Dillon and the videography team from Broadacre Contracting are down in Donald, located in the heart of the famous Victorian/Wimmera wheatbelt.
In this episode of Talking Gear Tuesday, Dillon and Glenn, General Manager of BB Harvesting, are sitting in the cab of a John Deere S780, Number 11 in the fleet.
Glenn is the bloke who manages one of the most impressive harvest contracting operations on the east coast.
We had a proper yarn about gear, transparency and what it takes to keep 20+ headers rolling at the busiest time of year.
If you are a grower looking for harvest contractors who run quality gear and share full transparency, or if you need any gear to hire, Google Broadacre Contracting.
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BB Harvesting is based in Donald, VIC, the heart of the famous Victorian/Wimmera wheatbelt.
As much as the business is grassroots and all about supporting the local community, BB Harvesting ventures a long distance from home.
BB Harvesting covers the east coast from Southern Queensland down through New South Wales, into Victoria and across to South Australia.
That is a proper footprint, and it takes a lot of reliable gear and properly integrated systems to service that size area.
The BB Harvesting fleet is made up of 20+ John Deere headers, running a mix of MacDon and John Deere fronts, followed up by chaser bins and trucks.
So the service BB Harvesting offers is not just harvesting. The team can run a full paddock-to-silo operation.
Covering a large footprint is required in cropping, and the reason for anyone not familiar is that each year in Australia, somewhere is in a drought or having a thin year.
You cannot focus on servicing one small area. It is simply not viable.
Australian cropping is not guaranteed each year in certain areas.
No rain, no crop. If rain falls but at the wrong time, it could mean a reduction in yields, and that leads onto the farmer or grower not requiring harvest contractors.
BB Harvesting is a harvest contractor.
The structure of providing headers, trucks and chasers really does make sense, as growers often require this full service to keep everything running smoothly.
After all, if grain does not get moved, everything stops.
Having over 20 machines allows BB Harvesting to service a range of clients, from the 10 to 15,000 hectare growers, right down to the 100 to 200 hectare clients.
That is the part most people do not think about.
A contractor with 2 or 3 headers cannot, or probably is not viable to, move things around to fit a small grower in during peak harvest.
The focus at BB Harvesting is to ensure they have a service that can support farms and growers of any size.
With 20+ machines, you have flexibility, and having that flexibility in the peak of harvest is bloody gold.
Depending on what the grower wants, BB Harvesting can supply just the headers, headers and chaser bins, or headers, chaser bins and trucks.
So growers can pick and choose the level of service that suits their operation.
Glenn and the BB Harvesting team have really identified an issue in Australian harvesting: job size and viability.
More often than not at Broadacre Contracting, we see and hear growers explaining their struggles getting a contractor because of their size.
So to see a contractor, especially one on a larger scale, commit to serving those clients is unreal.
It is impressive.
What an approach.
Most of the fleet are John Deere S780 Class 8 machines, with a couple of S680s still going strong.
That is the beauty of the 680s and 780s. Not a lot has changed.
It is just electronics, a little bit more room in the cleaning area and a couple more horses from the horsepower perspective, but the fundamentals are the same.
Most parts will go on both machines.
BB Harvesting has run these machines for many years.
The founders completed their apprenticeships at John Deere, and the knowledge they built over the years is something you cannot buy.
It is the reason BB Harvesting keeps the fleet running reliably.
For pickup fronts, BB Harvesting currently runs Knuckey, Countrywide and John Deere on the Class 8s.
For draper fronts, the fleet runs John Deere 740D rigids with hydraulic float, table augers, knife track and turbo drum upgrades, plus MacDon flex fronts in 40 and 45-foot setups.
These are used for lentils and any crop that is sitting on the deck.
The choice between rigid and flex fronts comes down to country and crop.
Down south when growing lentils, a flex front generally does a better job depending on the paddock.
It is a necessity when you are on the deck trying to pick lentils up, or even any crop on the deck.
But when you are off the ground, these do the same job as a 740D.
The MacDons are getting harder to get nowadays, but for a contractor running one or two bits of gear, a flex front gives you the most flexibility for different jobs.
Glenn really nails the hammer on the head here.
The point about parts crossover between the 680s and 780s is gold for any contractor or grower trying to keep gear running and building a reputation of reliability.
This approach is proactive.
Explaining why BB Harvesting is running the flex front and rigids is spot on. That is real contractor knowledge.
If you are a smaller operator running one or two machines, taking Glenn’s advice on the flex front is a no-brainer for versatility.
This is the part of the yarn that hit the hardest.
BB Harvesting runs full transparency with the grower through John Deere Ops Centre.
The farmer would generally have their own Ops Centre if they are running John Deere gear on the farm.
If they do, BB Harvesting moves their machines into the farmer’s Ops Centre, so the grower sees everything from electronic faults down to rotor settings, concave settings, speeds and fuel usage.
They can see the lot.
It is all transparent, all out in the open.
For more context, John Deere explains that Operations Center helps growers access farm information through web, tablet or phone.
That is just complete transparency, and I do not think you can do much more than that.
That builds trust between a grower and a contractor.
The grower has the same access as the directors and job managers do.
If I were engaging a contractor, I would appreciate that, and if I was given that, my trust for that contractor would increase.
Should we need it? It is questionable.
