I was gonna make a thread and never did get around to it.. So here's what we were doing for 2 weeks at the start of december. Between my dad, my brother and I we ran 3 shifts and ran 24 hours straight through until done. I had the always fun to try and stay awake 12-8am shift.

The loader was a 2004 cat 980G. It only had 3000 hours on it. We put over 300 on it. Pretty sweet machine, much nicer than the old 966 with 30k plus hours we ran last year...

The bucket has a special sweep out deal that swings from the top of the bucket. Otherwise it was hard to pile enough beets in the truck because the loader couldn't reach high enough to dump all the way. The sweep out thing was pretty nice except they put hoses on the cylinders twice as long as they needed and they got cracked from the bending and blew eventually. The first night I ran it all night without the sweepout until about 6:30 when I finally got a new hose. After I put a shorter hose on it was much better. When the hose blew it sucked because I had to shake them out of the bucket on the last few scoops because it couldn't dump all the way. Made it take twice as many scoops to fill a truck.

The trucks have racks so you can get more beets in them, because the rest of the year they haul rock, and beets are lighter than rock. They would leave weighing 112000 pounds total.

Nice machine there.Amazing how equipment has evolved. I bet that cab is nice and cozy..LOL I drive dump trucks and load my self from time to time with an older Cat 963 track loaders. Love running them . 3 buckets and im loaded. We also have an older Michigan wheel load same size of your cat. that thing will load a 28' dump trailer in 1 and 1/2 buckets!! pretty amazing to run that machine!!

That's a lot of beets where they just from your farm?
That's a cool bucket I haven't see one like that. I got to demo 980H a while back there not bad. I have always liked cat's cads there large and fairly comfortable. Did this one have one of those weird horse shoes like steering wheels?

Those were the beets from all the growers here in our area, about 3000 acres worth. The one pile was almost gone in those pics, it was quite a bit bigger before.

Yeah it had the half steering wheel, you just held the little joystick thing on it that had the forward/reverse on it and moved it that way. Seemed sensitive at first but after I got used to it I really liked it. Much nicer to always have your hand on the reverser than have to grab the lever each time...

Oh man thats a lot to move......

What's the machine behind your pickup? I've seen beet pickers before. Maybe you do things really big in WY!!!!

What's the machine behind your pickup? I've seen beet pickers before. Maybe you do things really big in WY!!!!

Looks like the machine they use to unload and pile the beets. The truck backs up to a hopper and dumps the beets into it, the machine shakes off the excess dirt and other goodies, then the beets move up the long conveyor where the arm can swing back and forth and pile them up.

I live near a bunch of processing plants in Michigan, as a kid I would ride my bike down to the plant and watch the guys unload their trucks.

Cool pics nar, brings back some memories..

Yeah what BigStu128 said, that's the piler. To harvest them first we run a defoliater over them to remove the leaves and then we use a beet digger that pulls them from the ground and takes as much dirt as it can off them and loads them into the truck.

Ah beets... reminds me when I was in college and working after class for a farmer southeast of Fort Collins driving a beet truck. Part of the job was to pick up the beets on the ground the digger dropped. Pretty brain dead work but it was beer money. The equipment was a lot smaller than that rig you use Nar. The times sure have changed, my brothers tractors are all a lot more than the old JD G and 60 we drove as kids.

i want that loader back dammit!

Yeah me too... I need to move a couple hills.