Potato Harvester Trailers/Farming Simulator 17
A Potato Harvester Trailer is a type of Implement in Farming Simulator 17. This tool collects Potatoes from the field, like a Harvesting Header does for other crops. Unlike other crops, before the Harvester Trailer can collect the Potatoes they must first be processed by a Potato Haulm Topper.
Farming Simulator 17 offers only one model of Potato Harvester Trailer - the Grimme SE 260. This model can be towed by most vehicles, but it is designed to be attached to the back of a Tractor, while a Grimme KS 75-4 Potato Haulm Topper is attached to the front and prepares the crop for collection. Together, the two tools perform both potato harvesting tasks simultaneously. Nevertheless, you can use each tool separately for the same end result.
Potato Harvester Trailers are in direct competition with Potato Combine Harvesters - self-propelled machines that can cut the haulms and collect the potatoes in a single go. However, such machines are incredibly expensive compared to Potato Harvester Trailers.
List of Potato Harvester Trailers
Farming Simulator 17 offers only one model of Potato Harvester Trailer. It can be found in the "Potato Harvesting" category at the store.
| Name | Price | Maint. Cost per Day |
Working Width (m) |
Max. Work Speed (km/h) |
Power Consumption (hp) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grimme SE 260 | 112,000 | 190 | 1.6 | 10 | 68 |
Harvesting Potatoes
- Main article: Potato (Farming Simulator 17)
A Potato Harvester Trailer is designed to harvest Potatoes from the field. Unlike most other crops, the process of harvesting Potatoes is a two-step process, preparing the field and then collecting the potatoes. Furthermore, the Potato Harvester Trailer itself is operated a little differently than a normal Harvester.
Haulm Topping
- Main article: Potato Haulm Toppers (Farming Simulator 17)
Before any Potatoes can be harvested, their leafy green tops - the 'haulms' - must first be cut off. You can do this with a very expensive Potato Combine Harvester (which will also immediately harvest the potatoes themselves), or use a Potato Haulm Topper to do the cutting separately. A Potato Harvester Trailer will simply not interact with any potatoes until their haulms have been removed.
Note that you can attach both a Potato Harvester Trailer and a Potato Haulm Topper to the same Tractor, and do the entire work in a single pass. This speeds up the harvest significantly, compared to making a separate pass with each machine.
Operating the Harvester Trailer
The Potato Harvester Trailer itself is not a self-propelled machine like most other Harvesters. Instead it must be towed behind a vehicle that can provide it with power, most likely a Tractor. When active, the Harvester Trailer will collect any haulmed potatoes its head touches.
As it harvests, the Potato Harvester Trailer will collect the potatoes into a holding tank inside the machine, just like a normal Harvester. The machine will stop collecting potatoes once the tank is full. To make room, the Harvester Trailer must extend its offloading pipe, and transfer the potatoes into another container (a Tipper, Loading Wagon, etc.) - or dump them straight on the ground in a Pile.
As with most other harvesters, the most efficient way to unload a Harvester Trailer is to have a secondary vehicle (typically a Truck or Tractor) pull such a container alongside the trailer.
Comparison with Potato Combine Harvesters
Potato Haulm Toppers and Potato Harvester Trailers are separate tools, each performing only one half of the potato harvest. When mounted together on the same Tractor, they can perform the job in a single pass.
This puts them in direct competition with another type of tool - a Potato Combine Harvester - which can perform both actions simultaneously, harvesting potatoes in a single pass with just one machine.
Each of these two different setups has its own advantages and disadvantages:
- A Topper/Trailer setup is much cheaper. The combined price of the models available in the base game is $124,000, not including the price of a Tractor strong enough to use them both at the same time (assuming you don't already own one). Compare this to the $429,000 price of a Combine Harvester.
- A Topper/Trailer has much lower maintenance. Both tools together cost only $200 per day, compared to $1,290 for a Combine Harvester. This doesn't include the maintenance of the tractor, but then a tractor can be used for many other jobs while waiting for the next Potato harvest. A Combine Harvester can waste a whole lot of money if it just sits around waiting for you to need its use again.
- A Topper/Trailer is easier to transport. These tools must be attached to a Tractor, and most tractors have a good maximum speed. Compare this to the only available Combine Harvester model, whose maximum speed is only 25 km/h. If your Potato fields are located far away from one another, this factor can easily become very important.
- A Combine Harvester has a much wider collection head. The potato-collection head of the Grimme SE 260 trailer is very narrow, at only 1.6 meters. The head of a Combine Harvester is more than twice as wide - completing the same amount of work much faster.
- A Combine Harvester has greater capacity. It can collect twice as many potatoes as a Topper/Trailer before it needs to be emptied. This can make the harvest go quite a bit quicker.
- A Combine Harvester is much easier to control. It is a single solid machine, with a single header at the front that does both jobs simultaneously. This makes it a lot easier to put the header exactly where you need it. A Topper/Trailer, on the other hand, has one of its headers at the back, behind and to the right of the tractor - making it much harder to put that header in the right place.
Overall, the Maintenance Cost difference is probably the most important factor in the early game, when money is short and you do not yet have many Potato fields to process. This prevents you from needlessly spending massive amounts of money for a Combine Harvester to just sit and wait for the crops to ripen. In the late game, once you can afford the Combine Harvester, it will make the harvest go much faster.