forage harvest with overloader

[Linrox]

This might be a dumb question,
Why can't forage harvesters use overloaders?

[DirectCedar]

This might be a dumb question,
Why can't forage harvesters use overloaders?

This is also likely a dumb question...

What on earth do people mean in the context of this game and/or the world at large, when they use the term "overloader"?

It seems sort of randomly and not that consistently associated in game terms with a lot of functions sort of related to trailers and bulk goods transfer.

In forty years of real-life farming I'd never heard this term used before I picked up this game a few years ago. Granted I likely live in a bubble. Can someone please offer me a concise definition? It would obviously be appreciated

[FarmDemAcres]

This is a question that somehow fascinates me. No one in North America would use the term "overload" when it looks like the truck is "unloading" and yet when reported as a "bug" the Giants response was "won't fix". Maybe this is a term used elsewhere in the world? Interesting one of Nick Welker's first comments when seeing FS19 Welker Farm map was "Shouldn't that be unload?" Hopefully Giants programmers are hard at work on important game updates with no time to repair grammatical "errors". Back to earning dollars/euros.

[juf.de]

Regarding the first question: The pipe, which is used to transfer can't handle the chaff, as it is to wet and therefor probably blockades the pipe after a short while, something a farmer definitly doesn't like, when he's on the field.
Second question: probably comes from the german term "überladen" (eng. over-loading),which means putting something from one storage device into another similar one

[cwattyeso]

Depends on the Overloader or Auger Wagon being used. If it's a default base game one then it won't work because Giants screwed up the filltypes they can carry and actually overload or unload depending on your preferred term. Many of the modded ones you can download fix this issue because many of the author's set the filltype category to 'Bulk' in the xml, which pretty much means you can put everything and anything into the Overloader/Auger Wagon and then unload it again at your chosen location or destination.

On the rare occasions where I do forage harvesting in game, that is my goto setup, forage harvester, towing it's own auger wagon to unload into as it goes, then I can drive a trailer next to the auger to empty that when it gets full. Means I very rarely have to stop the forage harvester, and usually only need to hire a worker for that brief moment when I'm emptying the auger into a trailer so the forage harvester can keep going whilst I drive the truck or tractor.

[FarmDemAcres]

AHH, thank you for the explanation. Of course we interpret "overload" a trailer to load it excessively, and "unload" to remove it's contents. I have grown accustomed to its use in game.

"All your base are belong to us."

[DirectCedar]

Depends on the Overloader or Auger Wagon being used. If it's a default base game one then it won't work because Giants screwed up the filltypes they can carry and actually overload or unload depending on your preferred term. Many of the modded ones you can download fix this issue because many of the author's set the filltype category to 'Bulk' in the xml, which pretty much means you can put everything and anything into the Overloader/Auger Wagon and then unload it again at your chosen location or destination.

On the rare occasions where I do forage harvesting in game, that is my goto setup, forage harvester, towing it's own auger wagon to unload into as it goes, then I can drive a trailer next to the auger to empty that when it gets full. Means I very rarely have to stop the forage harvester, and usually only need to hire a worker for that brief moment when I'm emptying the auger into a trailer so the forage harvester can keep going whilst I drive the truck or tractor.

This is fine of course and all the power to you to play however you like.

I'm sure you recognize though that in real life, green chopped silage (or "chaff" as it's called in the game, which is another interesting bit of nomenclature, as in most or maybe all of North America "chaff" means something not at all the green chop coming out of a forage harvester) would be a complete disaster trying to load out of an auger wagon (which itself would be called a "grain cart" in most of North America ) because the fluffy damp material would immediately bridge at the auger and would not come out. So I would argue that Giants didn't "screw up" the filltypes by not permitting green chop ("chaff") to flow out of a grain cart ("auger wagon"). In real life this wouldn't work either.

Of course though it is a (mostly) free world and you can set up mods to haul whatever you want to make the game fun for you. I'm just pointing this out because I'm pedantic and I farm and operate all this stuff in real life too

Thanks also for the clarification above re: "overload". Is this term used in British English, or is it a literal translation from German? I don't recall it from when I lived in the UK a looooong time ago, but it might be regional.

As was mentioned above, in NA when you say "overload" it generally means exceeding the legal and/or design load of a vehicle.

[Deadeye]

Depends on the Overloader or Auger Wagon being used. If it's a default base game one then it won't work because Giants screwed up the filltypes they can carry and actually overload or unload depending on your preferred term.

Giants actually didn't screw up the fill types. Chaff/Silage, as mentioned above, would not handle well in an auger. It is intentional that chaff is not accepted in auger wagons. The sugar cane carts I believe do accept chaff however. That said I have never seen anyone chop with a cart like that. Not to say it isn't done though.

