Feldspar
Member
- Location
- Essex, Cambs and Suffolk
I was listening to a talk by the farms director of an estate local to us. They have recently moved to predominantly one large central store from what were a much larger number of stores spread out around the estate. He said that one of his recent efforts has been to persuade merchants and haulage firms to collect contracts in shorter and more concentrated periods of time. They have one full time person who manages their one big store, and AFAIK he loads out probably 20,000+ tonnes of grain a year with one loading shovel.
It seems at the moment we load grain out in pretty inefficient way. We have stores located on different farms which are often half an hour away from each other by tele-handler. Haulage firms ringing up with 24 hours notice wanting pick up single loads of grain is seriously undesirable, especially when the lorry ends up getting stuck in traffic. Having to suddenly stop one job to go and load a lorry makes the other job also very inefficient.
Sometimes when we sell grain onto a boat we seem to be able to load 10+ lorries in a day and empty an entire store in one go. This is obviously a far better way of doing it. So my question is, what progress can be made (or has anyone made) in persuading haulage firms / merchants taking or selling milling wheat to UK mills and maltsters to stop sending lorries in piecemeal, and instead to send a succession of lorries so that they can be loaded one after each other in one or two goes to clear the contact? In order to get the whole contract loaded out in a very small number of goes, does this mean we need to grow different grades of wheat and only sell into certain markets, or can progress be made on this front across the board?
If we could move towards a much more condensed timescale for loading individual contracts, I think we could probably reduce the number of tele-handlers we need, and also reduce the number of man hours that we spend loading out grain.
It seems at the moment we load grain out in pretty inefficient way. We have stores located on different farms which are often half an hour away from each other by tele-handler. Haulage firms ringing up with 24 hours notice wanting pick up single loads of grain is seriously undesirable, especially when the lorry ends up getting stuck in traffic. Having to suddenly stop one job to go and load a lorry makes the other job also very inefficient.
Sometimes when we sell grain onto a boat we seem to be able to load 10+ lorries in a day and empty an entire store in one go. This is obviously a far better way of doing it. So my question is, what progress can be made (or has anyone made) in persuading haulage firms / merchants taking or selling milling wheat to UK mills and maltsters to stop sending lorries in piecemeal, and instead to send a succession of lorries so that they can be loaded one after each other in one or two goes to clear the contact? In order to get the whole contract loaded out in a very small number of goes, does this mean we need to grow different grades of wheat and only sell into certain markets, or can progress be made on this front across the board?
If we could move towards a much more condensed timescale for loading individual contracts, I think we could probably reduce the number of tele-handlers we need, and also reduce the number of man hours that we spend loading out grain.
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