Driving impression: Hawe Wester ULW 2500T chaser bin Chaser bin chase hots up Though they long ago established their place on the harvest prairies of the US, chaser bins have never really caught on in the UK. But is this all about to change? Martin Rickatson catches up with one of the first of a new German line of Hawe Wester chasers being launched in the UK for next harvest
As a whole, farmers often take time to adjust to new concepts in machinery. When a new idea hits the market, it often takes quite a while for it to achieve initial uptake before gradually working its way to popularity – or obscurity.
The chaser bin is a case in point. After the idea made a tentative entry onto the UK market around ten years ago, the concept of employing a single, flotation-tyred and auger-equipped hopper-on-wheels to ferry grain from combine to trailers – or better still lorries – which don’t venture beyond the headland, has never really blossomed to any great extent.
Warks-based firm Krampe Trailers, which has begun importing the German Hawe Wester range into the UK – Hawe Wester has no association with Krampe, the two simply sharing a UK importer – believes the key reason the idea has never taken hold on larger UK farms is chiefly due to existing chaser bin configuration. The inverted pyramid shape of the single axle, balloon-tyred models currently on the market is well suited to the US prairies they were initially designed for, but the bins’ high centre of gravity makes them unsuitable for the more undulating fields of the UK, reasons the firm. Stability has been a major issue, it says, even on flat fields where deep tramline ruts can be enough to upset machine balance.
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