American Crystal Sugar Company
Hillsboro Processing Plant
Hillsboro, ND
GPS: 47.434612, -97.062921
That phrase used derisively to describe a PhD surely fits a sugar beet pile. A piler is able to make piles of sugar beets over 200 feet wide at the base, and over 20 feet high, containing between 70,000 and 90,000 tons of beets. There is no angle from which I could take a picture that would capture the size of these beet piles. Maybe this diagram along with some pictures will do the job.
Compare the pile to the piler and the trucks
Looks like gravel but every particle is a sugar beet the size of a coconut
The pile grows 24/7 and the top of the boom is 30 ft above the ground
When we started, I could see the factory buildings under the stacks
Sugar beets are harvested quickly and stored up to 180 days to await processing. It is during this storage period, that sugar is lost through normal respiration. Respiration causes about 70% of sugar loss during storage, and decay accounts for 10%. The remaining 20% is the result of fermentation when the oxygen content is low because of poor ventilation, freezing and thawing cycles, and root desiccation. Storage losses caused by respiration have been controlled through the utilization of forced-air ventilation and subsequent freezing of storage piles after mid-December.
“forced-air ventilation and subsequent freezing” brings up an important part of the beet pile story and our work, but first an important side story. (I love these little adventures off into the encyclopedia to learn something new)
The Skidsteer
Darting around the Piler, like pilot fish around a shark, is a Skidsteer. The Piler could not function properly without the Skidsteer.
This Cat Skidsteer is the same as the one at our piler
Time for the information from Wikipedia
A skid loader, skid-steer loader, or skidsteer, is a small, rigid-frame, engine-powered machine with lift arms used to attach a wide variety of labor-saving tools or attachments. Many manufacturers have their own versions of this vehicle, including Kubota, Bobcat, Terex, Case, Caterpillar, Gehl Company, Hyundai, JCB, JLG, John Deere, Komatsu, LiuGong, New Holland, Volvo, and Wacker Neuson.
Skid-steer loaders are typically four-wheel vehicles with the wheels mechanically locked in synchronization on each side so the left-side drive wheels can be driven independently of the right-side drive wheels. The wheels typically have no separate steering mechanism and hold a fixed straight alignment on the body of the machine. By operating the left and right wheel pairs at different speeds, the machine turns by skidding or dragging its fixed-orientation wheels across the ground. The extremely rigid frame and strong wheel bearings prevent the torsional forces caused by this dragging motion from damaging the machine. The skid-steering vehicle is turned by generating differential velocity at the opposite sides of the vehicle. Skid-steer loaders are capable of zero-radius, "pirouette" turning, which makes them extremely maneuverable and valuable for applications that require a compact, agile loader. Skid-steer loaders are sometimes equipped with tracks in lieu of the wheels and such a vehicle is known as a multi-terrain loader.
Unlike in a conventional front loader, the lift arms in these machines are alongside the driver with the pivot points behind the driver's shoulders. Modern skid loaders have fully enclosed cabs and other features to protect the operator. Like other front loaders, it can push material from one location to another, carry material in its bucket or load material into a truck or trailer.Wikipedia
“it can push material from one location to another, carry material in its bucket or load material into a truck or trailer” and that is what it does around a piler 24 hours a day.
The Skidsteer cleans up trash around the piler. From beets spilled from the hopper because the driver dumped too fast to debris from the tare dirt dump, there is an endless stream of trash accumulating around the piler. Especially behind the piler and ahead of the pile. If this debris is not removed frequently, it will be buried in the pile.
Beets spilled by the trucks as they dump are run over by the trucks that follow, quickly covering the concrete pad with a covering of mashed beets that becomes slippery and dangerous for both trucks and workers.
The most important job for the skidsteer, and the job requiring the most skill, is laying down the culvert piping for the forced-air ventilation system.
The Skidsteer uses this gadget to pick up pipe
The Skidsteer lays the pipe sections end to end in from each side of the pile but not completely across
The Skidsteer piles beets in front of the pipe to prevent rolling or sliding
As the pile advances, it fills in behind the culvert and buries it
The ends of the culvert pipe are connected to ventilating fans
As soon as the weather turns cold, the ventilating fans are turned on to chill then freeze the core of the pile.
Posts about the Sugar Beet Harvest
FIRST DAY IN NORTH DAKOTA
Hillsboro, North Dakota, we have arrived
GETTING READY FOR WORK
Some paperwork to get us started
ON THE JOB TRAINING
A trip to the Hillsboro factory for some OJT
TEN DAYS OF WORK
Notes and pictures on our ten days of work
THE CAMPAIGN
A quick summary of the annual campaign of sugar beet processing
THE SUGAR BEET
Bigger than a coconut, smaller than a football. Here is the story on the sugar beet
THE PILER
I was very impressed with the big machine we worked on. I thought you might like to learn more.
THE SUGAR BEET PILE
How big is a pile that contains 90,000 tons? Here are some pictures and figures
DOWN AND DIRTY: GIVING BACK THE TARE DIRT
Harvesting root crops produces dirt. How to handle and dispose of it is an interesting side story
A LOOK AT THE SUGAR INDUSTRY
A $20 billion industry with 142,000 jobs in 22 states. Take a look at the Sugar Beet Industry
AMERICAN CRYSTAL SUGAR COMPANY
Get a closer look at the company providing this workamping opportunity.
EXPRESS EMPLOYMENT PROFESSIONALS
If you are a workamper interested in short term hard work for big bucks, here’s the link
American Crystal Sugar Company
Hillsboro Processing Plant
Hillsboro, ND
GPS: 47.434612, -97.062921

