Combine capacity

We ran 4500+ acres through our claas 780 for a few years. 250ish threshing hours per year. Running two machines now but still put about the same amount of hours on split between two of them.

X9 payment over 5 years would be close to 200,000/ year on principle alone if you were to buy it nothing down.

There is no real way to determine what capacity is needed other than enough to get the job done when it needs to be done. In 2009 I combined about a million dollars worth of crop with a 25 year old class 5 combine worth about 5k including the header. Not saying that I want to do it again but it got the job done. It also doesn't mean that I need to harvest 200 million dollars worth of crop a year to justify a million dollar combine. It is totally yield and area dependent. You obviously don't need near as much capacity to harvest 4500 acres of 25bpa crops in an area that has a 4 month long harvest window as the same acres of 150bpa crops and a 2 month window. This year I harvested about 1700 acres that averaged 140ish bpa in 150 separator hrs with a small class 8 combine. Harvest started with fall rye at the end of July and finished with corn 3 months later. Had lots of capacity as each different crop matured at a different time and just went from one to the next. Now 1700 acres of green stem straight cut canola and snow around the corner would be a different story and more capacity would be required.