The combine gets the pre-harvest attention. It should. But every year, at least a handful of the frustrated harvest calls we take at the parts counter are not about the combine. They are about the auger that would not start when the first load came in. The bin that had a sensor reading -47 for three weeks and nobody knew. The dryer that had a bearing on the way out and nobody looked at it until it seized on the second dry day of the season.
If you already worked through our June 18 pre-harvest combine inspection guide, this is the companion piece. Corn harvest opens in southern Indiana and southern Ohio in two to three weeks. Whatever is going to fail on the grain-handling side will announce itself the first day the combine unloads. This post is about the walk-through you can do this week to make sure that announcement does not happen on your farm.
For clarity, this post covers everything downstream of the combine's grain tank. That includes:
John Deere does not manufacture most of this equipment directly. Grain augers, bins, and dryers come from a set of specialty manufacturers (Sudenga, Westfield, GSI, Farm Fans, Meridian, Brandt, and others). Our service teams and parts counters support customers running these systems as part of the broader harvest ecosystem, which is why this walkthrough is written brand-agnostic where the equipment is, and John Deere-specific only where it applies.
If your farm runs a portable auger to move grain from cart or truck to bin (which is the pattern for the majority of small and mid-size operations in this region), spend an hour on it this week. Not a five-minute glance. An hour with the auger on the ground, running under no load, and then looking at every wear item.
The walkaround, in order:
Drive belts and pulleys. Every belt on the auger is a wear item. Cracks, glazing, missing chunks along an edge, or visible stretch mean replace before harvest, not during. A belt that broke last October and got patched with duct tape to finish the season is a belt that will fail on day two of this harvest.
Bearings. With the auger running under no load, walk it and listen. Growls, grinding, or intermittent chirps are bearings going out. Feel each bearing housing after 5 to 10 minutes of running. Anything above what your hand can comfortably touch is a bearing running hot, and hot bearings do not get better with time.
Flighting condition. Inside the tube. Look with a flashlight down the barrel. Flighting that has worn thin at the outer edge is the most-common wear pattern, and it kills auger capacity long before the flighting fails visibly. Auger operators often notice the tell-tale sign as "the auger just does not move grain like it used to." That is worn flighting.
Hopper condition. The bottom hopper takes the most abuse from grain flow. Look for holes, cracks, and worn edges. A hopper that is losing seal at the joint spills grain onto the ground and doubles handling loss.
Intake screen and safety screens. If the safety screens are damaged, missing, or bypassed with wire, fix or replace them before you run the auger this fall. This is both a safety issue and often required by insurance.
Wheels, tires, and jack. For portable augers you move around the farm, the tires, wheel bearings, and jack are wear items too. A flat tire on the auger on day one of harvest is exactly the wrong day to change it.
PTO shaft or motor. If your auger runs off a PTO, inspect the shaft, u-joints, and guard. If it runs off an electric motor, check the wiring, capacitor if applicable, and switch. Electric augers often develop issues over winter that only show up on a load test.
If any of the wear items above surface issues, order parts now. Common auger wear parts (belts, bearings, flighting sections) are stocked at our parts counters or available in 3 to 7 business days from our supplier network. In the second week of August, that lead time doubles. On September 15, it triples.
Bin walkthrough is more involved than most owners give it credit for, and it is the pre-harvest task most often deferred to "I will get to it before we start."
The core checklist:
Structural. Walk the perimeter of every bin. Look at the anchoring at ground level (rust, movement, cracking of concrete). Look up the sidewall for damage, denting, or missing bolts. Inspect the roof panels and vents. Any storm damage from July should be addressed before the bin holds grain.
Cleaning. Bins are supposed to be cleaned annually between crops. Empty bins should be swept out completely, corners checked for old grain, and the whole interior surface inspected. Old grain harbors insects and fungal spores that will contaminate the new crop.
Aeration fans. Turn every fan on. Listen for bearing noise, motor sound, and airflow. A fan that ran through last winter should run cleanly. Anything unusual is a service ticket. Fans that have failed and were not replaced are the reason a lot of stored grain goes out of condition faster than owners expected.
Temperature and moisture sensors. For bins with monitoring cables, test every sensor. Sensors that read out of range (a random -47 or +200) are common failure modes and need replacement. Sensors that show accurate ambient temperature and moisture on an empty bin are your baseline for the season.
Load augers, unload augers, and sweep systems. Same walkaround as portable augers above.
Emergency exits and safety gear. Fall protection anchor points, ladder integrity, safety cage condition, and any fall-arrest gear. This is not just checklist compliance. Grain bin entries every year end lives that could have been saved with basic safety gear.
For any bin system beyond the simple portable-bin scale, your local grain-bin service company is usually the right call for the pre-season deep inspection. Our service network can often help with recommendations for who to call in a specific region.
