Combines starting a custom harvesting companyIJ

As a custom harvester for 49 years and now retired I would like to answer some of your questions. It can be a very rewarding business both financially and as a way of life, but if not managed right it can be a financial night mare. Yes, you will need a lot of equipment besides your two combines, and most of that equipment will have to pass DOT inspections. Since you have sons that seem to be willing to work that will help. Finding good help is probably the number one problem for a lot of harvesters. Remember any heavy truck driver must have a CDl license and be drug tested even if they are your own sons. You will need commercial insurance for your vehicles with at least a million dollars of liability insurance. I have always thought for a new guy in the business finding good jobs would be very difficult. I had a customer base that I was loyal to and they were loyal to me so I could go back every year to the same farmers, and by the way that is the way, probably 99%, of the harvesters operate today. There are second and third generation harvesters cutting for the same second and third generation farmers. On the other hand in a year when there is a shortage of combines in a given area a lot of farmers will hire about anybody that has a combine. Hopefully other harvesters will chime in and give you some of their advise also. Good luck if you give custom harvesting a try.

A buddy of my son is out in north dakota now working for a harvester and needs another driver. His buddy said they turned down 15000 acres of I think canola. Then they go back to I think neb. to do soybeans then back to do corn.So I dont know if there is a shortage combines in that area with all the new corn planted or whatIJ We live in mid minnesota so I dont think we could go to too far south in the spring because we still farm here too. We would probly keep our 2388 here for home use and mabey lease two new ones. am I crazyIJ We have 2 semis available one drop deck and one grain trailer now and another driver for the drop deck and equipt.One other question when you move all your equipt.The combine fit on one semi so thats 2 semis. The heads on trailer pulled by whatIJThe tractor, grain cart and grain trailers do you go back and getIJ What about a service_ fuel truckIJ Thats enough question for now Thanks

There are a lot of options in getting all your equipment moved from one place to the other. First I will tell you the way I did it. I had two combines, a tractor and grain cart, two tandem grain trucks, one semi tractor and trailer, two combine trailers, one 3_4 ton pick-up, (this was my service truck) a 1_2 ton pick-up and two campers. I hired three college age young men, and my wife, and myself were the crew. When we moved, the headers were loaded in the back of the tandem trucks. The combines were hauled on the combine trailers pulled by the two tandem trucks, the grain cart and tractor were loaded on the semi tractor and trailer, and the two pick-ups pulled the two campers. I usually drove the semi hauling the tractor and grain cart, my two best truck drives hauled the two combines, the other employee drove one pick-up with one of the campers, and my wife drove the other one. Now for just some of the ways Ive seen others do it. There are semi grain trailers made that can be made to haul combine headers also just by raising the two ends and the header is slid in from the back end. The combine is loaded on a combine trailer and the grain_header trailer is pulled behind the combine trailer. This makes a very nice tractor double trailer combination. Another way is a drop deck header, combine trailer combination. The header is loaded on the front of the drop deck and the combine in back. One more way that Ive seen is both combines are loaded on one double combine trailer and the headers are loaded on a double header trailer. The bad thing about this is the DOT hates double combine trailers because, not all, but very few of them can scale legal weight limits with the large combines of today. The other bad thing about all of the options Ive listed except for the first two somebody usually has to go back and get the semi grain trailers. That makes for a lot of driving with long days and short nights and keeping your fingers crossed that you dont get stopped and the DOT wants to see your log book.

I love combines and harvesting locally, but what you described just doesn't sound like fun to me. Maybe it would have when I was younger.