In this fourth installment of the Drive-Along Diaries, we’ll shift our focus a little. I’ll continue to share observations about real world spraying practices, but we’ll also dip a toe into the business side of custom application. Every contractor’s situation is different, but perhaps you’ll be able to relate to some of these experiences.

4:30 am

Once again, I found myself driving through Ontario in the wee hours, sipping life-giving coffee and marveling at the total absence of traffic. I was headed to Grande Pointe near Chatham to meet with Paul Delanghe, who’d invited me to tag along with him. I was looking forward, but I was also experiencing a little dread as I imagined subjecting my posterior to another day in the buddy seat. When I arrived at 7:00, I found Paul and his staff in the office. Handshakes were shared all around. Then I dove right in by asking how he got started and how his business worked.

An evolving business model – fertilizer and/or fungicide?

Paul’s family has farmed cash crops, including field tomatoes and sugar beets, for four generations. When he left the aviation industry in 2015, he invested in a high clearance sprayer and a set of Y-drops to apply fertilizer on the family farm. It wasn’t long before he was doing neighbouring farms as well. By 2017 he was saw potential in custom fertilizer work and started Acres Unlimited (AU), which incorporated in 2019.

The original business proposition was straightforward. A split fertilizer application with optimal timing can increase yield while saving fertilizer dollars. For example, perhaps a customer would lay down 150-175 lbs of fertilizer early season, and then call on Paul for another 25-50 lbs using his Y-drops. They might request a single rate, or a variable rate depending on soil type and yield potential (or none if hail or drought wreaked havoc).

This worked well for a few years, so Paul expanded into fungicides. He observed that many corn growers didn’t want to invest in their own high clearance sprayers and preferred to let a contractor worry about minimizing the trample (~4% of the yield). In the case of wheat, many growers were too busy planting to thoroughly clean their sprayers after herbicide applications and were happy to make that the contractor’s problem.

Paul found that fertilizer applications weren’t as lucrative as fungicide applications. High volume fertilizer applications meant spraying 300 ac/day instead of the 5-700 typical of herbicide or fungicide applications. That loss in productivity bit deeper when he had to rely on the client to load UAN because it meant chasing refills and waiting on small-capacity pumps.

Those delays created scheduling conflicts. Typically, as June slips into July, the window for fertilizers closes as the window for fungicides opens. But when there’s a wet spring (like we had this year) it stretches the planting window. Paul would get calls for fertilizer applications in late July, overlapping the fungicide sprays that extended into early August.

So, was offering custom fertilizer still worth it? Fungicides represent the biggest opportunity for profit and are relatively low risk. UAN is hard on equipment and machine prices and depreciation costs have increased significantly (Paul figures $200.00 CAD/engine hour). He calculated that he would have raise his prices to $25/ac for custom fertilizer applications, and that just wasn’t feasible. So, for all these reasons, he decided to leave custom fertilizer applications behind.

Staff roles and coordination

Today, Acres Unlimited consists of Paul, two full time employees (one sprayer operator and one tender truck operator) and one part timer. In addition to working for AU, employees have personal endeavours, such as running their own farms or hauling tomatoes. That means work assignments must be flexible because availability isn’t always a given. Paul sprays from April to November and when he works on his own, he can handle 3 to 500 acres a day. As long as everyone is on board for the peak spraying season in late July / early August it all seems to work.

Staff coordinate their activities through their phones. They drop pins in Google Maps, use a group chat and call regularly to stay in touch. Each employee is trusted to operate semi independently, using their own judgement to establish the safest, most effective, and most efficient means to get the job done. I was left with the impression that the business functioned almost as a cooperative under the Acres Unlimited banner.

7:45 am – The yard

This was great office conversation, and I was so engrossed that I didn’t notice when the staff left for the yard to get ready for the day. We followed behind and Paul showed me their spraying equipment.

