Revolutionary Hemp Harvester - Inventor Story

DELTA, Colo., November 13, 2019 (Newswire.com) - ​​​The Wright Brothers had Kitty Hawk and Thomas Edison had Menlo Park. The hemp industry may well look to Olathe, Colorado, as the birthplace of modern hemp harvesting. Toby McCracken, a 36-year-old inventor, has agricultural equipment and innovation in his DNA.

Toby’s grandfather, Ted McCracken, a life-long farmer, worked for the Allis Chalmers Dealer in Montrose, Colorado. Toby’s dad, Doug McCracken, owned Olathe Machine and Supply, and farmers from hundreds of miles would travel to Colorado to have a McCracken figure out how to fix or invent a solution to a vexing farm equipment problem.

Last year, Toby McCracken and business partner Mike Meyer traveled to Oregon to learn best practices for growing and harvesting hemp. It was during this trip that Toby, running his fingers through a branch of hemp, first conceived of the idea of “stripping” the bud off the plant in the field.  

Toby designed a series of combs that could strip the flower off the plant and, along with Vietnam veteran and life-long steel fabricator Bobby Isom, built a prototype of a vertical header that resulted in a provisional patent and a non-provisional patent application. The inventors called the machine the Revolutionary Hemp Harvester and RHHE, LLC was born.

Toby and Mike met with Oxbo International, a worldwide leader in specialty harvesting equipment. OXBO leaders Brian Maul, Chris Schloesser, and Curt Schaben traveled to the western slope and immediately understood the genius of the invention. Oxbo agreed to build a three-header prototype to be powered by an OXBO 2430 power chassis. 

The prototype was delivered in Colorado on Sept. 3 and immediately went to work, harvesting maturing hemp crops on the western slope of Colorado. 

By late October, Toby was able to harvest up to 40 acres per day. The three-row harvester strips the flower, filling the hopper with beautiful, finished bud, leaving the stalk and stem in the field. The freshly harvested hemp is transported to their 34,000-square-foot drying facility in nearby Delta, Colorado. The harvested flower is placed on a conveyor that goes into the proprietary drying system, which can dry up to 60,000 lbs per day. 

The Revolutionary Hemp Harvester makes large-scale harvesting cost-effective and scalable. By harvesting only the flower and leaving the stalk and stem in the ground, drying times are dramatically shortened. This machine has solved the most expensive and difficult problem in the hemp industry.

Toby and Mike have shown the machine to several large growers.  The concept has generated significant interest for purchasing in 2020. The innovation of the RHHE header, coupled with the legacy of Oxbo in the specialty crops harvesting business, creates a solution unmatched in the market today. 

For more information, contact:

RHHE, LLC
Toby McCracken
(970) 901-1822
info@revolutionaryhempharvester.com

website: www.revolutionaryhempharvester.com

Source: RHHE, LLC