Gavilon Grain`s Headrick, oK- based rail shuttle loader utilizes a

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August/September 2011
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the
feat of
moving
wheat
Gavilon Grain’s Headrick, OKbased rail shuttle loader utilizes a
unique tripper conveying system
to fill and reclaim wheat from its
ground storage piles.
Maintenance matters
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About Retrofitting Motors
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Mark Sethre, Gavilon Grain’s
Headrick, OK, location manager,
oversees the facility’s 5.2 million
bushels of grain storage.
Photo by: Jackie Roembke
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Co v e r s t or y ❚ G av il on Gr a in LL C
❚ “We’ve seen a lot of expansion and growth
in the grain business brought on by railroads
and the global demand for grains.” ❚
— Mark Sethre, Gavilon Grain’s Headrick, OK, location manager
The
Feat of
Moving
Wheat
By Jackie Roembke
Gavilon Grain’s Headrick, OK, rail shuttle loader’s
unique tripper conveying system saves 4 cents/bushel
McCord Conveyor System’s
permanent belt conveyor with
track-mounted tripper arm feeds
wheat to and takes it from the
facility’s storage piles.
S
outhwest of the Wichita
Mountains, in the heart of
cattle country and Tornado
Alley, agribusiness firm
Gavilon Grain, LLC has
staked its claim to export wheat
market accessibility. The company,
which has roots as Peavey Company
and acquired DeBruce Companies
in 2010, occupies the No. 3 position for most grain storage in the
United States. Just behind Cargill
and ADM, Gavilon holds 300 million bushels of grain across 21 states
and Mexico.
Now, building off this momentum, Gavilon Grain is expanding its
operations through a strategic greenfield development in the Southwest.
In December 2009, construction
began on the company’s Headrick,
OK-based 1.2-million-bushel slipform concrete elevator to handle
hard red winter wheat produced
within a 75-mile radius of the
facility. In addition to the permanent structure, two temporary
storage piles offer an additional
4 million bushels of storage. The
site, previously a wheat field, loads
110-car Burlington Northern Santa
Fe (BNSF) shuttle trains on a 7,875foot loop track.
“We’ve seen a lot of expansion
and growth in the grain business
brought on by railroads and the
global demand for grains,” location
manager Mark Sethre explains.
“Gavilon saw an opportunity for a
facility in this area.”
Gavilon also owns and operates
elevators in Wichita Falls, TX, and
Saginaw, TX. Grain leaving these
facilities and the Headrick location is
shipped to the Texas gulf — Houston
and Galveston — for export to
Africa, Middle East, Caribbean and
Latin America.
Though the Headrick facility has
the capacity to hold more than 5
million bushels of wheat, unfortunately, it will not be able to realize
its total potential during its first
wheat harvest in full operation.
Drought and high temperatures
delivered the wheat harvest early in
southwestern Oklahoma, severely
impacting producer yields by as
much as 70% in some areas. Luckily,
the company’s move into this market has provided local producers
with new marketing opportunities
at a crucial time.
“As a mid-sized corporate farm,
having an additional option in the
area has been helpful this year,”
explains Gary Nason, farm manager
with Skelley & Skelley in Rocky,
OK. Nason notes that the 3,500acre farm’s ability to utilize its
on-farm storage allowed it to have
multiple marketing options. This,
Nason says, proved to be the silver
lining in an otherwise dire situation.
(Drought sidebar is on page 20.)
The facility is projected to handle
10 to 12 million bushels in a normal
weather year.
Happenings at new facility
Built on a 110-car shuttle-loading loop
track, Sethre and his team load trains in
10 hours.
Grain movement through the
Headrick location is extremely
streamlined, enhancing the ease of
doing business for customers and
Gavilon employees alike. Vigen
Construction served as millwright
and general contractor for the facility,
and Van Sickle Allen provided the
architectural and engineering services.
Workflow begins at the west end
of the site where producer trucks
enter and approach the facility’s
grading area. An Intersystems probe
takes a sample, and the wheat is fed
through a MCi Kicker Grain Tester.
