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North Central Indiana | Maintenance on grain legs? I’m curious what you think that entails. Clean the boot out fairly regularly. 4 bolts hold an inspection panel, pull it off, roll belt by hand and inspect buckets. Tighten or replace some bolts every few years. Adjust tension on belt with adjustable shackles on bearings. Once it’s out of adjustment remove a section and do it again. Similar to a chain. Up top put auto greasers in, inspect motor belts, check oil/change oil in gearbox, clean out dust in distributor, grease it. We’ve got 5 legs over 3 locations. Anywhere from 5-40 years old. We’ve replaced bearings on the belts on 4 legs but let’s just say we did all 5 legs (4 on each leg) one complete belt, 2 electric motors, and maybe 10 or 12 buckets over the past 25 years as I can recall (my span on the farm). Average bushels per year over that timeframe is close to a million. Figure today’s costs for that stuff, motors (roughly $5200) belt (roughly $2600) buckets ($200) bearings ($1700 if you want to replace the blocks too, we didn’t) which is $9700 in today’s prices. Auto greasers are $50 each today. 2 on each leg is 10, so $500 at today’s cost times 25 years is $12,500. So in the last 25 years our maintenance has been $22,200 if you use today’s pricing. Divide that by 25 million bushels, we’ve spent $0.00089 per bushel on grain leg repairs. Or just under a tenth of a cent per bushel. I suppose we should include labor, we do them all in a day easy with 2 guys. So 16 hours, that’s probably enough cushion over the years to catch our time changing bearings and the belt. 16 hours yearly x 25 years is 400 hours. Times $30 an hour today is $12,000. Brings our total expense to $35,000 if we round up. Do the math, that brings the grand total out to just under a tenth and a half of a cent per bushel. Using all today’s costs rather than actual costs over time which would be lower, in some cases much lower. Ouch indeed
Of course basis opportunities are a big part of the math along with harvest timing, moisture blending, drying charges vs NG or LP, extra labor to run more trucks at harvest vs less labor because we can turn fewer trucks faster at home during harvest, value of hired help in trucks throughout the year vs trying to find only part time help or having full time guys doing nothing that adds value while getting paid in the offseason. I’d be interested in your “true” trucking costs per bushel vs what I calculate mine at as “just an average farmer”
Edited by JRCS Farms 7/7/2026 22:42
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BiNs DoNt PaY
