In Texas, legend has it that just about everything's a little bit bigger.

El Campo rice producer Norris Raun has taken that to heart and designed a 700-bushel grain cart on tracks.

Not only does the larger size improve harvest efficiency and reduce the number of overall carts needed, but the tracks allow him to navigate through muddy fields, which would mire conventional wheeled carts.

"I don't care what size tire, they just don't support the weight," Raun says. "I used to keep a D-7 Cat with a winch on it to pull out our carts and the combine.

"And the wheels rut up the fields. Not only does that hurt you on the second crop, but it's also detrimental in land preparation the second year. It takes major tillage to get land back into shape. And there's no telling what that is doing to the internal soil structure."

Fewer ruts

James Moore, plant manager at Brandt Manufacturing Inc. in Carlisle, Ark., says putting carts on tracks isn't just a Texas trend. He's seeing it among rice producing customers throughout the Mid-South who have invested in zero-grade leveling and want to preserve it.

"Most of our (track) equipment is sold in rice counties to the zero-grade guys," Moore says. "Once they spend that type of money to zero grade, they don't want to rut it up."

Brandt sells both a 750- and a 1,000-bushel grain cart that can be mounted on either wheels or Caterpillar VS tracks.

As Moore has attended farm shows in the Midwest, he's noted that growers there use carts on tracks for a different reason.

"Up North, they're doing a lot of no-till and the entire concern is compaction," Moore says. "If they compact the ground, then it has to be tilled again. What they are trying to do is avoid as much ground compaction as possible."

Can the tracks be interchanged?

Although the tracks probably aren't economical for growers to use solely under grain carts, some units--including those from Brandt--can be easily changed over to carry other equipment, making them more appealing financially. A pair of Caterpillar VSF tracks and axles costs about $26,000, says Dan Mathews, an ag product specialist with Mustang Tractor in El Campo, Texas.

"The way I've been trying to promote it is growers need to look at tracks not only to put an auger cart on but to put something else on after harvest," Mathews says. "They could put a large liquid chemical tank on to put liquid (fertilizer) out or anhydrous ammonia. This allows them to carry a lot of weight out there in the field without bogging down."

Raun is quick to point out that tracks don't benefit just harvest. They provide long-term types of savings.

"You need to start looking at systems that minimize this capital investment per acre," Raun says. "And one of these is to look at the way growers are leaving those fields. If the thing is loaded with ruts, you are going to have to use some pretty big equipment and use your fleet of equipment a lot more."

Speed

Raun, who's been farming rice for nearly 60 years, says he designed the cart based on his years' of experience and what he envisioned as his "dream" auger cart.

The tracks are the same width as the tractor's tread which pulls it, reducing the number of tire paths across the field. In the past with the conventional grain carts, Raun says they had a different wheel width than the tractor.

Each pass across the field created two sets of imprints. Because soil in his production area is prone to compaction, he says he could see the detrimental effects of running wheeled vehicles across the field in subsequent crops.

In response, he redesigned his wheeled carts so the wheel path fit inside the tire path of the dually tractor pulling them.

The tracks under the carts also are narrower, running about 25 inches wide compared to a 30-inch-wide wheel on the larger auger carts. The tracks independently oscillate 17 degrees to handle rough terrain and other field obstructions.

Drawing from experience, Raun oversized the auger, making it 18 inches in diameter on a 12-inch pitch. An operator can unload a cart of rice into a waiting semi-truck in two minutes.

"One of the reasons I went with an 18-inch screw is we were losing too much time up at the trucks," Raun says. "Our combines are getting larger and harvesting faster. So our bottleneck right now is in our auger carts. One cart used to take care of two to three machines. Now it takes two carts to take care of one machine.

"This just allows you to keep up with your combine without having to put an extra cart out there," Raun says.

Profit Tip: For the best returns, make sure the grain cart can be easily dismounted from the tracks and other components mounted on them for more hours in the field.