Combines Custom pricing

[marshall]

I will charge $12 per acre and .25cwt hauling.

 

[wheatman]

Marshall is that Wheat and MiloIJ Some guys are $18 plus whatever cwt hauling they charge. I bet they are charging $20 this year to pay for the new machines they use.

 

[thud]

Wheat will run you $30_acre and trucking ranges from $.10 -.15_bu in our area. At $12 an acre I cant see how you can even cover operating expenses unless you are running a HUGE amount of custom acreage through you machine every year.

 

[wheatman]

Thud what area are you inIJ Thats ridiculous, operating expensesIJ BUll $nit. After you take $30 off the top of the farmers end profit what the heck does he have leftIJ Just enough to cover his expenses!

 

[marshall]

Most will charge $14 acre in NE TX on wheat and milo. Hauling varies from .20 to .25 cwt. It is a fair price for the work involved. I use old machines (l3 and N7) to harvest. Not much overhead. Only maintenance cost. It is cheap to rebuild. If I had $150K tied up in a machine might need to charge more.

 

[thud]

Im in southern Ontario and $30 is the most common rate, some charge more. We own our own machine( r50) and put roughly 1200acres thru it a year. My brother actaully owns the machine and hes got a very pointy pencil, he figures that we are just at the border line of owning our own vs having it custom done.Out of curiousity a few years back a neighbour priced out an R70 with heads, it was going to cost him $300,000 + ( canadian funds)Now consider if he was able to put 50% down and borrown the balance at 5% . His yearly payments would total to $33925.92 PER YEAR. So your looking at roughly $34,000 per year. Figure he runs 2500 acres thru the machine and his payments alone run him $13.60 an acre.This is before fuel,labour,REPAIRs,insurance etc.Its safe to say that the per acre expense will be approaching $25 _acre to actaully own and operate the machine. So a $5 profit for the custom operator is no BS. Its reality. Not to argue with you but unless you are a custom operator thats running 15,000acres a year through your machine there is no way you can get by on $12.

 

[dakota]

I think you two got Canadian and US Dollars mixed up. No one can survive on US$ 12 per acre here either. It is more like US$ 20 per acre. We just rather like to split it and charge part of it by the acre and part of it by the bushel.

 

[wheatman]

Hey thud here is an idea, dont buy a 300,000 dollar machine! Wow cut that figure in about 1_3 and what you have sir, is an affordable, paying for your own darn combine situation. Its a simple problem that some custom guys need to fix. I dont care if you have a new machine, I aint paying for your combine, so stay in your home town and cut for locals, see if they appreciate the price, and if they do, you deserve each other! Ive seen a few custom guys from Alberta Canada down here in Texas and they look like they have been here a few days and havent moved their machines an inch. Could it be that with the condition of this years wheat, nobody can afford themIJ With all that aside, I still hope the best for everyone envolved with this years harvest, here and everywhere else.

 

[Big_Truck]

As an interesting comparison here, our rates for cutting winter wheat in Northern Ireland are 26_acre(approx $40 US_acre)+3_acre ($4.65 US_acre) to haul it with a tractor+trailer.You would normaly have on average a max 10 mile round trip for hauling.Our main problem is that the rate stays the same weither you are cutting 2ton_acre or 5ton_acre wheat, you guy's in the states have a better system for charging more when you go over 20bu_acre.

 

[marshall]

It depends on how much you have in your machine. I don't have more than $35,000 in both my machines put together. like I mentioned. They are older machines. Maintenance cost are low. I do all my own maintenance work. I will cut around 2500 to 3000 acres total this year. I am not questioning anybody elses operating costs. Your business is your business. Most owner_operators are more comfortable with new are nearly new machines.