NEWTON – Ben Dillon tried to keep his fledgling innovation under wraps.
But when you have a harvester like his, it’s not easy.
Maybe it was the fact it was an orange – not red, green or silver – machine shifting through fields of wheat during test runs. Nor did it look like a normal combine, with its mammoth back end that could hold enough grain to fill an entire semi.
Now, however, it is D-Day – or what Dillon was calling the Tribine’s launch on this early August morning at the Tribine Harvester complex at Newton. The new website was live. The engineering team was doing finishing work on the latest model before it rolled off the production-room floor.
Three weeks later, Dillon and the team unveiled the Tribine – with its 1,000-bushel grain tank – at one of the nation’s premier farm shows.
“It’s exciting, no question,” said Dillon of the concept he first envisioned 20 years ago while working on the Indiana farm his family has owned since 1844. “I always felt it would reach production; I just didn’t know how.”
“I’m not smart enough to see the future,” he added with a smile.
In an age of bigger farms and precision management, Dillon hopes to cater to farmers wanting to increase productivity and efficiency.
At the family farm, Dillon watched grain carts go back and forth from the combine – with its 350-bushel grain tank – to the 1,000-bushel semi truck parked along the road.
The two machines with multiple tires compact the soil and require added cost and labor. Dillon thought there had to be a better way to harvest crops.
Thus, he began working on a concept that combined the mechanisms of a combine with a 1,000-bushel grain tank, eliminating the need for a grain cart and tractor running parallel with the combine. His first idea was to attach a grain cart to the back of the combine. That didn’t work very well, and Dillon continued to hone the concept, building the first few prototypes on the Indiana farm and testing them there, Dillon said.
Those led to the design he has today, said Greg Terjesen, Tribine’s vice president of sales and marketing.
“The traditional business hasn’t changed since World War II,” said Terjesen, adding that Dillon has put together a 15-member team, with many previously working for various agriculture manufacturing leaders.
However, regarding the red, yellow, green and silver machines of the industry, Terjesen puts the Tribine into perspective, just like any good marketing person would.
“We know we have a better mousetrap,” he said.
Read More: