Case Study: Walkabout Mother Bins achieves reduced harvest downtime and lower trucking costs with Onshape

Walkabout Mother Bins - Customer Case Study

Walkabout Mother Bins, founded by Australian farmer-entrepreneur Dave Hedt in South Dakota, makes portable 110‑ton “mother bins” that store surplus grain in the field to reduce combine downtime and trucking costs. To introduce the Australian concept to U.S. farms Hedt needed to turn hands‑on experience into manufacturable CAD designs despite having no CAD background, a 9,000‑mile/15‑hour time difference with his designer, and the need to protect intellectual property during supplier bidding.

Using Onshape’s cloud CAD, Hedt and designer Bruce Bartlett collaborated in real time, leveraged full edit history, and used granular access controls to share read‑only design Documents and communicate with manufacturers directly inside the platform. The result was a faster, more transparent design-to-bid process with greater IP control, demonstrated field savings (e.g., one farm cut its truck fleet from four to two), strong show reception, and plans to build an initial run of units priced at $115,000.

Walkabout Mother Bins

Dave Hedt

CEO & Owner