The Sprayers

Paul has experience with several asset tracking packages (e.g., AgLeader, Raven), but he likes John Deere’s Op Centre the most. When he started spraying, Deere was the most expensive North American option, so he went with Miller and Hagie. However, the cost of sprayers has increased in recent years and closed the price gap sufficiently for him to justify buying a 412R in 2023. AU also runs a 2022 Miller Nitro 7310, and that’s used by their second operator.

According to Paul, Deere really isn’t interested in producing a high clearance machine for corn (he was encouraged to go buy a Hagie) so he had to add tall tires and a lift kit to climb from the 1.53 m (60”) stock clearance under the frame to 1.82 m (72”). He also protected the hydraulics behind the tires by covering them with canvas bags. Other growers use 5 gallon pails or even car mats to accomplish the same thing.

Tendering equipment

AU recently upgraded to a Phiber DASH 4.4 on their 15,900 L (4,200 gallon) tender truck. It caused a little sticker shock but paid for itself very quickly. The sprayer was no longer idling while the operator filled the bowls, saving on engine hours. Plus, the less than eight-minute fill time added to their overall productivity.

The tender truck itself was designed for the operator to forklift totes onto an overhead platform and gravity feed chemistry into the inductor bowls. Paul likes the bulk format over the jugs and uses it whenever it’s feasible. However, he installed transfer pumps because they’re faster than gravity feed and do a better job emptying the totes completely. Paul prefers to trust the embossed sight gauge on the side of the bowls over a flow meter; Variability in product viscosity makes the flow meter inaccurate, and that adds up over several loads. In fact, when using totes, they’ve seen discrepancies as high as 50 L (13 gallons) at the end of a day.

There was also a humble 1994 cube truck to service the other sprayers with diesel and chemistry, and a 27,250 L (7,200 gallon) water truck. AU gets their water from municipal stations, and one was conveniently located across the street from the yard. It’s a fast fill, and while there’s rarely a line up, they still make sure to fill each night to ensure an efficient start the next morning.

Float trailer

Chatham-Kent and Essex are big counties. When Paul ran the numbers on engine hour depreciation, the operator’s time, fuel, maintenance, and tire wear, floating the sprayer between jobs made sense. So, he uses a 12,100 L (3,200 gallon) float trailer to transport his Deere 412R.

He chose the two-bowl Phiber DASH 2.4 because they use a lot of jug formats with this sprayer. The left bowl (J) is a push-to-rinse system and on the right (R), a knife. This is handy for co-packs. For example, Veltyma DLX is a co-pack with one larger and one smaller jug. The smaller jug gets upended on the rinser and the larger jug gets spiked on the knife. Spiking is faster, but there’s always a chance of stabbing yourself, so better to spike the larger jugs.

8:05 – Heading out

While I waited, Paul circle-checked the float trailer. Then he flipped open the tractor trailer hood and climbed inside to get it to start! He explained that he had to manually operate the fuel pump because the electrical was cranking too slowly. This truck had almost 1,000,000 km on it and fixing the pump was going to be ~$7,000.00, so this little work-around was fine with Paul. Plus, it’s great anti-theft security.

We drove on narrow county roads which required us to lean on the gravel curbs. Paul noted that it typically kicks up a lot of dust and aggravates the people driving behind him. It can spur them to passing unsafely. But since we’d had so much regular rain this season, there was no dust and people seemed more patient.

8:18 am – Loading

Now at our destination, Paul found a safe and accessible place to park and began untethering the sprayer. That consisted of removing the four chains with turnbuckles that secured the sprayer to the trailer. He always does this first, so he doesn’t forget before backing it off… ask him how he knows. This took about two minutes to complete. Then he hit a switch under the sprayer to send up the airbags and grabbed some gloves to start filling the inductor bowls.

As Paul was pouring chemistry into the inductor bowls his phone started ringing. He said he never answers when he’s focused on loading. It takes time and attention to ensure it’s done right, and he didn’t want any distractions. Paying a little extra time and attention now means avoiding costly issues later.

This was a 54 ac job, but Paul was adding enough for 60 acres because he didn’t want to run short. A little leftover fungicide on the next job (soybeans) would be a nice bonus for the client. Each jug was emptied, rinsed immediately, had the cap replaced and was dropped back in its cardboard box. The water truck operator would grab them later when he came with our refill. Removing caps and labels for recycling is a rainy-day job.

