What is the ROI when adding a mother bin, instead of another grain cart or truck, to your operation? How many combines, trucks, and grain carts do you own? Have you ever figured the daily fuel and labor costs of running them? Have you ever taken pen to paper and figured what it costs you, daily, while that farm equipment sits idle? No one makes money when combines are waiting.

Below are the daily savings* a farming operation can realize (based on an ROI done recently with an operation harvesting corn) by adding a Walkabout Mother Bin to their farm.

This particular farming operation has one combine, five trucks, two 1300-bu grain carts and a 25-mile maximum haul. They combine, on average, 16 hours a day during harvest. They estimate it costs $7000-$10,000/day to run their harvest.

Their combine is stopped 4-6 hours per day, minimum, waiting for trucks to return to the field.

A breakdown of the cost of waiting:

• Owning a 1300-bu grain cart with tractor, fuel, and lube costs approximately $10/acre.
• It costs $3,000/day** in fuel and labor for the grain carts, combines, and trucks while they are waiting.

A Walkabout Mother Bin would give this operation the ability to drop a grain cart and a driver from their harvest at a savings of about $500-$1000/day. Not only that, but if they filled the mother bin just one time at the end of every day, they would be able to harvest an extra 16-20 acres (250 bushels of corn) per day. That would be their minimum gain.

We also factored in the cost of insurance, maintenance, registration and seasonal labor for their five trucks.

Based on our ROI worksheet calculations, we were able to estimate, based on their 25-mile haul, that when used correctly, a Walkabout Mother Bin will speed up their truck turn around time and limit combine and grain cart stoppages, saving this operation $1000 — $1500 per day. The closer to the bin site that number can increase as high as $2500 per day.

The Walkabout Mother Bin is a 4000-BU temporary, in-field storage system designed to keep your operation running a peak efficiency and profit. You don’t need to add more grain carts or trucks, all you need is a mother bin.

*The savings were calculated using the Walkabout Mother Bin ROI Worksheet.
**based on an average of $8,000/day to harvest