Elmer’s builds its first CTF Conveyor for Controlled Traffic Farming in the Czech

Agroservis, a Czech dealer, farmer, and previous Elmer’s customer, came to Elmer’s Manufacturing to adapt a new 1600 Bushel HaulMaster Grain Cart to their Controlled Traffic Farming (CTF) methods. Controlled Traffic Farming in short is when all equipment throughout the season uses the same tracks in the field. This presents an issue when using a Grain Cart as the Cart needs to approach in the neighbouring track. That’s where the CTF conveyor comes in, to close the gap between the combine auger and the grain cart.

The Engineering team was tasked to develop its first version of the CTF Conveyor and fly out to Višňové, Czech Republic to install it on the new Grain Cart. The concept was simple, but there were a lot of variables that required tweaking to get it right.

The Elmer’s CTF Conveyor includes a Belt Conveyor to bring the grain to the cart and a second, horizontal auger that runs length-wise on the Grain Cart to disperse the grain throughout the cart. The CTF Conveyor also had hydraulic fold out and resting height requirements that made the installation more complex.

Riley Dyck, the lead engineer on the project, was chosen to fly out and oversee the installation of the product. He mentioned the language barrier to be one of the biggest issues as one of the service personnel could speak English, but the others couldn’t so some words would get lost in translation. Regardless of the issues had, the Czech team was determined to get the kinks worked out.

Riley stayed with a local family and enjoyed the Czech culture. On the last day, he went out to Vienna and stopped by the Kreuzenstein Castle. He mentioned the farming culture there was much more relaxed because they had a longer growing season and seeding wasn’t as much of a rush.

The Elmer’s Controlled Traffic Farming Conveyor is one of the first advancements to prepare Elmer’s Manufacturing products for the European environment.