The loading process

Perhaps I should have explained sooner, but here’s a short and generic description of the chemical loading system. Product gets added to a conical inductor bowl. This can be via jug (poured or knifed), or from bulk containers via gravity or transfer pump, or dry products get blended with a recirculating agitator. One of several bowls might be filled, each with their own product, or one bowl can be filled and emptied serially. Then the operator starts the carrier pump and begins pushing carrier (usually water) into the sprayer tank. Once enough is loaded, a valve at the bottom of the bowl is opened and the Venturi effect creates suction to draw the chemistry into the carrier stream. Then a second valve is opened to activate a rinse head in the bowl, or this is done manually using a hand-held hose. This process can then be repeated to separate products and control mixing order. Finally, it’s followed up by more carrier to rinse the lines and finish filling.

Alternately, the suction pump on the sprayer itself can draw in carrier and the induction bowl on the side of the sprayer can be used to add chemistry. In a similar fashion, onboard water is used to rinse the jug and the bowl.

Paul used a hybrid of these two methods by engaging the pump on the tender system and the pump on the sprayer simultaneously to speed up the process. There are some caveats to doing this. The concern is that some formulations may cause damage to the sprayer pump, but Paul feels there’s so much carrier water following behind the chemistry that it flushes the pump and the entire line. Here’s how he did it.

Paul backed the sprayer off the trailer and hooked up to the front-fill. He started the pump on the DASH to add about 750 L (200 gallons) of water to the 4,540 L (1,200 gallon) sprayer tank. This was not the ideal “half full”, but unless he’s anticipating a mixing issue, that’s all he uses. In situations when he’s pushing multiple products into the sprayer, he’s found that the tank can fill before he’s done. Ironically, that’s when it’s so important to start with more water, but I’ll get off my high horse now.

He had already poured or knifed products into the bowls, so he opened the valve under the first, drawing the contents into the water stream before rinsing the bowl down. Then he did the second. Then he walked over to the sprayer and started the sprayer pump to add a “pull” to the “push” and speed up the fill before returning to the DASH to wait.

Paul said he’d installed an Accu-Volume on his Miller sprayer (and loves it) but saw no need for it on the Deere. He said the float in the tank quickly and accurately responds to the level in the tank. At that point the sprayer registered as “full”, the sprayer pump automatically shut off and the valve closed. You could hear it happen. But the DASH was still pushing and would quickly stretch and damage the hose, and even cause leaks.

That sound was Paul’s cue to quickly shut off the DASH pump. Then he closed the Banjo quarter turn valves on either side of the connection and disconnected the feed. He said he never pushes UAN through this system. Ag retailers don’t use flow meters with UAN because they can be inaccurate – instead they use weigh scales. However, it was too hard to navigate an oversized tender truck onto a scale, so UAN got loaded directly.

At 8:32 we were filled and ready to go. That was 14 minutes from the time Paul started untethering to when he started backing the sprayer off the tender truck. And it would have been a lot faster if he hadn’t taken time to explain it to me.

8:35 am – Job 1

At the edge of the first corn field, Paul unfolded the boom and set up the monitor. We would be applying 20 gpa at 60 psi and travelling about 12 mph. When spraying corn, Paul tends to travel between 10 and 14 mph. He double checked that the pneumatics he’d switched on earlier had lifted the sprayer high enough to clear the corn.

One of the chemical companies had given him a set of Low-Drift Air 11005 flat fans (PSLDAQ1005) to try, and this was his first time using them. We immediately saw that they were not all pointing in the same direction (or even alternating). They were just on willy-nilly. We figured it wouldn’t matter since we were only just clearing the tassels, but it tweaked both of our latent OCD personalities and we decided to fix them next chance we got.

We finished at 8:59 am and found we’d covered 51 of the estimated 55 acres, due in part to a few missed strips and rounded-off corners. Why did we miss them? Read on.

