CASE STUDY – COURTESY OF GRAIN JOURNAL

New receiving building, truck probe, and inbound truck scale operated by Finley Farmers Grain & Elevator Co. south of town. Photo courtesy of CompuWeigh Corp.

New receiving building, truck probe, and inbound truck scale operated by Finley Farmers
Grain & Elevator Co. south of town. Photo courtesy of CompuWeigh Corp.

GRAIN HANDLER CONTROLS TRAFFIC TO THREE RECEIVING PITS AROUND TOWN

If your goal is to increase truck receiving throughput at your grain elevator, one way to do it is to run more trucks through your receiving system faster.

That was a challenge, however, at Finley Farmers Grain & Elevator Co. in Finley, ND  (701-524-1500).  The 300-member cooperative operates three separate elevators in the town of 445 – the “office elevator” at 503 Broadway, the so-called “dryer elevator” immediately south of the office elevator, and “north elevator” about a mile to the north on Broadway.

Each elevator had its own dump-through truck scale. With trucks going every which way through town and employees scrambling to keep up with weights, grades, and scale tickets at three locations, it was a recipe for near-chaos.

Order from Chaos

General Manager Todd Erickson came to Finley Farmers in 2015 and had some ideas on what it might take to improve the situation in town. Prior to that, Erickson worked as a certified public accountant for 30 years strictly with grain elevator clients, where he saw a lot of things that worked or didn’t work.

At Finley Farmers, he turned to CompuWeigh Corp., Woodbury, CT (203-262-9400), to plan a solution. “In my accounting practice, I saw a lot of what CompuWeigh was putting in. They had a card reader that could read cards clipped on a truck’s visor – I liked that a lot.”

Together, they designed a citywide truck routing system revolving around CompuWeigh’s SmartChoice software module.

Finley Farmers purchased land about a quarter mile south of the dryer elevator along State Highway 32 and hired Verwest Contracting, Argusville, ND (701-524-1500), to construct a two-story truck receiving building, with an adjacent InterSystems probe and 120-foot Rice Lake pitless truck scale.

All incoming trucks are routed to the new probe house, where a CompuWeigh SmartTruck RFID card reader, SmartTalk intercom, and SmartView message board begin the transaction.

SmartView display board installed alongside the new inbound scale. Photo by Ed Zdrojewski.

SmartView display board installed alongside the new inbound scale. Photo by Ed Zdrojewski.

 

After commodity weights and grades are determined, SmartChoice automatically compares the commodity and grade against current pit rules, and the SmartTruck system at the new inbound scale automatically routes the truck to one of the receiving pits or to a new temporary storage complex east of town. As each truck arrives at the assigned dump pit, the elevator attendant can view the commodity, grade factors on a CompuWeigh Dump Pit Workstation and route the grain to the correct bin.

After unloading the grain, the driver then proceeds to a new Rice Lake 120-foot pitless outbound scale located at the far north end of town. This scale also is equipped with a SmartTalk RFID card reader which automatically identifies the truck and prints a ticket on the OTP-4700 Outdoor Ticket Printer.

“We started up the new system with dry bean harvest and had everything fully integrated by Oct. 7,” Erickson says. “CompuWeigh had a team out here for two weeks to train our personnel. The farmers were very patient, while we got everything up to speed.”

Ed Zdrojewski, editor

 Site Before Truck Routing Automation

Finley Before Drawing


 Site After CompuWeigh SmartTruck System

Finley After Drawing