Using LS-WIM Axle Scales to Track Inventory
Efficiently harvesting and tracking grain inventory can present a number of challenges when there are multiple owners with numerous bins and storage sites. Trips to an offsite scale equal lost time and higher labor and fuel costs. Commingling multiple owners’ grain without accurate scale records leads to guessing and inaccurate records.
Maxwell Farms installed Intercomp’s LS-WIM scales prior to the 2016 harvest to accurately comingle multiple owners’ grain and maximize efficiency and storage. The ability to scale onsite eliminated the need to switch fields when one owner’s wet bin is full. In the past, when an individual owner’s wet bin was at capacity, they moved the equipment to another owner’s field and began hauling to their storage site. Often the same problem would arise with a full wet bin and harvesting of a field not completed. Maxwell Farms can now haul grain to both sites from the same field, avoiding a bottleneck at the dryer and having to change fields. Eliminating this bottleneck and extra transportation time saved them two weeks of harvest time in addition to reducing labor, wear on machinery, and fuel costs.
The LS20™ improves record keeping by logging a CSV file for future download (up to 1,500 records) and can print a ticket if required, along with displaying information on an LCD scoreboard with a stop-and-go light. Maxwell Farms simply loaded the CSV file into their management software, allowing them to maintain accurate inventory data for each individual owner. Previously, Maxwell Farms minimized commingling grain because of the distance from a storage site to a scale. Billing and tracking trucking fees is also streamlined with the data logging and reporting capabilities of the LS-WIM system. This ensures each truck owner is reimbursed correctly and eliminates the human error associated with paper records.
In addition, the ability to enter moisture percentage for each load enabled them to quickly and accurately calculate shrink. Accurate inventory levels allowed Maxwell Farms to market their grain with confidence, knowing they had the inventory needed to meet grain marketing contracts. The accurate per-field harvest data also allowed Maxwell Farms to easily and accurately maintain per-field crop insurance yield records.