Fungicides versus herbicides and fertilizers

I’d tagged along during fertilizer and herbicide applications, so I began to notice that overhead fungicides in corn seemed to follow different rules. Here are some observations I made throughout the day:

1. It’s not ideal to have to stretch a tank of herbicide, but you can if it’s not too dilute. And you can always go top up if you really must. However, for fungicides, you absolutely do not want to run short because that means increased trample. You can stretch the tank a little, but if it means running over corn, then leaving a few “test strips” and unsprayed corners is the profitable choice. Quote from Paul: “The most important part of fungicide in corn? Don’t run over the corn.”
2. Paul felt sectional control was more than enough resolution for fungicide applications in small/medium sized fields. The uniformity and product-savings associated with nozzle-level resolution (e.g. PWM with turn compensation) pays with herbicides and expensive fertilizer, but not fungicide.
3. A low and steady boom is ideal, but not critical for corn fungicides. Increased drift potential and a loss of coverage uniformity are still bad practice, but rather than slow down and drop the boom, we leaned into maintaining our speed and raised the boom ends until they were clear of the tassels. Even then, the centre rack was still deep in the canopy. C’est la vie.

9:00 am – Job 2

Job two was the for the same customer, so all we had to do was cross the street to a 60 acre soybean field waiting for an application of Delaro Complete. This time we were full in seven minutes (because I didn’t ask silly questions) and we were starting to run short of water. We called for more.

I haven’t mentioned it, but the Deere was equipped with Precision Planting’s ReClaim recirculating booms. He was actually one of the prototype testers, having installed it on his old Patriot a few years back and his Miller as well. I’ll discuss the system in more detail later on. So, at 9:10 am we started recirculating the boom to dilute the residual Veltyma DMX and prime the Delaro Complete. Veltyma DMX has some “greening effect” on soybean, so while a full dose wouldn’t hurt anything, it would leave a conspicuous green triangle at the edge of the field that no one wants to see.

We drove the perimeter manually. The ruts left from such a wet year kept tugging the sprayer, so Paul steered with a light touch, correcting when the wheels pulled. Once we got to the interior, we were applying 20 gpa at 13 mph. Paul relied more on autosteer (although he still fought the ruts a bit) and took the opportunity to text customers and get in touch with staff. Just as when he’s focused while loading, never taking a call, he doesn’t take them when spraying field boundaries. At 9:39 we were empty and done.

Acquiring and scheduling customers

I asked how AU found and scheduled customers. Paul said that roughly 40% of their business came from contracts with ag retailers and the remainder was direct. AU works with a few ag retailers, and they don’t all operate the same way. Here’s how it was explained to me.

Ag retailer 1 acquires a customer and sells them any number of agronomic services, including crop inputs. Then they use their own sprayer, or subcontract someone like AU to spray those crop inputs. AU has the option to decline a job (perhaps it’s too small, too distant, or generally undesirable), but they can’t do that too often. If they accept, they pick up the chemistry and apply it within 24 hours to avoid long-term storage.

Ag retailer 2 has a different arrangement. In this case Paul refers to a project management app called “Monday.com” which allows him to review and select open jobs. Once again, they pick up the chemistry and apply it within 24 hours.

AU also takes on customers directly. Weather events and breakdowns are problems for farmers but represent opportunities for contractors. AU is often hired by large farming operations (e.g. >1,000 ac) when they can’t keep up, and this is far better than chasing 10-15 ac fields.

Juggling all these customers can be challenging. In the winter, the core, repeat customers are penciled into the schedule. However, in the chaos of fungicide season, the ag retail customers get priority because of contractual obligations. And, of course, AU is always open to opportunities and slots in new jobs as best they can. They take advantage of social media while operating because Paul believes it’s important to stay involved in the community, but also because it’s a means of free advertising. People see when they’re in the area and it’s resulted in lots of jobs.

Duck hunting

I debated including this in an already epic article, but it was too interesting to leave on the cutting room floor. Paul also described a long-standing niche job working as a land manager for a few private “duck-farm” operations. Nearby Mitchel’s Bay is some of the best duck hunting in the world because of strategically placed duck-farms next to marshes or lakes. They grow corn to attract the ducks, then mow parts down to make pathways for boats, and then flood the fields using dikes and pumps.