All producers have a scan card
that is swiped at the card reader and scanned into the Cultura
Technologies (formerly AGRIS Inc.)
oneWeigh System to generate a ticket
Cultura Technologies oneWeigh system
saves time, guesswork at grading shack.
for that load.
After the load is probed and
sampled, the truck proceeds to
the Mettler Toledo scale east of
the probe shack, and the card is
scanned again to record the truck’s
pre-dump weight.
From there, the truck heads to
one of two 900-bushel receiving
pits to unload the product. The
elevator utilizes two Intersystems
legs, a 40,000 bushels/hour or a
20,000 bushels/hour leg, to bring
the grain up into the elevator via
Tapco elevator buckets.
After it unloads, the truck falls
back in line to the scale without
stopping at the probe shack. The
card is scanned again to capture
the post-dump weight and a ticket
is printed out for the driver.
“The card reader frees up the
person in the grade shack,” Sethre
explains. “This system gives the
operator more time for the next
customer since the previous driver
Co v e r s t or y ❚ G av il on Gr a in LL C
can take care of himself. The person
running the probe doesn’t have to
worry about it; the card takes care
of it and eliminates the problem of
making sure you’re weighing the
right truck.”
Eight employees serve a growing
number of local wheat producers.
Drought stricken corn near South Bend, KS
Photo courtesy of Warren Parker.
Unique reclaim system
The Headrick facility features
Gavilon’s first 20,000-bushel/hour
McCord Conveyor Systems belt conveyor with track-mounted tripper
system, an application familiar to
other industries, but unique to grain
handling.
To reclaim grain from the Union
Iron Works-housed ground piles, the
tripper’s arms lay flat and a hopper
is fitted over the end. A pay loader
dumps grain into the hopper and
onto the arm, where it falls onto
a 1,200-footlong belt, and
is brought into
the elevator’s
ground tunnel
where it hits a
60,000-bushel/
hour Hi-Roller
reclaim
belt
conveyor. It is
then elevated
Oklahoma wheat harvest.
back into the
Photo courtesy of Emma
Misener for High Plains
bins.
Journal’s All Aboard
To load the
Wheat Harvest
ground piles,
the system is
reversed: Grain exits the elevator,
hits the belt, leaves the tripper arm
and is dropped onto the ground pile.
The tripper’s 1,350-foot-long track
runs between the two 2-millionbushel piles and is permanently fixed
into place.
“The ground pile reclaim is much
more efficient than loading grain on
to the trucks and bringing it back to
the elevator that way,” Sethre says.
“The benefits to this investment have
been a combination of time and dollar
savings. I estimate we save about 4
cents/bushel.” ❚
‘Historic’ drought’s
impact on the Southwest
In spite of the optimism displayed
in the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) June 30th Crop Report,
the reality of drought conditions in the
American Southwest must be taken
into careful consideration.
Spreading from Florida to Arizona, conditions have gone from bad
to worse; all sources
point to a comparison
of the 2011 drought
and the moisture levels seen during the
Dust Bowl of the
1930s.
The USDA designated 213 of the 254
counties in Texas as
natural disaster areas;
more than 30% of the
state’s wheat fields might be lost with
loss projections surpassing $3 billion.
With no end in sight, Feed & Grain
reached out to those most affected
to better gauge the situation.
Dispatches from Oklahoma
Gary Nason, farm manager with
Skelley & Skelley, a 3,500-acre corporate farm in Rocky, OK, believes
this to be the worst in state history.
The Oklahoma State Department
of Agriculture, Food and Forestry
forecasts 2011’s wheat harvest to hit
74.8 million bushels — down 38%
from 2010’s yield of 121 million
bushels. The average yield estimates
ranged from 15 to 22 bushels/acre.
(Source: Bloomberg Business Week)
“Our rainfall has been less than
half our average; we didn’t receive a
single drop of rain on our wheat from
when it was sowed in October until
it was harvested in June,” Nason
reports. “Our yields were one-third
of normal — overall average from 38
bushels to 18.”