Like an Octopus with tentacles everywhere, this behemoth scared the snap out of me when I first saw it. Pictures and videos did not do it justice. I had no idea what I was going to do to it or what it was going to do to me.
The dictionary says a Piler is “one that piles or heaps up; especially: one whose work is piling materials or products for storage, transportation, or processing”. Our Piler is not a person, but a huge piece of machinery used to receive truckload quantities of sugar beets delivered from the growers and pile these beets for future processing. Kringstad Ironworks manufactures these for American Crystal Sugar Company.

At the Hillsboro receiving station where we worked, there are six pilers.

In just a few minutes, a piler can digest a large truckload of beets. At a rate of about 250 tons an hour, this big guy can pile 5,000 to 6,000 tons of beets per day.

Part of the piler is a large cleaning device to carry out a secondary cleaning of the beets since the harvester has not cleaned all foreign materials from the beets in the field. The cleaning screen, known as the grab roll screen, is comprised of a slanting row of scrolled and smooth rolls. These rolls, perpendicular to the travel direction of the beets, turn at different speeds; scrolled rolls turn faster than smooth rolls. Beets are bounced and rolled through a water spray, being scrubbed clean as a result. Dirt and other foreign materials (known as Tare Dirt) fall through the rolls, are collected in a hopper, and returned to the delivery truck as the last step in the process.

The piler includes a mechanism for extracting buckets of samples from the stream of sugar beets and dropping them down a chute where we bagged them.

These samples are transported to the company laboratory in Grand Forks, ND and analyzed for sugar content. The result of this analysis becomes the basis for payment to the farmer.

Despite its size, this thing is actually a movable electric appliance. A power cord approximately 200 feet long supplies electricity at 440 volts. The operator moves the piler back as the pile builds up – typically a couple feet once every hour or so.