These clubs aren’t necessarily big revenue generators. They’re perks for businesses to offer employees, or locales for casual business meetings, or maybe just status symbols for the wealthy elite. Given that they spend a lot of the year flooded, the ground is tough to spray because it’s always soft. Sprayers can’t go in full, and that tends towards premium fees for crop management.

Paul sprays for a few of these operations because he finds the whole practice fascinating. And, as a duck hunter himself, he’s permitted access to places most never see. There’s no such thing as free corn, Daffy.

9:43 am – Water fill

The water truck arrived and six minutes later we were topped up. Then it left to go support the Miller about 30 minutes away, promising to come back to us right after. Paul appreciated not having to go back to the yard for water – how can you ever be satisfied with coach after you’ve flown first class? We headed off to the next job.

9:51 am – Job 3

This 50 acre soybean field abutted a tomato field, and after seeing this sort of thing all season I wondered aloud if buffer zones were just a white lie that we tell ourselves. Paul chuckled and said there’s generally no stress when spraying fungicide this close to a sensitive crop, but herbicide would be tense. He changed fields on the monitor, verified that he was applying the right amount and started spraying. He noted there was a soft area in the field where the owner replanted soybeans. We avoided it.

This was one of the direct customers and not an ag retail client. The customer was a tradesman that left the crop protection choices to Paul. Custom operators can have a lot of influence on their client’s product choices because they spray so many acres with so many chemistries. In order to better guide his clients, Paul makes an effort to get involved in product testing and performance trials. But, as a sprayer operator, he’s not only interested in efficacy and price, but also ease-of-use.

For example, powdered manganese plugs a sprayer horribly while liquid formulations are far more forgiving. Another example, perhaps one product is 1 L/ac while another is 2 L/ac. Handling less is always easier. Or perhaps all this is trumped when a customer is swayed by loyalty points, which are issued by some registrants to reward a customer for using their suite of products.

We were done at 10:11 and found we’d covered 47.5 of the 50 acres because we skipped that wet, replanted area. That left about five acres worth of spray mix in the tank that we’d have to consider on the next job.

Recirculating booms

Paul secured the sprayer to the trailer, and we hit the road. While we drove, he talked about why he felt a recirculation system was necessary. Beyond the savings in chemistry and water, he said it was tricky charging the boom on some of the farms in the county. Severed lots meant more homes and private gardens, and that limits where it’s safe to prime.

Precision Planting released their aftermarket ReClaim recirculating boom a few years ago. We’ve written about it. Basically, it relies on dropping the pressure below the ~10 psi required to open the check valves in the nozzle bodies. So, no shut-off valves required. However, some Deere pumps won’t operate under 20 psi, which requires a work-around. Despite having that fix in place, we still saw nozzles dribbling while we were recirculating. Obviously not ideal, but Paul said it cost about a seventh of what the factory option would have cost, so he could live with it.

But there are other points to consider. For example, the sprayer doesn’t know the feature is there. So, when recirculation is engaged the sprayer “thinks” it’s spraying, and as liquid passes the flowmeter, the display shows the volume dropping… but it isn’t. As a result, the operator must know how much liquid circulated and manually adjust the volume prior to spraying.

And this system isn’t plumbed to flush the lines from the clean water tank. And it increases the length of hose that needs to be rinsed. And while you can recirculate glyphosate and UAN, many operators won’t do it with sticky products like atrazine or dicamba, preferring to just prime normally and keep them out of the recirculation lines.

While Paul and I were discussing all of this, and you can’t make this stuff up, the second operator called to say they broke an elbow on their recirculation line. To their credit, Precision was out there like a shot and had it mended in an hour (amazing service). But the delay meant we had to redistribute some of the remaining jobs. It was decided that Paul would take on some extra work and then both operators would meet up at the end of the day and split the last job.

