1. Field of the Invention
A system and method for moving agricultural material out of a container and, more specifically to a system and method for moving a floor of a container to transport agricultural material from the container.
2. Description of the Prior Art
It is known in the prior art to provide a container on an agricultural combine. A combine is an agricultural harvester/thresher, which removes agricultural material, such as chaff, stover, stover, switchgrass seed, grass seed, grass stems, wildflower seeds, leaves, flowers, other seeds, as well as other organic matter, from a field. Typically, the combine separates grain from the chaff, distributes the chaff back onto the agricultural field, and deposits the grain into a container. When it is desired to move the grain from the container to another vehicle or to a stationary storage container, an auger or other type of grain transport system is utilized to transport the grain out of the container. As the combine and the other container are often moving during this transport, it is desirable to provide a substantial amount of room between the combine and the other container. The auger transports the grain beyond the lateral dimensions of the combine for delivery to another container.
Some prior art combines, such as that described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,358,141, which is incorporated herein by reference, include a first tank for storage of grain and a second tank for storage of chaff, such as stover, for later use. While an auger may be utilized to move grain from a container, a separate auger for the chaff container would be undesirably expensive, bulky, and heavy and would require an undesired amount of maintenance. It would, therefore, be desirable to provide a system for emptying a container of chaff, such as stover, which is of a low cost, lightweight design, and easy to maintain.
It is also known in the prior art to provide grain wagons and other agricultural material transport vehicles. It is known to provide such vehicles with downward or rearward facing “doors,” which may be opened to release the agricultural material from the container. While such downward or rearward facing doors work well for flowable materials such as grain, in circumstances which do not require the agricultural material to be transported a large lateral distance from the container, it would be desirable to provide a system for not only transporting agricultural materials, such as stover, from a combine container, but also to transport the stover laterally relative to the container to move the stover beyond the lateral dimensions of the combine and into another container positioned near the combine.
While, as noted above, an auger system may be utilized to transport grain in a sufficient horizontal direction to extend the grain flow beyond the lateral dimensions of the combine, providing such an auger system for the corn cob container would be unnecessarily heavy, expensive and difficult to maintain. It would, therefore, be desirable to provide a system and method for removing stover from a container which moved the stover beyond the lateral dimensions of the container and into another container positioned nearby. The difficulties encountered in the prior art discussed hereinabove are substantially eliminated by the present invention.