[snyperal]

Overload is probably a miss - translation and should be "unload" or "load"

[asyvan]

Regarding words in different geos.
I think chaser bin is more used in Europe and grain cart more in the US.

[chedly_farms]

Most everyone's questions on how or why could be answered by watching farming videos on youtube. "Dump Wagons" can and are used in certain applications to harvest "chop" or forage here in the states. If you watch Farming, Fixing, and Fabricating's YouTube channel, he uses dump wagons when the ground is too muddy to use a semi truck. Also BigtractorPower YouTube posted a video last week of a farm/Farms in mid Wisconsin using dump wagons I believe. And I do believe I've seen Krone have a built in dump wagon on a model.

However, to go back to the original question of why not comes down to speed. When chopping "whole crop" meaning the whole plant, your wagon would be filling every 2-4 minutes. And with stopping to unload all the time, it would take forever to harvest a field. So to make up for the constant filling of wagons, farms will have a fleet of tractors/trucks with trailers going to and from the field to silo site.

[Mellek]

Where I live "overloaders" are sometime used in the wet seasons to get the maize off the field, the tractors would easily get stuck in the mud so they put the overloader and forage harvester on tracs and leave the trucks and/or tractor on the road, it also prevents getting the roads covered in mud.

An example with a Terra Gator used as overloader in muddy conditions :


And a company that has custom built equipment, combining the harvester and overloader wagon :

[cwattyeso]

I think Overloader is a term that hasn't translated well from Giants native German to the English speaking parts of the world. I guess in Giants eyes because these vehicles are designed to act as in intermediary between harvester and trailer, they receive the load from a Harvester and then 'Overload' it into another traditional trailer type, and they probably chose that Overload name because of how Augers or Grain Bins as some people are now calling them, unload over the trailer.

Either way whatever terminology you want to use to describe this type of equipment, they are still very useful in the game. Like I said running one attached directly to the Forage Harvester makes it much easier when playing solo to manage and saves you having to drive constantly beside an AI worker with a regular trailer.

[fenixguy]

As answered above, forage harvesters can't use auger wagons as they are designed for grain. Forage harvesters put out chopped, wet plant material that wouldn't work with an auger wagon.

For the purposes of a single-player game, the most realistic way to have your AI drive the forage harvester while you haul from the field to the clamp is to hook the sugarcane trailers to the harvester. These high-tip trailers are commonly used with trailed or self-propelled harvesters IRL. The most efficient way I've found to do it in game is like this:

-Make sure you have your tractor/truck and forage harvester next to each other in your 'tab between vehicles' queue. (Do this by resetting or customize something at the shop. This puts the vehicle last in the queue).
-Start your forage harvester going with the AI and the high-tip trailer attached. You might have to make a couple passes around the field edge so the AI plays well.
-Get your tractor/truck and silage trailer ready. It's best to have at least a 25% larger capacity hauling trailer than the one the AI is pulling. When the AI has filled the high tip trailer you have two options. 1. If the high tip trailer's dump side is facing away from the crop, tab to the forage harvester and dismiss worker. Tab to the hauling vehicle and drive next to the trailer. Tab to the harvester and dump. Hire the worker. 2. If the high tip trailer's dump side is facing toward the crop, drive your hauling vehicle next to the harvester and it will continue down the field loading into the trailer you are pulling. Once it reaches the end, let the worker turn the harvester and get going on the next pass. Then do what I said in option one.
-Once your trailer is filled or close enough, empty into the clamp and repeat.

This sounds complicated when spelled out in black and white but it's actually quite fun and efficient (for single player with no Course Play) once you get the hang of it. Also, I've not done this since FS17 so I'm assuming it would still work the same with the updated AI.

[Mellek]

I think Overloader is a term that hasn't translated well from Giants native German to the English speaking parts of the world. I guess in Giants eyes because these vehicles are designed to act as in intermediary between harvester and trailer, they receive the load from a Harvester and then 'Overload' it into another traditional trailer type, and they probably chose that Overload name because of how Augers or Grain Bins as some people are now calling them, unload over the trailer.

In German they are called Überladewagen (or ULW's), it translates perfectly into overlaadwagen which is used in the Netherlands and Belgium.
A direct translation to English would indeed be overloadwagon, being Dutch and living near the German border I can understand that perfectly, but maybe naming them transfer trailers would have been a better choice.
If you search for ULW's from the company HAWE, I believe the SUW 4000 and SUW 5000 models that are also capable of transferring silage.