But on a large scale, I feel it is not about distrusting the contractor.
It is about knowing when to get diesel out, where to do things and how to do things.
It is a digital form of communication, and all good relationships are built on real communication.
As a matter of fact, we at Broadacre Contracting feel that communication is one of the main reasons relationships break down.
That is how you build a reputation that lasts, and it is exactly what Broadacre Contracting stands for: Respect, Reliability and Responsibility, all backed by full transparency.
Running 20+ headers means breakdowns will happen.
The difference is how prepared you are for it.
BB Harvesting works on the principle of preventative maintenance, not reactive.
From pre-season prep right through, the team makes sure they are getting on top of maintenance and not being reactive.
Changing stuff at a set hour so it does not fail, getting it before it fails.
They do not rely on John Deere dealerships for breakdowns.
They supply their own mechanics and have access to all the John Deere manuals through their customer service advisor.
The director is a heavy diesel mechanic himself, so the knowledge runs deep.
This is the difference between a contractor who survives and one who thrives.
Preventative maintenance over reactive is something every contractor should do, but very few actually commit to it.
Yes, it costs money because you are purchasing and replacing parts before their actual end of life, but what it means on the other hand is you do not get hit with an in-paddock failure.
Do not get me wrong, gear breaks down, things fail, but if you can reduce that, you are saving and making more money from machines being consistent in the small time frame of operations, being 2 to 4 months for the Australian harvest period.
So when you are replacing something, work on the fact that if you break down during harvest and it takes 10 hours to get that part and get going again, you are losing over $7000 at harvest because you are on $700 an hour.
Think like that, put that spinner into play, and all of a sudden replacing that $1000 part early is not really that big.
Having your own mechanics on the road with service trucks fully kitted out? That is the ticket.
But the bigger-ticket item is being the qualified mechanic yourself if you are a small operation.
That is the kind of reliability that keeps growers coming back season after season.
That is a solid approach from the BB Harvesting team.
Once again, they are putting reliability first.
The John Deere S780s in the BB Harvesting fleet average around 30 tonne an hour, depending on ground conditions, crop type and crop density.
The 30-tonne figure is conservative, and we go with this approach as there are so many variables that can impact that figure.
Moving away from the tonne-an-hour rate, we would prefer to focus on what is actually factual.
When you have 20+ headers running through a harvest programme, the fleet capacity is massive.
Our capabilities are big.
That approach is the BB Harvesting team speaking confidently, and we are a firm believer in always under-promise and over-deliver, rather than over-promise and under-deliver.
So the quoted approach they have here is professional.
After all, we do crop checks with our clients to ensure we know what the struggles are.
So to put it out saying we will do 50 tonne an hour for every machine is what I would actually class as misleading.
You can structure it by saying we know our minimum is 30 an hour, but we have done a maximum on one job of 55 tonne an hour.
But why go that approach?
Best to under-promise and then focus on the scale you can provide.
Let us do some maths.
30 tonne an hour, times that by 20+ headers, is 600+ tonnes an hour.
Breaking that figure down has helped us understand why BB Harvesting can knock over the kind of programmes they do.
This is the scale of operation Australian cropping needs.
You can view the team’s equipment on the Broadacre Contracting website through the BB Harvesting listing.
At Broadacre Contracting, we are wanting to become an advocate and trusted partner to the agriculture sector.
We want to showcase every contractor possible, from small to larger scale.
But who we do work alongside must align with our core values of Respect, Reliability and Responsibility.
BB Harvesting ticked those boxes, and that is why we wanted to share the team’s story on Talking Gear Tuesday.
This is what the directory is all about: connecting growers with verified contractors who do the right thing by the people they work with.
If you are a contractor running quality gear and you want to feature on Talking Gear Tuesday, or you want to get verified on the Broadacre Contracting directory, give Dillon a call.
Call Dillon on 0439 300 380 from 6am to 9pm.
Cheers legends.
These resources may help growers and contractors look deeper into BB Harvesting, harvest contractor listings, John Deere Operations Center and the S-Series gear talked about in this episode.
If you are a grower looking for harvest contractors, or a contractor wanting to showcase your gear and build trust, Broadacre Contracting gives you a clearer place to start.
Browse BB Harvesting, view more harvesting listings, or watch Talking Gear Tuesday to see how we showcase the people behind the gear.
BB Harvesting is a large-scale harvest contracting business based in Donald, Victoria. The team operates across a wide footprint, including Southern Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia.
BB Harvesting runs 20+ John Deere headers, including John Deere S780 and S680 machines, supported by fronts, chaser bins, trucks and service support.
BB Harvesting runs John Deere headers, MacDon and John Deere fronts, pickup fronts, chaser bins and trucks, allowing the team to offer everything from headers only through to full paddock-to-silo support.
BB Harvesting is based in Donald, VIC, in the Victorian/Wimmera wheatbelt.
BB Harvesting uses John Deere Ops Centre to provide transparency to growers, including access to machine data, settings, location, fuel usage, faults and yield mapping after the job.
You can view BB Harvesting through the Broadacre Contracting directory, call Glenn on 0405 669 047, or email glenn@bbharvesting.com.au.
Talking Gear Tuesday is Broadacre Contracting’s video series where we sit down with the people who keep the wheels turning in agriculture, including growers, contractors and ag operators.
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