UP / Thumb of Michigan | mlfarms1 - 10/10/2025 12:19
My hesitation:
Bins are often an excuse to market grain passively.
The costs involved with more infrastructure and labor make paying storage and drying at the elevator reasonable.
In order to make a large investment like that pay I’d have to truck grain much farther out.
I know most guys love bins but I’m just curious about the investment vs opportunity cost. I also understand the idea of having full control of your own grain is nice.
Thoughts?
Your first line is very valid- no matter what some might say.
We NEVER have had a storage bin. Not one. We have had almost enough bin space top "hold" a crop. And by "hold" I mean we moved everything out between December and before the frost laws hit us. Usually late February to early March here. We aren't on a class A all-weather road, if so, I might have been enticed to go all the way to the end of March. That's it though. We missed the line ups and early dump pit closings. Good thing. This might be geographic, but yes, there's carry and basis to be gained by holding off marketing. Usually, we could gain the biggest % of that by March 1 however. Not all of the potential, but a lot of it.
We also had trucks that were legal to haul anywhere in the state- but I didn't particularly enjoy driving them. It seemed relatively easy to find truckers to move grain in the winter many years. I didn't mind bins being empty a lot of the year, and it didn't bother me to have trucks parked either. Especially on sloppy roads.
I still vividly remember sitting in line to dump corn as a kid. I wasn't old enough to drive yet, but I was old enough to jockey our trucks in line at the elevator. If we were very lucky, I could have an empty waiting for our driver when he showed up with a full one. We had few choices as to where to go then as well, not very many elevators had the ability to dry corn. Thats what prompted my Dad to build a dryer and a bin. And then another annually for quite a while. Had enough room for quite a while until we quit sugar beets, so another bin was needed. Again, none of them were built for storage. They're all holding bins, and they were a pretty decent investment for that purpose. Filing cabinets and a hedge account filled the need for any "storage" needs. |
On farm storage cost and ROI
