C8 The BulleTin • Sunday, May 23, 2021
Mother bins help cut harvest times, increase profits
BY BEN LONERGAN
East Oregonian
PENDLETON — Towering over a
field at Jones & Jones Ranch outside of
Pendleton, the 58-foot-long and nearly
13-foot-tall mother bin dwarfed its at-
tached tractor during a recent field day
demonstration hosted by Walkabout
Mother Bins and FEI Inc.
“The idea of the mother bin is to
constantly keep your combines and
your grain carts running and your
trucks running,” said Crystal Kopecky,
director of sales at Walkabout Mother
Bins.
Based in Faulkton, South Dakota,
Walkabout Mother Bins has been pio-
neering the concept of the mother bin
in the United States since its start sev-
eral years ago. While new to the U.S.,
the concept of the mother bin has been
around in Australia since at least the
early 1980s, said Kopecky. Born out of
labor shortages, the colossal piece of
farm equipment helped cut down on
harvest times and save money by cre-
ating a site for temporary storage of
grain prior to transport away from the
field.
“This allows you to keep up if you’re
not keeping up,” Kopecky said. “But if
your operation is keeping up it will al-
low you to reduce your trucks and la-
bor needs.”
With a capacity of more than 4,000
bushels, the mother bin sits on the
edge of the field and acts as a tem-
porary storage facility for grain to
pick up slack between combines and
semitrucks hauling grain to storage.
Combines fill bankout wagons, which
in turn fill the mother bin for holding
until it can be transported. From there
a 22-inch auger can load a semitruck in
mere minutes.
“Equipment nowadays, especially
your combines, they’re built bigger and
they’re built to operate faster,” Kopecky
said. “Over time, as these combines
have increased their capacity and their
ability to combine faster, the only thing
that hasn’t changed is how we haul it
away.”
Ben Lonergan/East Oregonian
Keegan Jones’ Walkabout Mother Bin sits on display during a field day at Jones & Jones Ranch near Pendleton on May 12.
For Keegan Jones, of Jones & Jones
Ranch, the mother bin did just that.
Jones, who received a mother bin from
Walkabout 10 days into his roughly
40-day harvest last year, saw the hefty
piece of equipment cut nearly three
days off of his harvest.
“We were about halfway through
our harvest when we received the
mother bin and we were able to just
add it right into our system,” he said.
“It was like adding another combine.
It really picked up the slack because of
the extra surge capacity.”
Jones said he estimates his two-com-
bine harvest usually costs about
$10,000 a day, so the savings amounted
to nearly $30,000 in the first year alone.
“So you’re basically spending
$10,000 a day to keep your crew and
everything going — combines and all
that stuff rolling,” he said. “So if you
have some of that sitting or if you shave
off some time, then you have some
savings.”
That time was saved by allowing
combines to run almost constantly.
Jones said the field-side storage solu-
tion allowed him to harvest later in
the evening and have a supply of grain
ready for trucks to transport first thing
in the morning.
Continued from C1
The seasonally adjusted
unemployment rate, accord-
ing to the Oregon Employ-
ment Department, was 6.6%
in March, down from 6.8% in
February, but still higher than
it was pre-pandemic when the
Deschutes County unemploy-
ment rate was 3.3%.
On Friday, Deschutes
County moved into the lower
risk category, which allowed
for more dining-in and fitness
capacity and more social gath-
ering. The county achieved
65% vaccination rate among
those 16 and older, a level set
by of Gov. Kate Brown.
If the growth continues,
Duy said, the forecast for the
economy is rosy in the months
ahead, particularly if the num-
ber of vaccinated residents
continues to climb.
“The tourism and travel sec-
tor did recover, clearly people
have flocked to the area and
that reflects the outdoor ame-
nities,” Duy said. “We’ve been
coming out of this (recession)
economically for a while, now
it’s more light at the end of the
tunnel.
“We haven’t recovered all the
losses yet, but the index does
show the economy is growing.”
e e
“It just kind of streamlined the
whole operation,” he said. “The main
thing is to not shut down those com-
bines.”
FEI Inc., which is based in Yakima,
Washington, and is the regional dis-
tributor for Walkabout Mother Bins,
has sold two of the bins to operations
in the Pacific Northwest, one going to
Jones and the other near Helix, accord-
ing to Bill Nice, the Pacific Northwest
territory manager for FEI Inc.
“It’s a fairly affordable thing when
you think about how much more ef-
ficient it makes your combine,” Jones
said.
Veteran, Locally Owned & Operated
Index
Reporter: 541-633-2117,
sroig@bendbulletin.com
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