The crew for a piler is six (or seven) people:
** Operator
** Ass't Operator (operates the boom)
** Four Helpers (two on each side -- process trucks, collect samples, clean up)
** Skidsteer operator (usually shared by more than one piler)
This short (1:57) video was produced by Kringstad Ironworks, the piler manufacturer. It shows the piler throwing the beets to the pile, the beet truck dumping the beets into the piler, the cleaning process, the piler being moved, and finally the tare dirt being returned to the truck.
KII Sugar Beet Piler In Action
Now you know a little bit about Sugar Beet Pilers.
Posts about the Sugar Beet Harvest
FIRST DAY IN NORTH DAKOTA
Hillsboro, North Dakota, we have arrived
GETTING READY FOR WORK
Some paperwork to get us started
ON THE JOB TRAINING
A trip to the Hillsboro factory for some OJT
TEN DAYS OF WORK
Notes and pictures on our ten days of work
THE CAMPAIGN
A quick summary of the annual campaign of sugar beet processing
THE SUGAR BEET
Bigger than a coconut, smaller than a football. Here is the story on the sugar beet
THE PILER
I was very impressed with the big machine we worked on. I thought you might like to learn more.
THE SUGAR BEET PILE
How big is a pile that contains 90,000 tons? Here are some pictures and figures
DOWN AND DIRTY: GIVING BACK THE TARE DIRT
Harvesting root crops produces dirt. How to handle and dispose of it is an interesting side story
A LOOK AT THE SUGAR INDUSTRY
A $20 billion industry with 142,000 jobs in 22 states. Take a look at the Sugar Beet Industry
AMERICAN CRYSTAL SUGAR COMPANY
Get a closer look at the company providing this workamping opportunity.
EXPRESS EMPLOYMENT PROFESSIONALS
If you are a workamper interested in short term hard work for big bucks, here’s the link
American Crystal Sugar Company
Hillsboro Processing Plant
Hillsboro, ND
GPS: 47.434612, -97.062921
Profile of the Sugar Beet (Beta vulgaris)
Size between a coconut and a football
The sugar beet has a conical, white, fleshy root (a taproot) with a flat crown. The plant consists of a root and a rosette of leaves. Sugar is formed by photosynthesis in the leaves and is then stored in the root.
A sugar beet weighs between two and five pounds. The foliage has a rich, brilliant green color and grows to a height of about 14 inches. The leaves are numerous and broad and grow in a tuft from the beet crown, which is usually level with or just above the ground surface.
The beet root contains 75% water, about 20% sugar, and 5% pulp. The exact sugar contents can vary between 12% and 21% sugar, depending on the cultivar and growing conditions.
Sugar is the primary value of sugar beet as a cash crop. The pulp, insoluble in water and mainly composed of cellulose, hemicellulose, lignin, and pectin, is used in animal feed. Sugar beet by-products, such as pulp and molasses, add another 10% to the value of the harvest.
Sugar beets grow exclusively in the temperate zone, in contrast to sugar cane, which grows exclusively in the tropical and subtropical zones. The sugar beet is a root crop that flourishes in temperate climates where the growing season is about five months long. Farms are found in California, Colorado, Idaho, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oregon, Washington, and Wyoming.
Beets are planted in late March/early April and harvested in late September and October. When fully grown, a sugar beet is about a foot long, weighs two to five pounds, and is about 18% sucrose. They are processed at 23 factories located near the fields because beets are a perishable vegetable. Factories generally operate around the clock, seven days a week, from October through April. Beet sugar represents about 54% of domestically-produced sugar. There is no difference between beet and cane sugar.
Some beet sugar brands you might recognize are Crystal Sugar, Holly Sugar, Western Sugar, Big Chief Sugar, Pioneer Sugar, White Satin, and Spreckels Sugar.
In addition to processing pure beet sugar, sugar factories also produce a by-product known as dried beet pulp. The pulp is the dried fiber residue left after most of the sugar has been extracted from the sliced beets. Dried beet pulp can be produced and shipped in many forms: plain dried, molasses dried (which contains approximately 25 percent molasses) and pelleted.
This excellent feed is valued by dairy farmers to stimulate the cow’s milk flow and is widely used to feed cattle and sheep destined for market. In recent years, substantial quantities of pelleted dried beet pulp have been exported to Japan and Europe to assist their development of feeding programs and, in turn, help our country's balance of payments.
Another important by-product is beet molasses, produced in quantities ranging from 4 % to 5% by weight of the beet and containing about 50 percent sugars. Beet molasses is used for the production of yeast, chemicals, and even pharmaceuticals, as well as the production of mixed cattle feeds. It is one of the best mediums for liquid cattle feed.
Thanks to several public industry sources for the information above
Posts about the Sugar Beet Harvest
FIRST DAY IN NORTH DAKOTA
Hillsboro, North Dakota, we have arrived
GETTING READY FOR WORK
Some paperwork to get us started
ON THE JOB TRAINING
A trip to the Hillsboro factory for some OJT
TEN DAYS OF WORK
