Avery Weigh-Tronix scales.
Until now the terminal talked to Rice Lake indicators, which answer when the app asks for a weight. The Avery Weigh-Tronix GSE 465 we tested is different: it says nothing until someone presses PRINT. So the flow at the scale is the one you already know. Truck on the deck, press PRINT on the indicator, click Capture in the app. The gross weight lands in the box, and the tare is handled in the app.
Capturing spends the reading, so clicking Capture again without a fresh press gets a plain answer: “No weight from the scale. Press PRINT on the indicator, then capture again.”
One press, one load. The previous truck’s weight cannot land on the next one.
Setup has no settings page. The first time Capture is pressed with no scale configured, the terminal starts listening and asks for a PRINT. It recognizes the ticket, saves the port, and is live from then on without a restart. It never sends anything to the indicator, so sealed legal-for-trade settings stay untouched, and it can share the cable already running to your ticket printer.
The analyzer: one sample, one load.
The Dickey-John GAC 2500 also prints once per sample. Before this update a reading stayed available for ten minutes after it printed, which meant one moisture reading could be captured onto two different loads without anything on either ticket to show it. Now the reading is spent when it is captured, the same as the scale. Capture again without a new sample and the app tells you to run one.
If you run more than one sample on a wet load, there is a switch for that: Site Config → “Average all grain analyzer samples.” With it on, Capture averages every sample taken since the last capture instead of using only the newest. It is off unless you turn it on.
Test weight now gets its own readings box next to moisture. Enter several, it averages them; enter 0 to clear it.
Ticket numbers that count per customer.
Some elevators number loads per farmer rather than per site, so Johnson’s tickets run 12601, 12602, 12603 and the office can sort a season’s slips by hand. Site Config → “Ticket numbers count per customer” turns that on. Each customer gets a ticket prefix on their form and their loads count up from it. Customers without a prefix keep the site-wide numbering.
Two things to know. Use a three-digit prefix: a two-digit one can collide with the site’s own load numbers, and the customer form warns you if it would. And the yearly prefix change is the season reset, so re-key prefixes before the first truck rather than after.
Small things that add up at the scale.
- A new delivery can start on the last grain. Site Config → “New delivery starts on the last grain.” Forty corn loads in a row no longer means picking corn forty times.
- Close refuses a bad weight. A load with no gross weight, or a gross at or below the tare, cannot be closed. It used to go straight to the customer’s balance as a negative number.
- Split deliveries recalculate. Correct the tare or moisture on a load split between two owners and each owner’s share updates with it. The first-listed owner stays first, so the ticket number, contract, and field checks always key off the same name.
- Drying invoices foot. The volume on a drying invoice follows the site’s drying basis, so volume times rate equals the charge on every line.
Why this matters at small elevators.
When trucks are stacked up, nobody reads a settings page. Every refusal in the app has to say what to do next in words the person at the scale can act on: press PRINT, run a sample. And nothing here changes an existing site unless you flip a switch. The new switches are off by default; the scale and analyzer changes just make what was already there stricter about one reading landing on one load.
Have an indicator we have not tested? Email [email protected] with the make and model. Adding a scale is a small job now.
Related reading: the mistake you find in November.