The Bucking Combine

Friday and Saturday of last week I spent driving (or operating) my cousin’s Case IH 2388.  I got started around 1 pm on Friday.  For that day, we had two machines running, an older 1470 and the newer 2388.

We were cutting on a field with slopes ranging from about 10 degrees to several in excess of 30 degrees.  My cousin had reminded me that when traveling downhill you wanted to make sure the rear-wheel assist was off.

Well, I made it to the last part of day with no issues.  They have their grain trucked by others and toward the end of the day, we realized the last load out would be around 6 pm.

I was about half way up a hill when I got a call from my cousin to come back to the truck and dump the load.  Since this call was out of the blue, I simply turned the combine down the hill and started to make my turn.  Again, this was probably on a 30 degree + slope.

As I got about half way through my turn the header and front end of the combine started to “buck” bouncing up and down by about a foot or so.  I looked and saw that the creek/ditch at the bottom of the hill was about 20 to 30 feet away.

At that point, I jammed on the right brake to make sure the combine would finish the turn and missed the ditch by at least 10 feet.  I then mosied to the bottom of the hill, dumped my load of grain and finished up the last load.

The last time I had a “bucking” combine when I was about 19 years old sliding down the hill on wheat mixed with cheat grass.  This is probably an adrenaline rush that I can do without.

Tomorrow starts the first day of the annual meeting of the Farm Financial Standards Council.  The meeting is in Minneapolis this year and tomorrow is primarily the meeting of the committees with the meat of the meeting on Wednesday.

Paul Neiffer, CPA