Corn Bushels

Correct Dale,

The actual test weight of the corn in your trailer means nothing other than the amount of volume your hauling. Example a load of 50 lb TW will likely fill your trailer completly full to get 56,000 lbs (1000 bushels). A load of 60 lb TW will not fill the trailer nearly as full to get 56,000 lbs (1000 bushels).

When hauling corn the net weight divided by 56 will always be the bushels hauled.

When hauling soybeans the net weight divided by 60 will always be the bushels hauled.

When hauling oats the new weight divided by 32 will always be the bushels hauled.

Test weight really has no bearing at all in trucking, the only time it matters to the farmer is if the test weight is so light that a price discount applies to the farmer, has absolutly nothing to do with the bushels your transporting.

A bushel is a unit of volume. Test weight is the amount of weight it takes to get to a bushel.

You are correct lighter test weight will have more volume. However a 60,000 lb load at 60 lb test weight is a 1000 bushels. Whereas a 60,000 lb load at 30 lb test weight is 2,000 bushels and takes up twice the volume in your trailer.

As such if you have a high test weight product the rate per bushel must be greater in order to make the same amount of money on the load when we can only haul a set amount of weight in our trucks.

For example for a 250 MI load you want to make $1,000. If your truck can legally haul 60,000 lb, and the test way is 60 lb per bushel, then you must get $1/bushel. If you have a product that weighs only 30 lb a bushel then you must be able to haul 2,000 bushel at 50 cents a bushel in order to make $1,000 on the haul.

This is why products that have a lower density in the bulk world usually demand a premium such as soy hulls. This is because it takes specialized equipment to get a full load since your trailers must have a higher cubic foot volume.

Hopefully this helps.

The easiest way is to either do jobs by the ton or by the hundred weight (CWT). If you Google weight for bushel there is a USDA spreadsheet that gives average weights. That if you know your trailers capacity you'll be able to have a general idea of if you can get a full load. One us bushel is equal to 1.25 cubic feet.

No you're not being a d***. But you're doing you're best to insinuate stupidity. So I've been in trucking for 3 years, I have plenty to learn, 99 percent of the corn I haul is direct for the farmer. Its hardly ever conventional corn, almost always organic, or some type of specialized crop. I personally have never seen a scale slip that hasn't had a measured test weight printed on it. I literally watch them wait for the moisture tester to give them the moisture and test weight, they divide that by total pounds and write down that number as the total bushels.. I have always billed my customers what the slip says, I ask the aprox test weight before hand, so that im not contributing to the decline in rates as you are kinda insinuating. It sounds like I'm doing it wrong according to the industry standard. Or perhaps its only standard in the commercial conventional grain world. I'll have to look back on my previous paperwork and see where I went wrong.

Your incorrect in saying that 60,000 lbs of 30 TW is 2000 bushels. That is not how it works the standards set for grain grades are:

Corn is 56

Beans is 60

Oats is 32

Milo or Sorgum is 56

There are standards for every grain sunflowers, etc.

So a 60,000 lb load =

Corn 1071.43 bushels

Beans 1000.00 bushels

Oats 1875.00 bushels

Milo 1071.43 bushels

Unless you are a farmer you don't need to know what the test weight of any grain actually measures, and honestly the farmer doesn't need to know either as the only way it effects the farmer is a price discount if TW is too low, specifically in our are if corn is under 54 TW. We haul pounds, the farmer sell pounds, TW really doesn't come into play on either one. Both the farmer and trucker is paid by the bushel (net pounds delivered divided by the standard TW from above)

That's not how it works...my friend

Here is a load of beans we hauled this week, net 55,740 lbs. TW is 54.70, if your theory is correct we would have hauled 1,019.01 bushels, but your not correct becasue the grading system uses 60 lb TW for soybeans. So we actually hauled 929.00 bushels, TW means absolutly nothing to truckers, and almost nothing to farmers.

It is my understanding that s bushel is a measurement and not s specific weight. X gallons of corn = a bushel no matter how much X weighs.

Now when loading X it matters what it weighs in your truck .

A pound is a pound no matter what. So if you're asking how many bushel of corn in a 50000# load, it's 892.8.

since you have the bushel thing all figured out....how much does a bushel and a peck of corn weigh

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