Mid-Continent Industries, Inc. • 800-279-6812 • http://www.midcontinentindustries.com
Mid-Continent Industries’ (MCi) Kicker mechanical dockage tester is used by grain handlers to determine dockage and foreign material in all types of grains and oilseeds.
According to Vice President Darren Wells (800-279-6812), “The Kicker is designed to provide a fast, accurate, and consistent way of obtaining the following separations from most grains: shrunken and broken kernels, overs/scalped material, clean grain, broken kernels, splits, aspirated material, dockage/foreign material. The Kicker also greatly reduces handpicking of soybeans.”
Here is what some users say about the Kicker dockage tester:
“I have been using MCi Kickers for over 20 years. The three units I have been around have never had any issues and require little maintenance. A little bit of care, and this machine will go on and on. Let me tell you: It was not easy being one of the first elevators in our area to install a Kicker. We had to sell the idea to the farmers that it was a plus for them and not just a deduction of their bushels on their ticket. It wasn’t long before the farmers were coming in asking us to run their first sample out of their combine to see the different splits and going back to fine-tune their machines.
“When I started at my present job, they were pulling dockage by hand pans. A lab guy would give me the results after processing them. For weeks I felt there was no consistency. The day he gave me some results that said zero dockage, I decided that was all I needed to know. I went to the board and convinced them an MCi Kicker was a much-needed tool in this facility. I told them this machine would pay for itself in one year.
“We bought an MCi Kicker, which included a scale to weigh dockage and a new grain analysis computer. This equipment paid for itself in six months.
“The MCi Kicker puts everybody on the same level. Everybody gets paid for clean grain only.”
“It’s been four or five years since we installed a four-screen MCi Kicker dockage tester at our facility. Overall, we’ve been very happy with the performance. It’s great for cleaning grain samples. We use it a lot for wheat and flax, especially.
“One of the benefits we’ve seen is that it saves us a lot of time cleaning flax. We’ve got a variety of screens that we use for cleaning different types of grains.
“It just works really well and continues to do so. We haven’t had any maintenance issues.”
“Two of our locations have been using the MCi Kicker dockage tester for about eight years, and the rest of our 15 locations have been using them for four years. We use them for grading wheat and soybeans.
“When we initially decided to purchase an MCi Kicker, we looked at some competitors in the market and the cost-to-value ratio. I’ve worked with a couple of different dockage testers in the past, and the Kicker gives you a great bang for your buck. They’re the most consistent and accurate machines I’ve used. Another benefit is that they just keep running. They require very little maintenance over time. The Kicker was a no-brainer for the cost.
“The most important thing to us was buying something that graded consistently and accurately. If we grade three of the same exact samples, we hope to get similar results. That was the most important thing for us. We wanted to treat each of our farmers who delivered to us the same exact way: fairly and consistently.
“When you’re hand-shaking with pans, there’s just no way to get a consistent shake. One guy may shake it as many times as he’s supposed to, exactly as defined in the regulations. But the next guy might shake it half the time or half as hard or in the wrong motions, so it was important to us to get a consistent shaking motion out of the machine.
“We track all the analytics on our grade. When we started doing this, we had grades all over the place. Typically, in our area you kind of see similar results based off, of course, the weather, but we had people five miles from each other having completely different dockage and foreign material. Since we’ve added the Kickers everywhere, everyone’s getting similar results.”
Reprinted from GRAIN JOURNAL November/December 2018 Issue