“When you farm for the financial
institutions, it makes it difficult to
spread the wealth,” Nason says. “The
revenue end of the farming operation
this year was pathetic. The inputs and
expenses we have to maintain didn’t
adjust accordingly so it’s going to be
hard to push the revenue around and
pay bills.
“Americans should be proud of the
job their farmers do,” Nason says.
“Day in and day out we get it done
and we feed America. Drought or no
drought, we do the best we can and
so far there’s food on the table.”
Emma Misener of Elk City, OKbased Misener Family Harvesters,
a family-owned custom wheat-harvesting crew, was met with the driest
conditions she has witnessed in her
years on the road. In May, the harvest
crew began its journey at the Texas/
Oklahoma border, towing a caravan of
combines and campers to the farms
of 15 to 20 client farmers the family
has contracted crop harvesting with
for decades.
“This year has been different than
past years — they’re saying it’s like the
Dust Bowl, but much drier,” Misener
reports. “If there’s no moisture, there
are no crops. Parts of Oklahoma averaged 8 bushels/acre where it should
be 35 to 45 bushels/acre.”
The harvest crew’s summer harvest
route runs from Oklahoma to Kansas to
South Dakota and North Dakota. Now
finishing up Kansas, Misener is seeing
slightly less devastating results — averages of 35 bushels/acre, contrasted to
norms of 45 to 50 bushels/acre.
Misener hopes she doesn’t see a
“strange” year like this again. “Then
we have our farmers farther north —
with the flooding — they had trouble
getting crops in the ground. We wish it
would start raining in the South, and
stop raining in North.”
Conditions in Kansas
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Risk Management Agency
in Topeka reports Kansas farmers
have insurance claims on more than
308,000 acres of land. Farmers have
claimed more than $39 million in
wheat indemnities — up from $33
million the previous week in July.
While a mere 2 inches of rain could
remedy at least a few of the state’s
problems, farmer and Kansas Farm
Bureau web developer Warren Parker
reports that southwest and southcentral Kansas is reaching a critical
point. Dry land corn is a total loss,
and many farms have abandoned half
circles of irrigated corn to save the
other half.
“The irrigated land is holding on by a
thread,” Parker explains. “It’s a critical
development time and they don’t even
know if they’ll have the ability to put
water on it. Policies have been put in
place over pump allotments this summer. Farmers may get by this year, but
they will have to make a decision to
plant something different next year so
they can give the water back.”
The Kansas Farm Bureau is working
with the governor and insurance companies to find a solution for farmers
who had to abandon half their crop.
Coping with conditions
Whether hail, tornados or drought,
when the weather deals a bad hand,
relief lies in how farmers manage their
losses.
“Instead of putting everything into
this harvest to try to have the largest
crop possible, we cut back on the use
of inputs and meet in the middle,”
Nason explains. Skelley & Skelley’s
management strategy also included
aggressive marketing so the farm
could get the best price for the crop
produced, seeking outlets for highprotein, high-quality grain.
“This is a sixth-generation family
farm and as a rule we chug along as
we always do,” Nason explains. “We
tried to diversify by putting acreage
toward cotton this year, but with the
drought that will be a bust. It’s getting
difficult in the farm sector of southwest
Oklahoma.”
In the areas affected by too much
rain early this spring, producers turned
to planting fall crops in hopes of capturing some revenue to supplement
their losses.
When asked how the Misener family
business is faring, she replies: “This
lifestyle is not for everyone. We keep on
trucking and rely on faith. You just keep
on farming because that’s just what
we do. We’re the biggest gamblers in
the world. We put it in the ground and
hope it grows.”
U.S. Drought Monitor as of July 12, 2011. Drought tracking available at http://drought.unl.edu/dm.
Authored by David Miskus
Phone: 800-518-0472
Email: [email protected]
Posted with permission from August/September 2011. Feed & Grain, Cygnus Business Media. Copyright 2013. All rights reserved.
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