Handling and storage

Grain moves, or nothing else on the place does.

Augers, elevators, conveyors and dryers are the quiet part of a farm until one of them stops. Then trucks queue, bins sit half full and a harvest that was running fine turns into a bottleneck. Freeman Roadside Repair works on grain handling gear where it stands, and works on it locked out.

Call (707) 553-3369 Describe what stopped

Open 24 hours, seven days
No hourly minimum
Mechanical, drive and electrical work
Augers, elevators, conveyors, dryers

A red truck parked inside an industrial workshop

The machines nobody inspects until the day they quit

Grain handling equipment has an unusual failure profile. A tractor gets looked at constantly because somebody sits on it every day. An auger gets hooked up, run hard for a few weeks, unhooked and forgotten. The bearing at the top of a fifty foot tube, the tail pulley in an elevator boot, the belt on a stationary drive, none of those are in anyone’s line of sight during the months they are quietly deteriorating.

So the calls come in a pattern. Something squeals, somebody keeps running it because grain is moving, and two days later a bearing has welded itself to a shaft or a belt has shredded. The repair that would have been an hour becomes a shaft, a housing and a day.

What we do here is the mechanical and electrical side of that equipment at your site: bearings, belts, chains, flighting, drives, motors and the control problems that stop a machine from starting or make it stop by itself. Combines are their own subject and have a separate page, because header and threshing work is a different animal from handling gear.

Usual callsA screaming bearing at the head or boot, worn or thin flighting, a shredded belt, a drive that hums but will not turn, a dryer that will not stay running, and controls that trip for reasons nobody can trace.

The money conversationYou will know what the repair runs before a wrench moves, and if a diagnosis could land two different ways, you hear both sides of it up front.

CoverageNapa and Solano first, with Yolo, Sonoma and the Delta side of Contra Costa covered as the call warrants. Check the coverage map.

Nothing gets touched until the machine cannot start

This has to come before the parts list, because grain handling equipment is the most dangerous gear on most farms. An auger flight does not care what it is pulling in. An elevator with a slack belt can turn backward under load when power drops. And the thing that kills people most often is not a machine that was running, it is a machine that everyone assumed was off.

Power off, and proven offDisconnect opened, breaker off, and the start circuit tested rather than trusted. A switch in the off position is not evidence that the motor cannot turn.
Locked and taggedA lock goes on the disconnect and the key stays with the person under the machine. This is not a formality anyone here is willing to skip, on your site or any other.
Stored energy releasedHydraulics bled down, raised sections blocked or cribbed, and belts or flights checked for anything under tension that could move once a guard comes off.
Guards go back onEvery one of them, before the machine runs again. A guard that got left leaning against a leg because the job ran late is how the next incident starts.

If that sounds like it slows a repair down, it adds a few minutes and it is not negotiable. Plenty of grain injuries happen during maintenance, not during operation.

A mechanic's hands using a wrench on an engine component — Drive-end work on handling equipment means hands inside a machine that has to be incapable of starting. The lock goes on the disconnect before any of this begins.

What moves grain, and what stops it

Handling gear is mostly bearings, drives and the things that turn them. The faults repeat across machine types, which is why a mechanic who knows augers is rarely lost on a conveyor.

Augers and grain pumps

Flighting wear, tube damage, gearboxes, hitch and undercarriage trouble, plus the hydraulic lift and swing circuits on larger portable units.

Bucket elevators and legs

Head and boot bearings, belt tracking and tension, cups and bolts, plus the pulley lagging that decides whether a belt stays where it belongs.

Belt and drag conveyors

Idlers, tail pulleys, chain and paddle wear, and the misalignment that quietly eats the edge of a belt over a season.

Grain dryers

Burner and fan trouble, moisture and temperature sensing, discharge drives and the control faults that make a dryer cycle when it should run steady.

Bin unload and sweep systems

Unload augers, sweep drives, gearboxes and the wear that comes from running a machine at the bottom of a bin full of abrasive material.

Motors, starters and controls

Motors that hum without turning, overloads that keep tripping, failed contactors, and the wiring damage that comes from rodents and weather.

Standby power for handling

Drying and unloading during an outage depends on a generator that starts. That gear gets its own service and its own failure habits.

