What's the deal with "no more hydraulics" and "no more having to have your tractor running" bit in the ad???

Um, newsflash here......I don't think the auger is going to work very well without the tractor running, guys, and our tractors all have hydraulics any time they are running.  

Our Westfield swing away movers use hydraulics. They use hydraulics and your tractor has to be running to move them. With these electric units you can run them from the cab of the truck as you back up so you can shut the tractor off as soon as you are done unloading rather than having to move the truck, get out and walk around the other side, then swing the hopper, then shut the tractor off.

Personally if I can't have a pit I'll stick with our copy of a Batco drive over. Half the price of a real one and works just as good. Really nice when you set up at a bin that holds 30+ loads or at the wet corn bin.

We have 2 of the Hopper Walkers. If it's the 1st load of the day or you've been gone a while & have shut the tractor down, Hopper Walker swings irregardless of tractor. As a matter of fact, we move our augers often (lots of bin sites) & have to move swing arounds from one side to another (right to left, etc). You then unhook the tractor, drive it 50' away, & let the Hopper Walker pull itself around to the other side of the auger. Ours are 110V AC, which we prefer over the 12V. We have AC power at all bin sites. Hydraulics would require tractor to sit there w/"hot" hydraulics 16 hrs/day. I guess that would work OK.

Also, our traps on our hopper bottoms (Wilson & Merritt) require that we move our swing around back & forth when emptying the truck to avoid running corn/beans on the ground, while still attempting to hit the center of the hopper during max-flow ops. I'm not sure how you'd do that if the hopper was buried in the ground, unless the pit was about 1' wider than the hopper. Maybe it is & the photo just doesn't show that.

If we didn't have our Walkers, I'd buy them again immediately. Nice to finish dumping & just jump in vehicle, hit remote control & swing auger & leave. Same w/pulling up to dump. You hit the auto-swing button when pulling up, jump out & run for the pto lever. Truck/wagon is already positioned. If another site requires slightly different approach angle (trucks & wagons here), then you merely move the magnet mounted (our modification, not HopperWalker!!!) auto-swing stops. That's here anyway. I also realize that most any style of unload method has it's good & bad features. Ultimate would be a long 1100+ bus pit, with no water in or around it & 2 guys to run the cranks for you. We don't have that 98% of the time, but it's sure nice when we do.

I hate to start a tractor and put it to work immediately. I also don't like to have it working and immediately shut it down.

I realize there is a difference between running two combines in 200 bpa corn and one in 40 bpa wheat. The tractor probably never gets shut off in the first case, but about the best I can do is a load an hour so I don't leave the tractor run or idle continously. With a remote start on my auger tractor, I can fire it up from my Cat as soon as I get to the bin, and it gets a chance to idle for a bit as I'm getting over the hopper. After the hopper is empty, having the engine idle while I pull away from the hopper doesn't bother me. I usually let the tractor run while I'm turning around and I shut it off as I'm leaving the auger -- again without leaving the seat of my Cat.

I have been using a swing away hopper for 2 harvests now and am cussing it every time I have to move it.  This looks great to me.  Does anyone know the price difference between the electric and hydraulic hopper moving systems?

What does it cost to convert an auger over to a swing? Can a guy do it without having to buy an entirely new auger?  I am running 10" Westifield WR series now out of pits or plastic hoppers.  What a mess to clean up at each farm. Anybody build their own?  Maybe I should start a new thread.