor, engineered for gentle grain handling and improved efficiency. The updated design includes features like low-speed operation, dust seals, shaft guards and a new 15-degree curve section — all to minimize grain damage and enhance durability.
Contreras also shared the 70-year-old company's legacy of innovation in providing high-quality, long-lasting equipment for its loyal customer base across the agricultural and industrial markets.
Transcript of Feed & Grain Chat with Julio Contreras, vice president of sales, Sweet by Behlen:
Elise Schafer, editor of Feed & Grain: Hi, everyone, and welcome to Feed & Grain Chat. I'm your host Elise Schafer, editor of Feed & Grain. This edition of Feed & Grain Chat is brought to you by Sweet by Behlen. Sweet by Behlen combines decades of expertise in bulk material handling with innovation, reliability and superior service, delivering high quality solutions designed for efficiency, durability and global performance.
Today I'm at GEAPS Exchange 2025 with Julio Contreras, vice president of sales for Sweet by Behlen. Hi, Julio, thanks for joining me today.
Julio Contreras, vice president of sales for Sweet by Behlen: How are you doing? How are you guys? Elise, thank you for the opportunity here. I’m excited! A lot of things are happening at Sweet. We have been in business almost 70 years and in that we have a lot of core product lines that we have been trying to revamp and redesign and bring back to life. They’ve been great, high quality equipment, but we have decided to do a freshen up to the line — a lot of the elevator lines and conveyor lines, especially the drag series, the elevator series, that were designed in the 70s, evolved in the 80s and then in the 90s were adapted to the market.
So, what we have done in the last three years is come up with these new redesigns that include a lot of features that the market is demanding. And we decided to call that line the QL Quality Line, and it will remain the same model numbers. In this case, we have here a drag conveyor — the famous Flite-Veyor is a trademark for drag conveyors, chain conveyors as it's called. In this case, we have the 17 Series. It’s 17 inches tall, so we are unveiling it at the GEAPS 2025.
Schafer: Julio, how does the Flite-Veyor QL Series address gentle handling and minimize damage for your customers?
Contreras: That's an excellent question. One of the things that Sweet equipment has over the years is carry a legacy on their [equipment] — they’re very quiet, very easy to assemble, and the gentle handling portion. And there are multiple — these five features — that we add to that and in a moment we’ll go through the drawing and do that.
And I'm going to give you why these 17-inch series conveyors are so famous in the market for that. If you look at the design of the shaft here to the design of the discharge, basically the grain has a lot of space to drop before it even gets to the sprocket and the chain. This is mainly where the grinding happens. That's number one.
Number two, if you go to the tail, you also will see that our inlet is about in this area. This is sending the inlet, so we have a lot of space before the grain even gets to them. Number two, we are notorious for being very slow speed. Our paddles and seasons are designed heavy duty and notorious for longevity and our steel is U.S. prime steel, so we have equipment in the field that's still from the 50s and the 60s. I always joke and say, “You know we all need to eat, right? How many times are you going to pay for that?” We're very proud of what we do, and besides the QL 17 series, we introduced two years ago our bulk elevators with the same features in mind.
One of the things, too, that is important to notice is we have shaft guards now that cover all the moving parts behind the shaft guard in the tail. And on the head, we have seals now that contain dust, so we are one of the few ones that that is standard, it’s not an option. It's a standard on all the drag conveyor lines. So these conveyors, they can go from 2,500 bushels an hour all the way to 20,000. It can go 17 inches tall all the way to 24 inches wide.
We have an alternative besides the horizontal — the inclined — and they can get all the way from horizontal to 60 degrees. That's new also for us. And one of the features that I think will make the biggest changes on the horizontal drag is now we have a 15-degree curve. So, it's not usual like everybody does. It took us two years for us to develop that, and test it and then we came out with one of the best curved sections and horizontal drags in the market nowadays.
Schafer: Julio, Sweet by Behlen has a long history in the grain industry. How is this series a testament to your innovation in grain handling?
Contreras: We have been in business since 1955, so that shows you there how we've been evolving. Sweet manufacturing is a company that few people know we do agricultural equipment and industrial, too. So, we get it for the two markets. We can do aggregates, we can do sugar, we can do polymers. It's a lot of other things that we attach to, so we grab knowledge from both of them and we're mixing and coming up with excellent pieces of equipment.
One thing is that Sweet by Behlen has is very good success with our dealers and our end users, we have a lot of repeated business coming back to us. One thing I am here to say, and I don't know if you know that we're in the process of being acquired now by Behlen Manufacturing. So, we’re all excited about it. It's only one way to do more and now complete the seasons and keep bringing excellent pieces of equipment to the market.
Schafer: Julio, thank you so much for sharing your insights and information about the QL 17 Series.
Contreras: Thank you, appreciate it. Thank, Elise.
Schafer: That's all for today's Feed & Grain Chat. If you'd like to see more videos like this, subscribe to our YouTube channel, sign up for the Industry Watch daily eNewsletter, or go to FeedandGrain.com and search for videos. Thanks for watching, and we hope to see you next time.