Tracks can make the difference between seeding and not seeding, a Saskatchewan farmer found last year.
Kent Hanmer of Govan started the year with no rubber tracks. Today, every implement that goes to the field is tracked.
Wet conditions last spring prevented Hanmer from seeding 5,000 of his 22,000 acres. He ran a Seed Hawk 800-bushel air cart equipped with 30.5 x 32 duals, just about the biggest duals available anywhere.
“They just didn’t have enough flotation,” he said.
“We were getting stuck all the time. Bad rutting. It was big grief. I decided it’s pointless to keep on trying to farm like that.”
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Later that spring, Hanmer visited the Soucy rubber track display at the Farm Progress Show in Regina and decided he’d solved his problem.
He ordered a pair of non-driven floater tracks for each Seed Hawk cart and quickly realized they could also bolt to his home-built 2,000-bushel grain cart.
Wet conditions continued into the fall, making harvest on round rubber tires impossible in the Govan area.
“We’d pull into a field and within 10 minutes, five of our six combines were stuck,” Hanmer said.
“We had 20.8 x 42 factory duals on all the combines. Pick-up headers and empty hoppers. About as light as you can get. We’d go 20 feet and drop. We have big areas of that white muck clay. We call it loon shit. You’re driving along and you just drop. It’s like a sinkhole.”
He ordered a pair of driven Soucy tracks for one of the combines and the problem was solved, at least for that combine.
It wasn’t long before Hanmer was a full rubber track believer.
“We had this one canola field we had totally given up on already. Abandoned. We could not move a combine in that field.
“So I went back with that first combine on tracks and took off the whole crop. I was running full hoppers, through the cattails and through standing water as long as it wasn’t so deep that it came in the final drive.”
Hanmer immediately ordered two more sets, which took three hours to install.
He said it’s simply a matter of removing the original combine wheels, installing the adapter ring where the wheels were mounted and then bolting the tracks to the adapter.
There are only two different adapter rings to fit all combines, so there’s little room for confusion. He said the driven tracks can also serve as floater, or trailer tracks and go from the combine to an air cart.
Hanmer harvested more than 2,000 acres of canola that would have been otherwise wasted. It averaged 45 bushels per acre, which mean that at $10 per bushel, the tracks put $900,000 in the bank.
As well, the fields he harvested with tracks didn’t need cultivation to put them back into shape for 2011. Rutted fields all required work to prepare for seeding.
Changing flat tires in a muddy field is another arduous task that’s been eliminated at the Hanmer farm.
However, the most frustrating, time-consuming, e q u i p m e n t-wrecking task of all is pulling equipment that’s sunk down to the axles. He thinks those days are gone for good.
Hanmer said the best return on investment with trailer tracks comes from installing them on the air cart for seeding and then transferring them to the grain cart for harvest.
He said installing tracks on his Seed Hawk carts makes a huge difference. The original tires had a footprint of 1.5 sq. feet.
Depending on the model number, Soucy tracks have a footprint ranging from 28 to 32 sq. feet.
In dry conditions, rubber tracks reduce or eliminate soil compaction.
Hanmer’s rubber track conversion convinced him to become a Soucy dealer this year. He had sold eight sets as of May 6.
A pair of driven Soucy tracks sells for $70,000. The 32-inch wide non-driven trailer tracks he installed on his grain cart sell for about $35,000 per pair.
“This spring, my trailer track customers were all guys who were buying those big new air seeders, but without wheels or tires. That gives them a credit of about $18,000 to $20,000. That’s half the cost of trailer tracks. And they can use the tracks in the fall under their grain cart. You still need to buy the hubs and figure out some sort of shipping tires to get the cart home.”
However, putting any brand of tracks under any brand of air cart does have a disadvantage.
The tracks sit in the same path as the original tires and because the tracks are more than 11 feet long at the bottom surface, they prevent the auger from swinging below the cart for unloading unused seed or fertilizer when a field is finished.
“I think we may have solved that swing auger issue. I’m installing driven tracks from a combine on my air carts. I made a simple adapter to move the mating surface out past the dust cap by seven inches. That moves them out from the cart to make space for the swing auger.”
Soucy said tracks on combines have advantages that aren’t always visible. One of them is tire flutter.
A round rubber tire has a small contact patch with the ground. This allows a straight cut header to bounce up and down, changing both the distance from the surface and the angle.
The Soucy geometry keeps the header running parallel to the surface and at a constant height.
The company also said its unique engineering design uses eight independently mounted pivoting wheel tandems.
This provides better weight distribution and allows the track to be in full contact with the ground at all times, providing maximum traction and a better ride in rough terrain.
Soucy uses a large 67 inch diameter, Ferris wheel type drive and a low track tension system to extend the life of components. One factor that its tracks share with all track manufacturers is better flotation and less compaction than tires.
The company says research has measured the combine track at 5.8 pounds per sq. inch of down-force. The same combine with 800/656 R32 tires has 25 p.s.i. down force.
For more information, contact Hanmer at 306-731-7129, e-mail kent_nbo@aski.ca or visit www.soucy-track.com .
