End-to-end asset intelligence: Maintain visibility to your harvesting & processing equipment

Gathering, transporting, and processing grains like corn requires a variety of equipment and a host of moving parts. Losing track of these assets can result in shipment delays and unnecessary costs.

In this third and final installment of our series focused on tracking assets throughout the corn-production process, we explore the harvesting piece of the puzzle and how you can track your equipment every step of the way.

This blog focuses on the third phase of corn production: harvesting. But don’t forget to read the rest of the series: Part 1: Fertilizer mining & Part 2: Agriculture.

End-to-end harvesting equipment tracking

It takes a variety of equipment to successfully harvest and process corn. Keeping track of all these assets and moving parts is impossible without the right technology. Here’s how Geoforce’s devices and online platform help you track all of your harvesting equipment’s whereabouts:

Reaping

When corn fields are fully grown and ready for gathering; it’s harvest time!

Reaping corn typically requires a combine or tractor with a boom attachment to pick and collect the ears of corn, along with a trailer to catch them all. Farmers sometimes rent out or borrow reaping equipment, which can sometimes be misplaced.

Tracking benefits: Keeping tabs on the location and utilization of your equipment like trailers, combines, bulldozers and balers ensures that you effectively inventory these assets and that they’re where you need them, when you need them. Tracking these items also helps lenders minimize loss, while letting borrowers avoid late rental return fees. Geoforce devices can also separately track equipment attachments, ensuring they don’t get lost in the mix.

Transportation & processing

Once corn is harvested, it’s time to transport and process it.

The grain is either moved to a silo or directly to sale. Regardless of its destination, moving corn from point A to point B requires a semi- truck and trailer. Corn’s remaining transportation journey typically occurs via rail, where the raw grains move to factories for processing. Rail cars, excavators and maintenance equipment is typically needed in this step to bring corn one step closer to its final form as a commercial product.

At the end factory, corn typically sits in hoppers and bins, and is moved around by heavy equipment.

Tracking benefits: Using a single tracker on a semi-truck and trailer provides limited visibility, but Geoforce’s separate vehicle and trailer tracking devices can provide clearer insights when your trailer and truck are detached. When shipments move via rail, our devices can track rail cars providing you with near real-time shipping statuses and insight on delivery timelines. In factories, Geoforce devices track pallets, hoppers, and bins, along with the heavy equipment that move produce around.

Start tracking your harvesting equipment with Geoforce

Whether you harvest and process corn or a similar crop, you have a lot of equipment to manage.

Losing your assets can cost you late rental fees, replacement fees, product loss, and valuable time. Whereas keeping tabs on your assets unlocks a new level of end-to-end visibility and operational efficiency.

Join other companies that track their harvesting equipment with smart hardware and software solutions from Geoforce. Get a quote today.

See how you can track equipment involved in all crop harvesting and processing activities by reading the rest of this three-part series: Part 1: Fertilizer mining & Part 2: Agriculture.