Anybody ever use one? I need to finish up beans during the next "nice" stretch but for a lot reasons a bin system will not be an option. I do not have such a wagon but maybe i would look around if there were positive statements about them here.

Are you talking about a portable batch drier???? I do not know what a grain drying wagon is.

I stumbled on to some "grain drying wagons" on craigslist a couple months ago. They were barge boxes with false floors (perforated) and had bin fans on them. They looked kind of like a poor man's drying bin. Is that what you are talking about?

Coonie has the right idea as far as what I am talking about. Without going into a long story suffice it to say that a conventional bin drying setup is not going to be an option to finish this year.

Here is a pic of one, but I've never seen one in person. This one uses propane to dry the crop. Finding one would be a trick I suspect and I doubt if they worked all that great based on what I know about crop drying. Be a very interesting piece for a collection tho.

I saw 2 of those at auction many years ago.

Would sure be hard to find.

Don't recall anything good ever said about them.

For beans, would a screw in simple aerator work? Takes a little time, but should get beans down some.

Paul

Beans require really low heat and careful monitoring or you can lose test weight or over dry really easily.

How much do you have left? If you have some in a bin somewhere, you can do some blending to hit an ideal moisture. I've done this with a good deal of success.

If it is low volume, I think I would just get rid of them as is, and chalk it up to a lesson learned. Another option, if you have livestock, consider roasting them. This will add some protein value, especially for ruminants, and will dry the beans to a moisture they will keep. Not sure if anyone does roasting in your part of NY, but grain roasters are made in PA.

There were some around back in the 50s-60s,oil fired(self contained)held 200-250Bu..Not perfect,but could work very good on small batches that needed some drying.We had (still have) one(250-300B) that took a separate (remote)dryer unit,that was used on wheat mostly.Dad started drying corn and grain in 1946 or 47 so always had a dryer unit handy.

I have over 70 acres left which are out because of the weather we have had the past several weeks. Further, I run a cylinder/ walker machine that will not take them tough like the rotary combines and that is how a lot of guys worked around here this past fall. Go slow and not lose time unplugging a machine. Lots of guys here still have finishing up to do although it is mostly corn so nobody had a free hand to help me when the weather was better. The bin already has beans in it and it does not have a drying floor. Typically, I can work things well by running wet beans to the elevator and dry beans in the bin. I worry that the elevator is going to decide not to run any more wet beans this year because it is getting late. Yes, I know about low heat and probably would not have the temp at the plenum above 70 degrees F. Certainly, unlike drying corn through a continuos flow system.

New Holland years ago had a dryer that was a portable unit that was basicly a unit you would find on a bin but on wheels and it hooked up with canvas duct work to the bottoms of flat bed wagons with preferated floors, could hook up to as many wagons as you wanted. And for bales of hay and this was when there was only small squares they had the plans out for building a drying shed that dryer hooked to with that canvas tube to a seeled top part, upstairs floor of shed but with holes in the floor the size of a flat bed hay wagon and there were canvass that droped down over the load from those holes in the floor to push the drying air down thru the bales and out the bottom of those perferated floor wagon beds. Never saw any, only their advertisements as at that time there was no dryers of any kind around in the country. The local elevators did not have grain dryers, just shipped out wet grain. There was one other company that made the beds for that systen as well. And the wagons-beds did not have blowers on them. In my stuff I still have the sales information for what I am talking about. The sheds in the plans if I remember correctly were sized for 4 wagons. But in this area you did not have to put up hay wet enough you had to dry it to keep from molding. So cost was considered prohibiteing. Most corn was still harvested with pickers and stored in cribs that did not need drying.

Should be fairly easy to build a drying wagon that could be hooked up to a blower, don't know if a heavy furnace blower would work. Biggest problem would be finding heavy enough perferated steel for the floor and then you would need a wagon hoist to unload at elevator.