Until recently, pneumatic packers were relegated to muddy regions, such as Manitoba’s Red River Valley and Saskatchewan’s Regina Plains.
Steel or solid rubber packers dominated drier areas.
However, a new tire trend is putting more pneumatic packers on drills where once steel was king.
Scott Tilbury of Melita, Man., made the change last year. When he ordered his new drill in 2008, he put a check mark in the box for Titan pneumatic packing tires.
“I always liked the steel. They were simple and reliable. And I never had a flat,” Tilbury joked.
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“But I can pull my 74 foot drill with pneumatics easier than my old 54 foot drill with steel. I always gave my scrapers a little extra clearance, about a finger width. But those scrapers were like having 60 some brakes on the machine at all times. It took a lot of power and wasted a lot of fuel.”
Tilbury’s new drill is a Bourgault 5710 with .75 inch knives on 9.8 inch row spacing. It has mid row banding, and the Titan tires are 5.5 inches wide.
He said the packing pressure is 500 to 600 pounds, which is the same as his previous drill. He thinks this is too much pressure for the 3.5 inch wide steel packers he had on his smaller drill.
It overpacked in wet areas, resulting in surface crusting. The scrapers kept the packers clean but they caused problems of their own.
“In a wet year, you’re always out wandering around in the mud if you’re in zero till. You’ve often got too much moisture. So first the tractor starts spinning. Then your front casters push some and pull up more mud. Then your back three sets of steel packers stop rolling and start skidding because the mud wads up in the scrapers. So now you’ve got the packers pushing a two foot wad of mud in front of each one of them. The next thing is, you’re stuck. That just doesn’t happen with pneumatic packers.”
Tilbury seeded into dry conditions with his new drill in 2008. He thinks the narrower steel packers might be better in dry soil because they get down in the groove better.
“No machine is the ultimate for all conditions, and I won’t try to say that this one is, either,” he said.
“But you can’t afford to buy a different drill for each field and each day of the week.”
Conventional wisdom says pneumatic packing tires shed mud better than solid packers.
“That’s a myth, it’s just not true,” Tilbury said.
“I’ve got 92 packing tires and I don’t like setting the pressures every other day, so I just go to 35 psi and leave it. We grow a lot of sunflowers, and those stalks are really bad on rubber tires. I’ve seeded a couple thousand acres into sunflower stubble so far with this drill, and I’ve only had two tires go down. I carry a tire repair kit all the time. I just plug the tire, add more sealant and get back to work.”