10:50 am – Job 4

We parked, dismounted from the trailer, loaded and taxied to the headland. Paul said it was another 50 acres of corn, but I saw something was different. He treaded out the tires to a 138″ spacing to align with what I was told was a 23” corn spacing. Until now, we were on a typical 30” planting architecture. I soon learned that I didn’t like 23” corn. Tracking between such tight rows without trampling everything was a nightmare.

Here are two videos. We’re driving 30″ corn in the first and 23″ in the second.

I asked if Paul had tried row feelers, but he said they didn’t work on such tight spacing. In any case they got in the way when he used his float trailer. So, I watched as Paul studied the row ahead and referred to the feed from the cameras, micro-adjusting the steering for the entire 47.8 acre field as he fought to stay between the rows. It felt like forever, but we were done at 11:24 and back on the road for tendering a few minutes later.

11:38 am – Job 5

As we drove alongside this 45 ac field to get to the entry, we saw rows of sweet corn planted on the perimeter (surprise). Paul said there was a variety trial planted in the centre of the field somewhere as well and that we weren’t supposed to spray it. And it was another 23” row spacing.

Once again, we found it hard to stay on course. Just for added fun we got pulled by the planter draft and the occasional guess row. We finished at 12:10 pm and planned to meet the water truck. As we left, Paul reset the treads to 120” from 138”. Never good to forget that bit – again, ask Paul how he knows.

1:07 pm – Job 6

After a short and uneventful drive to the next client, we parked, loaded, and unfolded at the headland of a 45 ac cornfield. As we sprayed, Paul was on the lookout for a bridge that would give us access to another, smaller field. It turned out to be a substantial land bridge, which disappointed Paul because he was hoping to take me over a rickety little wooden bridge. The buddy seat was rough enough without testing its absorptive qualities as well, so I was good with it.

There were plenty of obstacles in this field. Paul was well acquainted with “the tree”. They’d had dealings in the past. I asked about wind turbines, which were all over the county, and I was surprised that he liked them. All turbines in the area have associated hard-packed lanes leading through the field. Paul took advantage by parking on them and filling there if needed. Plus, he watched them to monitor wind speed and inversion situations.

Still on the subject of obstacles, we found a field of peppers hidden in the corn. We left the test strip there. As we made these on the fly decisions, Paul wondered how an autonomous sprayer would handle all these little surprises. A good question.

I was finding the rows a little hypnotic and said so. Paul said corn was hard to spray day after day. In windy conditions, the tassels sway and it can make an operator dizzy. Some operators slow down to 10 mph or use row feelers to stay on track. We finished at 1:37 and when we got back to the trailer, two new jobs came in over the phone. Paul decided that his other operator could absorb those. We got ready for what might be our last job – rain was forecast

1:58 pm – Job 7

Full again, this 74 acre corn field would also get a test strip. Paul reiterated that it’s better to trample a field once, and not go in and out to get more spray mix. So, we filled for 70 acres spraying at 17 gal/ac and 9.6 mph to empty a single tankful as accurately as we could.

I watched as the pollen and anthers broke in waves over the hood and onto the steps. The radiator fan periodically reversed to blow it all out, but not as frequently as we needed. Paul occasionally did it manually. The sound of corn scraping and hitting the sprayer was loud. Paul said corn can beat the paint off a sprayer and damage the side induction bowl – wow. Carbon filtered cab or not, my pollen allergy was driving me crazy, and I was glad this was our last job. We were done at 2:37 and back on trailer five minutes later.

3:30 pm – Back at the yard

As we pulled into the yard it looked like rain was indeed coming. We weren’t worried about the fungicides we’d applied because they were rainfast in an hour. But it did put a premature end to the spray day. We’d covered more than 365 acres in the Deere, which was a light fungicide day for Paul. Combined with what the Miller did, AU covered 735 acres.

As I was packing to leave Paul asked if I was interested in seeing his new battery-powered backpack sprayer. I was, but I didn’t realize he’d put me to work spot spraying weeds. So, I suppose we actually covered 736 acres that day: 735 in sprayers, and one manual. Worth it.