Three inputs decide everything
Yield per tree, picking rate and bin capacity. Everything else on the page is arithmetic hanging off those three, and all three are specific to your block, your crew and your bins. That is why they are fields rather than constants: a published average for a crop covers a range wide enough that using it would give an answer with no useful precision.
Yield is the worst of the three to guess. It moves with variety, rootstock, tree age, how hard the crop was thinned, and the year — and a block that gave 120 pounds a tree last season can give half that after a bad bloom. If you have picking records, use them and use the low year rather than the good one for planning bins, because a shortage of bins stops a harvest and a surplus only takes up yard space.
Why the bin count matters more than the pound count
Pounds are a result. Bins are a logistics problem that happens in real time. Empties have to be in the row before the crew starts, full ones have to come out before they sit in the sun, and the tractor doing that is not picking. The default here — 576 trees at 120 pounds — is 69,120 pounds, which at 900 pounds a bin is 77 bins. With eight pickers at 250 pounds an hour over an eight hour day, that is 16,000 pounds a day, or 18 bins in and out every day for a little over four and a quarter days.
Eighteen bins a day is a specific piece of equipment planning: it tells you how many bins you need on hand, how many trips the tractor makes, and whether one person can keep up with the moving while the rest pick. That number, rather than the tonnage, is what makes or breaks the first morning.
Culls are picked too
Fruit that will not make the grade still gets picked, still fills bins and still costs picking time. So the picking cost per pound of saleable fruit is higher than the cost per pound picked, by exactly the cull fraction. At 12 percent culls, a picking cost of 7.2 cents a pound becomes 8.2 cents a pound on the fruit that actually sells. Over a large crop that difference is real money, and it is the argument for thinning and for a clean first pick rather than for a fast one.
| Trees | Yield each | Total | Bins at 900 lb | Picker hours at 250 lb/hr |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 200 | 80 lb | 16,000 lb | 18 | 64 |
| 576 | 120 lb | 69,120 lb | 77 | 277 |
| 1,000 | 150 lb | 150,000 lb | 167 | 600 |
What happens after the bins
Cooling is the next constraint, and it is a different calculation — the walk-in cooler load calculator covers the refrigeration side of holding a crop, and the material storage space calculator handles the floor plan if bins are being stacked in a building that does other things too. For where the trees came from in the first place, the orchard row layout calculator gives the tree count from a block, and the trellis post and wire calculator covers the structure they hang on. If the crop is going out on pallets rather than in field bins, the pallet load planner is the tool for that.
Questions people ask
What yield per tree should I put in?
Your own, from your own records, for that block and that variety. If you have no records, the extension service in your state publishes regional figures and the nursery that sold you the stock has expectations for that rootstock and training system. Whatever number you get, plan bins around the higher end and labour around the middle, because being short of bins stops a harvest while being short of pickers just makes it longer.
How fast does a picker actually work?
It depends on the fruit size, how heavily the trees are set, whether ladders are needed, how far the bin is from the tree and how experienced the crew is, and the range across those is wide enough that no single figure is worth quoting. The reliable way to get it is to time a real pick on your own trees: weigh what one person fills in an hour, do it twice on different days, and use that. Once you have it, this page turns it into hours, days and cost.
Why is the cost per saleable pound higher than the cost per pound picked?
Because the culls were picked as well. Every pound that comes off the tree costs the same to pick whether it sells or not, so the whole picking cost lands on the fruit that does sell. At 12 percent culls the cost per saleable pound is about 14 percent higher than the cost per picked pound. This is the strongest argument in the numbers for thinning earlier and for keeping the pick clean, and it is easy to miss if you only look at the total.
How many bins should I actually own?
More than the daily flow and fewer than the whole crop, and where in that range depends on how fast full bins leave the yard. If they go out the same day, you need enough for a day of picking plus what is in transit plus a margin. If they sit until the truck comes at the end of the week, you need close to a week of them. The calculator gives the daily bin flow, which is the number to build the answer from — the total crop count is only the ceiling.
Does this cover what I can pay pickers?
No, and deliberately so. How agricultural labour may be paid, what counts as a piece rate, what records have to be kept and what applies to seasonal and migrant workers are set by federal and state law and they differ by state and by the size of the operation. The pay field here is a cost input for your own planning. The rules are a question for your state labour department and for someone who advises farms in your state.