Bin Fronts for Potato Storage

Excerpts from the report: The fall crop areas produce approximately 200 million hundredweights (cwt.) of potatoes annually. Almost all of this volume is stored before marketing. One of the primary concerns of the storage operator is providing easier methods of moving these large volumes of potatoes into storage as rapidly as possible during the harvest period and removing them from storage as easily as possible during the marketing period. "Bin fronts," the set of removable access panels to the storage bins used for both filling and emptying, can be a key in providing easy accessibility to the storage. This study was undertaken as an auxiliary part of a USDA project aimed at providing improved storage designs for the potato industry. Initial experimental work for this part of the project began with the installation of glued-tee and slotted bin fronts at the Potato Research Center in 1964. The objectives of the study were threefold: (1) To determine the economics involved in fronting bins, (2) to determine the advantages and disadvantages of the various types of bin fronts, and (3) to design long-span bin fronts within the following criteria: (a) adequate strength, (b) reasonable weight, (c) reasonable cost, and (d) convenient stacking capability for storing