Loading Bulk Salt Using A Grain Auger

Once again, I must thank Alan Nadeau for supplying me with these photos of his set up. As Alan says, he "doesn't include it in the company tour" but it works. I will let Alan describe this in his own words.

"When I decided to go from mix to straight salt and pre treatment I was faced with needing some way to store material and load it into a tailgate hopper relatively easily.

What I came up with was a closed truck body (now the "shed") and a grain auger. Over the period of four years it has evolved into a more or less permanent installation. No electricity, so I have to make my own. Originally I ran the auger with a gas engine, but it was creaky at best and finally died completely and I replaced it with a generator and electric motor.

The final change was last year when we built a raised pad and a permanent cross bar and method of holding the auger up when it's being used for loading trucks. We can get the V box under it easily and in a pinch can load over the sideboards of our 5 yd dump.

To fill the shed, the auger is taken down and hung from the roof of the bin. Back the truck up to the hopper and let the salt run out through the coal chutes as the auger runs it into the shed. We also treat the stockpile with Magic -0 as it is being put in the bin."

"Loading the trucks is as easy as scraping the material down the pile, or across the floor, into this opening. The whole box is blocked high enough to fit a stock (and cheap) grain hopper underneath.

I like having gravity work for me any time I can arrange it."

"I cut a window in the side, and added floodlights on the scaffold beam so I could see how the load was progressing. In the prior incarnation we used to back up towards the door end of the shed to load, so seeing how it was going was never a problem."

"From outside, with a load ready to go. This small spreader loads in about 5 minutes, probably less time than it would take to dump 700 lbs out of bags. We can load the V box with 1 & 1/4 ton in about 20 minutes. Granted, not as fast as a Bobcat or some other machine could do it, but not bad for relatively easy manual labor.

The shed holds 12 tons if you crowd it a little. That's two loads with our dump truck, each load takes about an hour to get inside.

Granted, it's crude as hell, but I've only got about $800 invested, not counting the generator, which gets used for other things as well. It's not pretty either, but it would be relatively easy to spruce it up a little. Where it sits now nobody cares what it looks like and I don't include it in the company tour."

"On a long run, like 6 tons in one session, the auger will do about 200 lbs a minute, might be able to do more but it's hell if you overload it and stall the motor."

Overloading it, can cause it to break beyond repair in some cases. Go easy with it.
 

Additional Resources:

Tail Gate Salt Spreader Screen - Keep The Clumps Out!

Gemplers Catalog is over 500 pages!
Shovels, clothing, grain scoops, boots, gloves, etc.

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1/25/03

© 2003 Charles D. Smith