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North East Indiana | Real life example: 9860 STS and 635F running John Deere RTK Autosteer approx 4500 total acres. Had wiring issue on the combine and autosteer quit working. Customer decided that it was better to run manually than stop to let me fix it. The next day he called, told me he got 15% less acres done the previous day, He went from around 220 acres per day to 185 (14 hr day). Said that his acre counter went from being nuts on correct to 15% too high, (he did not change any settings to compensate for extra overlap). He also thought he was doing an excellent job of driving! The thing that really got him thinking was that the combine still wanted the same ammount of fuel the next morning and the hour meter still racked up the same amount of hours. Thats where it hits the checkbook and really matters. 25 acres doesn't sound bad until you think that in 10 days, it is a whole extra day cutting. If it cost $130 per seperator hour to run a combine and you save 40-50 hours on your machine (if a guy puts 300 sep hrs on it) thats $6000, and think that a combine can burn 15 to 20 gal fuel per hour(varies by size and operator), another $2000 in fuel. So total that to $8000 savings in 2 years of soybean cutting and your still not as tired when you get home.... and you can use it in the spring for planting or tillage.
I believe that tillage and harvest are where you will see the biggest dollar payback for autosteer. It sure is nice on a planter, but with markers, the advantage is less. Now section control on a planter is where a guy can make money, but I won't dive into that right now.
just my 2 cents | |
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auto steer
