I don't know what you spray or how you do it, but I will explain how we do it. We have an old (1998) Patriot 150 sprayer. If you're not familiar, it's a pretty small, old self propelled sprayer made by Tyler (before Case bought the Patriot line). 150 HP, 75' booms and 750 gallon spray tank. Our spray tender is a semi pulling an old combine trailer. On the front of the combine trailer we have a 3200 gallon tank for water or fertilizer depending on what we're doing. Behind the fertilizer tank there is room for two shuttles and another 100 gallon tank for 24D. There is also an area for whatever things we may have in 2.5 gallon jugs.

In the last five years we have probably never covered less than 20,000 acres in a year with this rig. Some years it has been significantly more. It is almost always a one man operation. The only time we need someone to run the semi back and forth for product is when we're streaming 32-0-0 on and we're putting on 30+ GPA. Most of the time our product rates are much lower than that and only one person runs the sprayer and spray tender.

The first key to covering a lot of acres is to avoid having to deal with water treatment during busy times. We have a 1500 gallon tank at home that we use as a water reservoir for the spray trailer. We run a garden hose with a float on it into the 1500 gallon stationary tank. When the semi pulls in to the yard at night we stop at the tank and start pumping that 1500 gallon tank into the 3200 gallon tank on the semi. As it's pumping we pull the forklift up to the 1500 gallon tank with a pallet of AMS on it. We dump 5 bags of AMS into the top of the 1500 gallon tank and then let the water start going into the top of the tank again with the garden hose. By the time you've emptied your 1500 gallon tank you've probably put another 25 to 50 gallons of water in it. The next morning, you get up before you can start spraying and you repeat the process. You now have over 3000 gallons of treated water in your semi.

We are also very careful to make sure shuttles are full before we need to start a spraying day. We also make sure maintenance is done in the off time. Even if it's not due yet, but it will fall during a busy day, it gets done ahead of schedule. Finally, you have to be making your first pass as the sun is coming up or earlier (weather allowing).

If you follow these steps, you should be able to pull off 800 acres a day with your 4830 without sweating too much. The only problem is that you probably won't be under 80,000 pounds because a 4830 is significantly heavier than our Patriot 150. If that's not important to you then you're still good. If it is important to you then you probably need to leave with a little less than full capacity on your water. You can have someone bring a nurse trailer behind the pickup full of water to fill the semi just once a day and you'll still be able to get 800 acres a day. If you push hard and the weather cooperates, you'll be able to do more than that (depending on your boom width and field sizes/shapes and the distance between them).