Anyone still use harvestores?

I cannot think of anyone in our area who still uses them. The pics were taken today. I doubt if I use mine many more years. The guy helping me chop is an iron man and is cutting them down with a plasma cutter just as you would fell a tree. He took one down last week and he has 2 more to go.

Still use mine, fill with corn in the fall and grass in the spring.

they were good silos...just the unloaders sucked!

Have 3 use 1 . The corn units are sweet ....The forage  units suck ..unloaders are pricey too ...

 

Some farmers in this area who are out of the livestock business are using them for dry corn storage. 

I have three, right now I have a sheet off my corn silage unit as I have the conveyor chain off the inboard end.  Father said it would empty the silo and I disagreed, nothing like digging out the lats 15 feet when the dome has collapsed on the unloader, not the first one I have dug out.  They are great units in their day but now they are all in need of new roofs and resealing all the sheets.  The unloaders are great pieces of equipment, just have to have regular maintenance and there needs to be some soource for parts that are reasonably priced with good quality, especially the chains, as we have gone through more aftermarket chains tht are just all the wrong metallurgy construction.  I have one for corn silage, one for haylage, and one that will be dry corn as we do not feed high moisture any more, once I get the leg put together to fill it that is.

Edited by Amos - 21 Sep 2011 at 8:13am

When I was in the army in Mannheim Germany, several farmers had small ones.  never saw them filled.  We were in an area where they had a lot of sugar beats.  Always wondered if they used the tops of them for silage.

We had two 20x80 forage units with Harvestore Goliath unloaders, and one 20x40 grain unit with Harvestore auger unloader. We used them up until we sold our main farm in 2006, we were milking 100 cows and they worked great!  I have herd many people bash them through the years, but they are the same as a lot of things in farming, if managed properly they work fine.  The biggest trick in forage is to not skimp on short arming the unloader if the silo is empty, or if the dome caves in, if that happens it makes the unloader work very hard.  A lot of guys around here are replacing the roofs with new Stainless steel roofs Harvestore is selling.  I can also think of at least three new units to go up around me in the last year.  They are mainly building them for shelled corn.  Guys are sick of the waste of bunkers, bags, or stave silos for shelled corn.   

Amos, have you tried using chains and sprockets  from Equipment Service?

Kevin in WA wrote: Amos, have you tried using chains and sprockets  from Equipment Service?

Kevin. no I have not even heard of them, have you got a phone number for them?  I am always on the look out for another supplier of any of the unloader parts.  The last time I found a new place and was there picking up some chains, got to talking to the owner and when we compared notes on the changes we had made to the Goliaths, he could not believe some of mine.  By the end of a ten minute discussion he was trying to get me to work for him.  He even called me a month later and asked me to come over for a week or two to help with his back log of service calls.  Kind of makes me wonder how much people can not look at a simple device and see so many time saving changes.  Our most local fellow just shakes his head when he stops in now at some of the changes.  I even gave him some ideas for a modification he had, shouldn't have as he wants to sell me one now, just have to convice my dad I can make it and that will stop. It is unfortunate that soem of the aftermarket chains were made with such poor metallurgy as it really turned some people off around here.