Spring grain and fertilizer

I just thought id throw a thought out there for the upcoming spring rush, if spring ever comes. Last year I had a pretty successful spring with the truck, moved alot of fertilizer and beans and I was satisfied with the rates I got. I noticed if i ventured outside of my small, no name elevator, the price to move beans was flat out trash and half the time i would drive to St. Paul or Port Neal empty. Heres where Dale Hermans has to stick his foot in his mouth...I advocated that poor commodity prices are the reason the rate to haul a soybean is low. I'll say poor commodity prices are the reason you wil never get 4 per mile to truck soybeans but the prices are more than adequate to do above 2 bucks a mile.

In 2018 I sold my grain to 3 different places for my farm. I sold 10000 bushels of bean to one elevator. Im looking back on my contracts and I see that basis at its lowest was 1.05 and at its highest was 1.45. Lets call that an average of 1.25. This means that elevator took 12500 dollars out of my check to pay for shipping those beans to the gulf or where ever...That facility used to pay around 40-45 cents per bushel to take beans to elevator D or Port Neal. Since then, the elevator has now been bought by CHS and I have seen them posting 25 cents per bushel to take beans to port neal. 180ish miles. makes me gagg. So, obviously all parties that handle those beans have to make money. out of that 1.25 basis comes the elevators cost to handle it, maybe 10 cents, the trucking to the port, 40ish cents, the cost for the port to handle it, maybe 10ish and then the cost for the barge to head downstream and i have no idea on that cost.

So whats my point? I really dont know. Maybe look up the local cash bid history for whoever you are hauling the beans from. Find out what their basis was for the last year and if basis was over a buck, i say dont touch those beans for less than 40 cents. Obviously things change, basis increases depending how far away from ports you get and demand ect. Maybe things are totally different than this once you get outside of my northeast SD area. But unless someone can correct me on my next statement, and id be happy to hear why im wrong, but if some of these places are telling you they cant do better than 1.25-1.50 per mile for soybeans, they are lying to you. I will also throw out the statement that Dale makes more money in my pocket bouncing to a port empty to pick up fert at an OK rate, then i do going in to a port loaded with 1.25 per mile beans and bringing fert out. Also these places paying 2.00 per mile on a load of fert that makes you scale nervous....they charge the farmer and distributer way more than 1.90 or 2.00 a mile. anyway, safe travels and hopefully summer falls on a weekend this year so you can have a picnic before winter starts again.