GSI sales director encourages grain system owners to not be underinsured

After multiple tornadoes, straight-line winds and derechos caused widespread grain bin and storage system damage in June throughout the eastern regions of Montana, the southern regions of North Dakota and western Minnesota. Now, many farmers are considering what they will do for grain storage this fall.

Greg Tramme, GSI sales director, said most farmers who have severe damage to their grain storage systems should call their insurance agent as soon after the storm as possible.

“Usually, the first call is going to be to their insurance agent’s (office) to try to get that sorted out,” Tramme said. “Start with your insurance company and get somebody out to your farm as quickly as you can because depending on the timing of the storm in relation to harvest, you could very much be up against a time crunch of trying to get storage repaired and replaced.”

While that’s a good call, many farmers become discouraged when they find out how outdated their insurance may be.

“Usually, farmers want to get the bin rebuilt. And if you’re underinsured, that problem doesn’t ever go away. You’ve still got to have the coverage at some point,” he said.

Farmers may find out there is going to be “quite a gap” between what it will cost to replace it in 2025 versus what the grain system cost when they first insured it. Many farmers find out the hard way that they may only have 50-75 percent of the replacement costs covered under insurance, according to Tramme.

“We have seen this a lot where farmers have ended up underinsured on things like grain bins,” he said. “If you had a grain bin that you bought 10 years ago and you insured it for the replacement value then and haven’t updated it to what it costs now, you’re going to have a very big surprise if you have a weather event now and have to replace it.”

Tramme pointed out that costs have gone up significantly over the last five years with steel prices and inflation, and it is important for farmers to update their insurance with current replacement costs.

No one knows when a weather event can turn into a damaging event, so it’s important to make sure all grain storage insurance policies are updated.

“Even if you’re one of the lucky ones that didn’t get damaged in one of these storms, it’s still very important to reach out to your insurance company and get a reassessment done on your grain storage system, the bins, the dryers and everything else,” Tramme said.

After calling insurance agents, the next call for farmers will be to their grain bin or grain storage system dealer so that they can come out and assess the situation.

“Usually, your grain bin dealer will be working with the insurance company to help determine if this a situation where we can repair the bin or it’s a situation where it’s a total loss and we have to look at replacement,” he said.

Fortunately, manufacturers and dealers have been able to quickly respond to the recent storm damage by providing replacement parts and new equipment.

“The good thing now is if we talk about the current state of the industry, lead times are still relatively short and most manufacturers have production capacity available,” Tramme said.

Tramme said at GSI, because of the storms that went through North Dakota, they have already received orders for quite a few of the parts needed to replace bins.

“With a lot of the damage that we have seen so far, farmers need to replace some of the roofs and some of the sidewalls. And we’ve also gotten orders for complete bins that we will replace ahead of harvest this year,” he said. “Luckily, for some of these people, the storm happened early enough that dealers had the capacity needed in order to get the builds done, and the manufacturers had the capacity to get product out there, so a lot of the people are going to be able to get some of those repairs done ahead of harvest.”

Even if a farmer needs a whole grain bin, Tramme said GSI can still deliver bins in the month of August.

Grain bins are built to the standard building code for a grain bin that is local for that area. Usually, codes require that grain bins should be able to handle winds up to 105 miles per hour.

“But that’s for a very short amount of time. What we see in a lot of these wind events is that we may not have 105 mile per hour wind, but we might have a 90 mile per hour wind for a very long duration of time and that can create just as much damage as a higher speed of wind,” he said.

So far, the crops are looking great in the Upper Midwest, so it is important to get grain storage systems resolved ahead of harvest, Tramme said.

“It looks like we’ve got a good crop out there,” Tramme said. “Storage is going to be very, very valuable this fall. And for a lot of people, they want to be able to try and get that storage replaced so that they’re not short on storage.”

According to Tramme, it is not just grain bins that need replacing. There is other equipment, such as dryers or grain handling equipment, such as augers, which were also mangled or damaged and needing to be replaced.

“It was a pretty nasty storm that went through and did that damage,” he said. “In some cases, when a bin goes down, it may do some collateral damage to other grain handling equipment.”

Unless the bin is completely knocked over, knocked in or knocked off the foundation, Tramme said many times the damage that you see can be repaired.

“We have definitely seen a lot of orders for repair parts coming in from that part of the world where they were fortunate to not have total losses. They will be able to get the bins repaired here ahead of harvest, hopefully,” he said. “With parts, usually we can have those out to farmers in days to weeks. A lot of times, we have them in our inventory already.”

