Good morning Riley,
A very interesting question. People who read this thread are going to be learning so much!
OK, there are producer car loading businesses and some of them have scales to weigh the grain as it is being loaded into the rail cars. The elevators of course have scales as well. The railway company wants the cars to be loaded to a certain point, say 90 or 100 tonnes depending on the type of car it is. If you are underweight it is no big deal but if you are over - BIG DEAL!
They will stop the car, remove it from the train and they they have "individuals" that are hired to come and remove the surplus weight and these guys charge mega$ for the work. Basically you are screwed and at their mercy as the weighing takes place say in Edmonton and there is no way a farmer is going to drive his truck and pull and auger 5 hours to empty out 4 or 5 tonnes.
It is the responsibility of the farmer to get it right and Dad thankfully is pretty accurate at this. We know the approximate weight of the truck say within 1/2 tonne and dad has not often been wrong. He keeps notes of each truck going into each railcar and which compartment. For him it is a sort of challenge to see how close he can get and not be over. The railways I have to say have mostly been decent and the occasions that dad has been over he has just been warned.
For example, the three cars we loaded saved $2700. For 4 people that is good pay for 2 days work. Like I said, we have to load the trucks anyway if it goes to the elevator or producer car, the difference is having to move a tractor and auger to town to load the cars and emptying the truck into a railcar is a bit slower than unloading the truck into the elevator pit.
But some of the larger farmers do this during the winter rather than having to get an off-farm job instead.
Some farmers don't like the paperwork but dad says once you've filled out the forms a few times it's no problem. The Canadian Wheat Board people are also really nice and helpful with this too.
Now that the CWB can't force farmers to sell them their grain they have to compete for it like everyone else.
It is a strange and little known fact that if you producer wheat for bread or pasta making you can't sell it to whoever you want. The government, back in the 1940's I think it was, passed a law that you had to sell it to the CWB first. I always took exception to this as I figure if I am the guy who producers it and it is a legal commodity I should be able to sell it to whoever I choose within or outside of Canada. Up to this crop year that was not the case.
Stranger yet, this law only applied to farmers in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and the Peace River block of British Columbia - the farmers in the rest of Canada could sell to whoever they wanted all the time. And this was called fair!!
Now it is..........
If you want Google the CWB and single desk vs. open market. Its sort of boring if you're not a farmer but you can get more info there.
It is a very polarizing subject for farmers, some who want the open market and some who wanted the CWB to keep their monopoly..........
I favor the freedom to choose myself.
Cheers,
Garry
