One Bin Down, Pad Untouched
One 20,000-bushel grain bin on a farm at Greenview, Illinois — roughly 36 feet across and eight rings tall. The owner wanted the bin gone and the concrete pad left exactly where it was.
That pad decision is the first question on every bin job, and it changes the number more than the bin does. Pulling a bin floor and the ring footing under it is a concrete job bolted onto a steel job — breaking, loading and hauling. Leaving a sound pad is a legitimate way to keep it simple when the ground isn't being rebuilt on, and it's a decision to make at the walk rather than halfway through, because it sets how the bin comes apart and where the machine can stand.
A bin is mostly bolted sheet steel, which is why it comes down faster than the concrete around it and why the scrap side matters. The sheets, the roof ring, the stiffeners and the aeration hardware are steel that goes to a scrap yard rather than a disposal site, so a bin teardown generates far less landfill than a building of the same footprint would.
The distance is worth naming honestly, because it's the part people don't think about. Greenview is roughly 95 miles from our shop in Mattoon — well outside the 60-mile radius we normally work. On a job that far out, moving the excavator, the skid steer and the tandem out and back is a real share of the day, and we price it as its own line so you can see it instead of finding it buried in an hourly rate. If you're outside the radius, ask — sometimes the answer is yes and sometimes the honest answer is that somebody closer should do it.
On the paperwork: a farm bin sits on unincorporated county ground, so there's usually no local demolition permit. The asbestos question runs the other way from a house, though — an agricultural structure does not get the exemption a single-family home does, so where a structure warrants it, the survey and the IEPA ten-working-day notice are real requirements and they go on the calendar before the machine does.
Bin down, steel out, pad clean and still sitting there. One machine, one crew, one trip.