If the tornadoes that took out many grain bins would have happened a year or two years ago, farmers would have been in a much worse situation because the industry was still gearing up supply from the pandemic.

“The grain handling industry was just much busier, and lead times were longer. With the general state of the ag economy, the build-out was slower, but the industry is back with supply on hand, for the most part, and build times are still reasonable,” he said.

According to Tramme, grain bins are typically only vulnerable to wind when they’re empty. Of course, there were a few bins that still had grain in them and ended up being damaged anyway.

“Usually, if there is still corn or other grain in them, they’ll survive the storms pretty well,” he said.

If grain dryers were damaged due to excessive wind, and farmers need to buy a new dryer for harvest, Tramme recommends that buying a GSI dryer with the GSI Connect system that remotely monitors the grain drying is a relatively low-cost investment that will pay for itself. For one thing, it brings peace of mind to know you can monitor your grain dryer when you are away.

“If you are buying a new dryer, GSI Connect is a must have. It’s a very low-cost investment on the front end. But the nice thing about it is that even if you already have a GSI dryer, as long as it has a vision control system on it, you can put this on any dryer, (which goes back to about 2005),” Tramme said. “If you’ve bought a dryer in the last 20 years, this can be installed on ones you already have, as well as a new dryer, so it is not just for a new dryer purchase.”

Tramme pointed out they launched the product last year, but they have something new for GSI Connect in 2025 – a new interface with more information. Farmers can now share what their grain dryer is doing in real time with their dealer.

“For the 2025 harvest, we have a completely new and refreshed interface that really provides the customer with a lot more information at their fingertips. And then the other nice thing that the system does is it allows the customer to give remote access to the dryer to their dealer, as well,” he said. “A lot of times it can be hard for the farmer to describe what’s going on, but if the dealer can log on and they can see what the dryer is doing, it is much easier for them to be able to troubleshoot and diagnose when they can actually look at what the dryer is doing.”

The GSI Connect system allows farmers to basically remotely connect to the monitor and control their dryers while the dryer is running.

“It’s a very easy-to-install self-contained system from GSI that gets installed into our dryer,” Tramme said.

Farmers can remotely control nearly every function of the dryer as if they were standing right in front of their bin at the farm. They receive real-time information about what is going on as the dryer dries their grain and can check the moisture and temperature levels and adjust settings remotely. There is more efficiency at harvest when you can more precisely monitor your grain in the dryer.

Farmers have reported they like the system and that it works well for them, helping them efficiently dry their crops remotely from their cellphone or tablet. The GSI Connect system works off the Cloud, and it is a simple process to connect.

“The system comes with all of the necessary cellular communication setups to where it is a very simple process to get it connected to the Cloud,” he said. “Farmers can create their account, they can log on, and then anytime that dryer is running, they can monitor what it’s doing. They can make changes to the drying, they can set up alerts, notifications, and everything that allows them to continue to monitor that drying process while they don't have to physically be at their grain dryer.”

In addition, since it works off the Cloud, farmers can not only check on what the dryer is doing currently, but they can look back at the history of what the dryer was doing last week or last month.

“If there’s something going on where something in the dryer has shifted or anything like that, they’ll actually be able to see the history of what it was doing as well as what it’s doing right now, and they can share that with their dealer, as well,” Tramme said.

For the rest of the month, local dealers are sending out crews in their areas to work on and repair some of the grain storage system damages or replace some of the systems.

“A lot of them have been deployed really quickly to do some of the demolition work because once insurance is there, then you have got to get it cleaned up,” he said.

There may be hazards that need to be mitigated and there can’t be bins or parts of bins lying out on the ground in case another storm comes through.

“A lot of dealers reacted really quickly to get these demolitions done and now they’re working to order new equipment, prepare concrete, and do whatever is needed so that they can get prepared to try to get these bins rebuilt ahead of the harvest time,” Tramme said.

One main point Tramme wants to encourage farmers to remember is not only to make sure their insurance is updated, but to be sure and discuss options for storage with their grain bin dealer.

“Their dealers are going to figure out when they can get equipment, what they can get, if they have to do concrete work, or if they’re going to have to do electrical work. And there is a variety of other things that they’re going to have to coordinate from a construction standpoint,” he said. “So, it is important to go through your dealer with any repairs.”