For a guy that self-identifies as “100% John Deere” Nebraska farmer Geoffrey Ruth might just go a bit color blind when it comes to one of farming’s newest automation technologies. That’s because he is pretty darn pumped up about the potential of OutRun, PTx Trimble’s driverless grain cart retrofit kit.
Ruth farms 3,300 acres of corn and soybeans in the silty and sandy riverbed soils of the Platte River Valley – and around 60% of his acres are under pivot.
His harvest crew, which consists of himself in the combine seat, his father in the semi hauler, and usually a retired truck driver in the grain cart, has put the automation tech through its paces as on-farm beta testers. What they’ve found: the technology helps him hit his harvest window and also frees his crew up to help many of his elderly neighbors that couldn’t get their crop off this fall.
When it comes to technology adoption, Ruth says his operation is probably “just slightly ahead of the curve”. He has already tried out spray drones for in-season fungicide on corn, and over the years he’s done a ton of data collection and field mapping.
“Everything that we do on the farm, we collect and analyze the data,” he adds.
But so far, the practicality and ease-of-use of driverless grain cart automation has stood tall across his acreage. In fact, Ruth is so all-in on the technology that he is keeping it snug tight to his farmer vest: today he is renting out space in his machine shop to the PTx Trimble product engineers working on getting the system red carpet ready for its full release.
RELATED: Planting A Flag - AGCO All-In On Mixed-Fleet Aftermarket Ag Tech
“We’re fairly flat so the technology works really well here,” Ruth says, noting one of his hired hands stayed in the tractor cab in case the system malfunctioned. “We’re usually pretty short on labor at harvest time, so we’re looking to purchase one outright and take that operator and throw them in a semi to haul grain.”
What Makes It Work For Him
Ruth likes being able to direct the grain cart from the combine, sending it off to a predetermined unload zone when it’s full or holding it in place and having it wait for his next command. The system is also smart, so it knows where it’s already cut corn and will use that area as a path instead of mowing over crops that haven’t been harvested yet. It’s similar to how a drone already knows the safe path home when the pilot hits return to home on the controller.
The system also allows him to set how full he wants to fill each cart, and it will autonomously sense grain levels and bump the cart forward or backwards to evenly fill it. He estimates that feature alone lets him fill his grain carts over 5% more than he was able to without it. Since Ruth always runs two grain carts per combine during corn harvest, that translates to a 10% bump in overall efficiency.
But what really stands out about the system, he says, is how easy it is to learn and how quickly he can get a new operator up and running.
“When we first got it on the farm two years ago, they handed me an iPad and gave me less than five minutes of training, and I was off and running with it,” he says. “If you know how to do anything on a smart phone you can use it.”
Ruth still has two teenage kids in school sports, so the system came in clutch this fall when he needed to knock off early and head over to the high school gym for his daughter’s volleyball game. While he cheered on his daughter, the guys were able to keep harvesting.
“Guys that don’t have the same access to labor that I have, I can see this being a huge benefit,” Ruth says. “And it just makes the job more attractive. These guys are retired, so they don’t want to put in 12-hour days seven days a week for two months (during harvest). This thing doesn’t care how long it runs, or if it missed lunch or didn’t get a bathroom break. And it doesn’t matter if the sun is shining or its pitch black outside, this thing will run.”
Other benefits of driverless grain cart technology, which is available (CNH Industrial also has a grain cart automation system called Raven Cart Automation) on John Deere 8R or 8000R tractors and select Fendt models in 2026, that Geoffrey likes include:
- Installation only took 6 hours on his tractor, and PTx Trimble techs have chipped away at installation times as they’ve obtained more experience with the system.
- Ruth says the perception system has proven adept at seeing everything in its 360-degrees of vision. It combines LiDAR, traditional radar, thermal, and standard RGB sensing to constantly scan its surroundings in real-time.
- OutRun’s Perception Vision System (a network of cameras, sensors and CPU processing units that see, think, and command the tractor) is being expanded to tillage tools, dry fertilizer spreaders, and other implements. The more year-round use a farmer can get, the quicker the return-on-investment, Ruth says.
- Integrations, like the API with John Deere’s Operations Center, makes pulling in field boundaries quick and easy, Ruth says.
PTx Trimble’s OutRun kit was recently awarded with a 2025 Davidson Prize at Commodity Classic 2025 in Denver, Colorado. The award recognizes breakthrough innovations in agricultural engineering that improve efficiency, sustainability and productivity.
You can learn more about PTx Trimble’s OutRun system at www.OutRunAg.com
Your Next Read: The Used Farm Equipment Market Is Thriving and Retrofit Tech Is Trending