Helping with the Harvest - Hauling Corn from the Field to the Elevator

it's snowing i think that's cooled off enough yeehaw we're still working on the harvest here in illinois everybody's in a panic the weather's supposed to turn south at the end of the week so they're trying to get as much done as possible before that happens my neighbors are picking corn they lost their truck driver because he had an obligation i don't know some reservations in las vegas for something he couldn't get out of anyway he took off for that so i'm filling in as a truck driver today well normally they'd be done with the harvest by now you know certainly by the end of october everything would be wrapped up in a normal year the problem this year was the duracho storm that came through about two months ago and it really took a toll on the corn crop you see how this corn is all blown over laying down and it's like that everywhere even in fields where it looks good from the outside in the middle it's all like this so they're having to go real slow they're using a real attachment on the the corn head and then a lot of times they're having to go only in one direction i even heard about some people that were picking corn by hand well here's my ride it's a 1991 kenworth t800 he's had it painted and it's got all the fancy chrome doodads on it looks sharp runs good but it is not fast it has a caterpillar 3176 engine which is basically the smallest engine that they would have ever put into an 18 wheel rig like this i think that's a 10.3 liter engine i want to say it has maybe 300 horsepower about a thousand pound-feet of torque it's pretty comparable to the l10 engine in my rollback except this is computer controlled and it does have jake brakes which is kind of nice but works good as long as you're not in a hurry all aluminum rims 24 fives the trailer is a wilson pace setter 40 foot double bottom hopper trailer all aluminum air ride suspension and it even has a remote control electric tarp which is pretty fancy so normally this rig would be legal for 80 000 pounds but hauling crops during the harvest were allowed to go 10 over so you're actually allowed to gross 88 000 pounds with this setup and that's all that that little cat engine wants believe me but luckily it's a pretty straight shot to the grain elevator it's only about eight miles away relatively flat it's only one stop so it's pretty manageable well for being 30 years old the interior is pretty nice too this has kind of a deluxe gauge package so in addition to the normal gauges it also has like a turbo boost gauge a pyrometer gauges for the air suspension pressure brake application pressure rear axle temperature that kind of stuff the glove box won't stay shut it pops open and bounces all over while you're driving but i've kind of gotten used to that air seat on the driver's side it also has power windows these are air powered windows and it has a nine speed eaton fuller transmission so the way this works there's five actual gear positions so up and forward is reverse that's low and then it's a standard four speed h pattern and on the front of the lever here is a little switch and that shifts you between high and low range so when we start out i'll be back here in the low low position this truck doesn't have a lot of power and we're on soft ground so we'll tear the clutch up if we try to start in a higher gear then we're going to shift through all five gears on the low side and then you'll see me flip this switch up and that'll pneumatically shift the transmission into the high range and then i'll shift through the h pattern the four speed h pattern again and that'll get me in my my top four gears six seven eight and nine this is a non-synchronized transmission so i'm gonna shift it without using the clutch you can double clutch i never learned how to double clutch so i probably couldn't even do it if i tried it takes a while to get used to it but once you get the hang of it it's not too [Music] bad [Music] so so [Music] so [Music] this is the most common setup that you see in our area so the combine's gonna unload into this auger wagon we call it a grain cart and he can do that while he's moving so he never actually has to stop uh the problem is that the the green car here only holds enough grain to fill my trailer about two-thirds full so he'll dump on that twice and then she'll unload that into the trailer and then once he gets one more hopper full he'll come over and unload that directly in the trailer and then i'll be full that's what we're worried about the rain is coming supposed to be thunderstorms tonight and tomorrow and then once the front moves through the high temperatures are supposed to be only in the 40s fahrenheit and well below freezing at night and the problem then is you know even if it doesn't rain it doesn't get warm enough to really dry things out so yeah it's going to be a big problem so that's it we're full [Applause] that's so cool how many thousand times have i manually rolled a tarp in my life looks good [Applause] [Music] [Laughter] so [Music] [Music] so [Music] oh this is a messed up intersection [Music] so got no turn signals [Music] [Music] [Music] so so [Music] all right that blue arm right there is going to take a sample of our corn and measure the moisture content they can do it all remotely from inside the scale house and now we're ready to go oh okay we gotta wait our turn we're gonna pull up here on top of the loading pit [Music] he's opening the door [Music] and he'll give us a signal to pull ahead and it'll open the rear door oh great thank you [Music] here i'm chatting on the tv radio this elevator has what's going on yeah ain't got much more to do really be good [Music] [Music] so so now i gotta go around and go back on the scale get our empty weight and they'll give us a printout that tells us how much corn we brought in what the moisture content was all that good stuff [Music] now i gotta wait for him to give me a thumbs up okay so we're pretty light on that load 76 400 [Music] and it was pretty wet 17 and a half percent so right now the elevator runs 12 hours a day seven days a week let's be sure to come to a complete stop [Music] all right puppies hmm and the process starts over man what a mess the problem is when the corn's down like that he can't tell where the rows are so he keeps getting off one row or you know he ends up at the other end of the field and he's a row short or or he's missed a row completely it's a mess all right guys that's all there is to it it's pretty boring really takes me about 45 minutes to make the round trip to the elevator and back and if things are going well they're usually ready for me when i get back but you see it's going really slow i even stopped at my house and picked up a few things on the way there and they're still they still haven't gotten three combine hoppers full so it's yeah it's a tough year now there's my ride it's the end of my shift thanks for watching everybody

Channel: Watch Wes Work

Views: 42,558

Rating: 4.9737258 out of 5

Keywords: harvest, picking, corn, combine, john deere, 9600, beans, field, haul, truck, semi, hopper, kenworth, t800, caterpiller, cat, 3176, eaton, 9 speed, trucking, fall, weather, grain, work, drive, shift, elevator, scale

Id: rv_I491R7ow

Length: 21min 29sec (1289 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 22 2020