With All the advances being made in combines to keep up with today's higher-yielding hybrids, it leaves growers to wonder how grain tanks — the combine's holding bin for grain — are going to keep up.

“I can barely get to the end of a quarter-mile field anymore without having to unload into a grain wagon,” says one grower attending the Farm Industry News seminar on new row-crop combine technology at the 2009 National Farm Machinery Show in Louisville, KY.

One concept manufacturers are considering is to eliminate the combine grain tank altogether and unload directly into a truck or wagon pulled behind the combine. “I think we will hit a point where we can't go any larger,” says Kevin Bien, Product Marketing Manager, Gleaner and Massey Ferguson combines. “Whether that maximum capacity is 500 bu. or 600 bu., we might get to the point where the on-board requirements become prohibitive for what the wheels on a combine can carry and we will have to develop a conveyance system that leads to a source that is outside of the combine.”