Notes and pictures on our ten days of work
THE CAMPAIGN
A quick summary of the annual campaign of sugar beet processing
THE SUGAR BEET
Bigger than a coconut, smaller than a football. Here is the story on the sugar beet
THE PILER
I was very impressed with the big machine we worked on. I thought you might like to learn more.
THE SUGAR BEET PILE
How big is a pile that contains 90,000 tons? Here are some pictures and figures
DOWN AND DIRTY: GIVING BACK THE TARE DIRT
Harvesting root crops produces dirt. How to handle and dispose of it is an interesting side story
A LOOK AT THE SUGAR INDUSTRY
A $20 billion industry with 142,000 jobs in 22 states. Take a look at the Sugar Beet Industry
AMERICAN CRYSTAL SUGAR COMPANY
Get a closer look at the company providing this workamping opportunity.
EXPRESS EMPLOYMENT PROFESSIONALS
If you are a workamper interested in short term hard work for big bucks, here’s the link
American Crystal Sugar Company
Hillsboro Processing Plant
Hillsboro, ND
GPS: 47.434612, -97.062921
As I was doing the research for this story, I noticed the word “campaign” was used often. Thinking about that, the word makes sense because the process is an annual agricultural thing. It may begin in the summer, but for sure it begins by 01 Oct at the start of harvest. I suspect it ends the following spring when all the beets are processed and the processing yards are empty and ready to start again. So how does the campaign get named? If named for the year of harvest, it would be “the 2015 campaign”. If named for the year when the process is complete and all the product is sold or for sale, it would be “the 2016 campaign”. I don’t know the answer?
My understanding is this. American Crystal Sugar Company is an agricultural cooperative. Every year they contract with each of their members to grow and deliver a certain amount of sugar beets. I suspect the unit of measure is acres, since the tons of beets or pounds/tons of sugar is determined by Mother Nature and is unknown until the campaign is in the books.
During the summer, company Agriculturalists visit the fields to check on the growing crops, advise the farmers, and predict what the harvest will look like.
Pre–pile harvest begins in early September. Harvest deliveries are limited and controlled due to the warm weather and poor storage conditions. This limited harvest allows growers to open roadways through fields in preparation for the main harvest, which begins October 1.
Growers deliver their sugar beets to a designated receiving station located throughout the growing area. Sugar beets are harvested with two primary pieces of equipment. The Defoliator removes the green leaves and slices a slab from the top of the sugar beet root. This removed slab is the growing point of the sugar beet and contains high levels of impurities, which impede the factories ability to extract the sugar from the remainder of the harvested root. The sugar beet root is then harvested with a Pinch Wheel Harvester, which pinches the root and lifts it from the soil. The sugar beet harvester also separates some soil and conveys the sugar beet into a truck to be transported to a receiving station.
A Sugar Beet Defoliator
A Pinch Wheel Harvester
Trucks hauling sugar beets to receiving stations are weighed and off loaded on sugar beet pilers. These machines also screen soil from the sugar beets and pile the sugar beets in large storage piles. Samples of sugar beets are taken upon delivery to be analyzed for sugar content, purity and tare.
Sample Bags Ready for Transport
Harvest is concluded in late October.
Throughout the winter, sugar beets are reloaded into rehaul trucks, which deliver the stored sugar beets to the factory for processing. Large front-end loaders load belly dump trailers which haul 27 tons per load. Piles are monitored for temperature during the storage term. Some piles are also passive ventilated or forced ventilated to enhance storage conditions and allow sugar beets to be stored for longer periods. Sugar beets can be stored in piles as long as mid-March when the slicing operations will be completed. Then, it is time to begin the process all over again.
A Belly Dump Trailer
Posts about the Sugar Beet Harvest
FIRST DAY IN NORTH DAKOTA
Hillsboro, North Dakota, we have arrived
GETTING READY FOR WORK
Some paperwork to get us started
ON THE JOB TRAINING
A trip to the Hillsboro factory for some OJT
TEN DAYS OF WORK
Notes and pictures on our ten days of work
THE CAMPAIGN
A quick summary of the annual campaign of sugar beet processing
THE SUGAR BEET
Bigger than a coconut, smaller than a football. Here is the story on the sugar beet
THE PILER
I was very impressed with the big machine we worked on. I thought you might like to learn more.
THE SUGAR BEET PILE
How big is a pile that contains 90,000 tons? Here are some pictures and figures
DOWN AND DIRTY: GIVING BACK THE TARE DIRT
Harvesting root crops produces dirt. How to handle and dispose of it is an interesting side story
A LOOK AT THE SUGAR INDUSTRY
A $20 billion industry with 142,000 jobs in 22 states. Take a look at the Sugar Beet Industry
AMERICAN CRYSTAL SUGAR COMPANY
Get a closer look at the company providing this workamping opportunity.
EXPRESS EMPLOYMENT PROFESSIONALS
If you are a workamper interested in short term hard work for big bucks, here’s the link