If your operation runs a dryer (batch, continuous flow, or mixed-flow), the pre-season shakedown is genuinely the most important 60 minutes of work you will do this month.
Burner and gas system. Every dryer has a burner. Every burner has a gas supply. If either has been sitting since last November, the gas system may have condensate or air pockets, and the burner may have accumulated debris or nesting insects. Follow the manufacturer's pre-season startup procedure exactly. Do not skip the shakedown burn.
Fans and augers. Same walkaround as portable augers. Bearings, belts, sheaves, and the frame itself.
Moisture sensors and controls. The controls on modern dryers are computer systems that occasionally lose calibration or configuration across a long off-season. Verify moisture target, temperature setpoint, and any staged programs match your intended operating profile. Do a bench check with a known-moisture grain sample if possible.
Discharge system. The discharge auger, gate, and any load-out configuration. Verify the grain-flow path from dryer to storage is clear.
Safety and fire suppression. Grain dryers are legitimate fire risks when they are not maintained. Any smoke, any dust accumulation on hot surfaces, any check-engine light on the controls is a call-service-now situation.
If your dryer has not seen professional service in more than 24 months, this year is the year. The cost of a dryer that catches fire during harvest is orders of magnitude beyond the cost of a service visit.
Every combine has an in-cab moisture reading. It is useful. It is not sufficient.
The working framework we recommend:
In-cab moisture for real-time cutting decisions. This is what tells the operator whether the corn is dry enough to bother cutting today.
Hand-held probe moisture meter for confirming loads before they hit the bin. A quality probe meter (a Dickey-john or similar) reads within 0.5 percent of oven-dry standard on properly-taken samples. Test 3 to 5 samples per load, average, and record.
Grain-elevator or third-party moisture check for the loads that matter most (contract deliveries, quality-premium sales). Keep receipts.
The critical rule: never trust a single moisture reading for a storage decision. Bin moisture that averages 15 percent across the bin can have 17 percent pockets that go out of condition first. Sample from multiple points in every load. Sample deep, not just from the top.
The math nobody wants to do until harvest starts. Do it now.
Expected yield estimate. Based on scouting or last year's yields as a floor.
Total acres to harvest.
Bushels expected = acres × yield.
Your on-farm storage capacity in total bushels.
Deficit or surplus = expected bushels minus storage capacity.
If you have a deficit, you need commercial storage arrangements, direct-to-elevator delivery scheduling, or grain bag/pile storage plans finalized before the combine starts. This math is the single most-important pre-harvest planning exercise. Ignoring it does not make grain disappear.
Rough rule of thumb: 1,000 bushels of corn takes up about 1,250 cubic feet at 15 percent moisture. A 30-foot diameter, 21-foot tall bin holds roughly 12,000 bushels of corn. Your specific bin dimensions and grain type matter; the manufacturer's capacity chart is the accurate source.
John Deere is currently running a Large Tractor Harvest-Ready Parts Program that gives 10 percent off harvest-related parts for large-frame tractors (5R, 6R, 7R, 8R, 9R families) through the end of August. If you have any parts you know you need for a harvest tractor (belts, filters, tine sections, hydraulic components), the pre-harvest window is the honest reason to order them at the current discount rather than paying full price after Labor Day. Our parts department can walk through what qualifies.
For our farm customers with a Multi-Use Account through John Deere Financial, the account also periodically runs harvest-terms financing where large parts orders qualify for deferred-payment or reduced-rate financing during the harvest window. Availability and specific terms rotate; worth asking about at the counter if you are planning a significant parts spend this month.
The morning of, or the day before the combine rolls the first time:
Start every piece of grain-handling equipment. Portable auger, bin unload auger, bin load auger, dryer, grain vac. Run for 5 minutes each. Anything abnormal is a call to service, not a "run it and see."
Confirm moisture meter calibration. Test against a known sample.
Confirm bin availability. Which bin is receiving today. Which is next. What is the transition plan when the first fills. 4
Confirm the storage math. Total capacity, expected bushels for the day, expected first bin to fill.
Confirm truck or grain cart availability. Whoever is moving grain from field to bin needs to know the plan.
The farms that finish harvest smoothly are not the ones that got lucky. They are the ones that did the walk-through the day before and caught the small problem when it was still small.
Our parts counters are stocked for harvest by early August and staffed to move parts quickly through September and October. If you are working on any of the above and hit a question, a phone call to any of our locations across Ohio and Indiana can typically get you an answer within a few minutes and parts headed your way the same day.
For customers running combines with any pre-harvest inspection needs, our June 18 pre-harvest combine inspection guide covers the combine-side companion checklist to this post.
Our next companion piece comes August 13 and covers grain cart selection for the customer thinking about capacity upgrades on the field-to-storage side.