At the recent Trimble Annual Reseller’s meeting, HTS received the Silver Circle Award for “Outstanding Sales and Invaluable Customer Service” in 2009.
We are seeing a tremendous growth in the Autopilot steering systems, and I wanted to take a minute to break down the technology and its value.
Autosteer in the midwest has been somewhat slow to adapt compared to other areas of the country, and I believe much of this has been because of the value of the crops. We were comparing our $2/bushel corn and $6/bushel beans to the high dollar vegetable crops of the west coast. The ROI just isn’t there, or so we thought. The thing is, everyone forgot that we are no longer working with those prices. With $3-$4 corn, and $9-$10 beans, there is a significant return on investment with an autosteer system.
We are also working with bigger machines now. This means that the cost per hour to run the machine has went up, because it is burning more fuel, and the depreciation on the machine adds up quickly with every hour on the tach.
There is also a third leg to this that I haven’t mentioned yet. Operator fatigue has become a bigger and bigger deal. This is tough to put a dollar figure on, but there is definitely significant value to getting home at night and not being completely wore out from running the tractor across the field all day long. This comes into play in the years like what we have had recently, with shorter windows of opportunities to get the crops in and out of the field.
What does this all mean? You can easily pay for autosteer technology on your farm. Contact HTS to find out how this can pay back for you.
Comentarios