Hydraulic lift and swing

Cylinders that will not hold position, pump and valve faults, and lines that fail on the raise where it matters most.

Anything with a flight in it gets locked out before I put a hand near it. I would rather lose ten minutes than have that conversation with somebody’s family.
Patrick Freeman, owner

Bearings and beltsThe two most common failures on handling equipment, and the two most often audible for days before they let go.

Electrical sideMotors, starters, overloads and controls are covered, so a dead drive does not need a second trade on site.

LockoutNothing is worked on until the machine is proven incapable of starting, and guards go back on before it runs.

PricingA single figure, said out loud before the job begins, with the travel already inside it.

A worker standing at the front of a large freight truck — When handling stops, the queue forms behind it. Trucks waiting at a full bin is the real cost of a bearing that nobody listened to.

Off season

The cheapest repair is the one done in a quiet month

Everything on this page is easier, safer and less expensive when the machine is empty and nothing is waiting on it. Turning an auger by hand and feeling for a rough bearing takes minutes. Pulling a leg cover to look at belt condition and cup bolts takes an afternoon. Measuring flighting thickness tells you whether this season is the last one it has in it. None of that is possible in October with trucks lined up.

The pattern we see is that operations who walk their handling equipment in the quiet months call us for scheduled work and rarely at midnight. Operations who do not, call at midnight. It is not a mystery and it is not about how good anybody’s equipment is.

If you want a hand with that, a walk-through visit covers bearings, belts, chains, drives, guards and controls across everything that moves grain, and you get a written list of what needs doing now against what can wait a season. That kind of work fits naturally alongside a seasonal pass through the rest of the equipment.

Straight answers on grain gear

Not seeing your question? A phone call sorts it faster than a form does, and somebody picks up regardless of the hour.

Something is squealing but it still moves grain. How long can I run it?

Assume less time than you would like. A squeal or a rumble means a bearing has lost lubrication or taken in dust, and from that point it is generating heat and wearing its race. Running it to the end of the day is usually fine. Running it for another week is how a bearing seizes, welds to the shaft and turns a parts swap into shaft and housing work. If it is audible from the ground, it is worth a call now.

How worn does auger flighting have to be before it matters?

It shows up as capacity before it shows up as failure. A worn flight has a bigger gap to the tube wall, so grain rolls back instead of moving forward and the machine takes noticeably longer to empty a truck. Edges also get thin and sharp and eventually tear. Flighting can be rebuilt or replaced in sections, and catching it in the off season means choosing when to do the work rather than having it chosen for you.

Do you work on the electrical side, or only the mechanical?

Both. A lot of grain equipment faults are electrical: a motor that hums and will not turn, an overload that trips a few minutes into every run, a failed contactor, damaged wiring where rodents have been. Being able to test the motor circuit and the mechanical load in the same visit matters, because the two mask each other. A stiff drive trips an overload and looks like an electrical problem, and a failing motor drags and looks mechanical.

Will you work on a machine that still has grain in it?

Sometimes, and it depends entirely on what is being worked on. Drive end and exterior work is usually fine. Anything requiring access inside a loaded machine or a bin gets treated with a great deal of caution, because flowing grain and bridged material are genuinely lethal and no repair is worth that risk. If a machine has to be emptied first, you will be told plainly rather than talked around.

Can you get out during harvest, or is there a queue?

The phone answers around the clock and handling breakdowns get treated as urgent, because a stopped auger usually has trucks behind it. What you get is an honest arrival window based on where your place is and what else is already running. If somebody is midway through another job, you hear that instead of a comfortable answer that turns into a long wait.

Do you service dryers as well as handling equipment?

Yes, on the mechanical, drive and control side: fans, discharge drives, bearings, sensing and the faults that stop a dryer running steady. Burner work and fuel train components sometimes fall into licensed territory depending on the setup and the fuel, and where that line sits gets explained on the phone rather than discovered halfway through an afternoon.

Tell us which machine stopped.

You get the mechanic on the phone, not a queue. Say what the equipment is, what it did before it quit and whether grain is sitting in it, and there will be a number and an arrival time on the table before the call ends.

Call (707) 553-3369 Send it in writing

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