Pierz High Schooler Invents Machine to Help Save Farmers in Grain Bin Accidents

By Hanky Hazelton

After watching “Silo,” a movie inspired by true events where a teenage boy becomes the victim of a grain entrapment accident, a Pierz high schooler has invented a machine that’s the first of its kind and is designed to save farmers from entrapment or suffocation inside their grain bins.

At the age of 14, after sitting through an agriculture class and learning that accidents associated with grain bins could cause life-threatening injuries, Mason Gahler set out to invent a state-of-the-art machine that could save countless lives.

Although most boys at 14 were into video games and other activities, Mason had a gift for putting complex invention ideas together. Stacy Gahler, Mason’s mom, said she wasn’t sure at first when he took an interest in such an idea, but after his agriculture teacher reached out with support for his innovations, she got behind Mason and supported him on his designs.

The grain machine Mason has invented, called the Grain Gyre, can be used for multiple types of feed. The model is designed to help keep farmers safe while unloading grain and to help with the funnel effect by breaking up the top moldy layers.

“The main purpose of this is for when you’re unloading the grain bin from a bigger bin, [when] you get down to the bottom of the bin, you have still 15 to 20 foot side walls in bins,” explained Mason. “Some farmers go in there and … try shoveling down to the center then they can collapse on them and suffocate them. What this does is brings all the grain down evenly and levels it.”

Corn, in this way, can act like quicksand and can have you sinking within minutes, leading to possible asphyxiation and death. Now, with Mason’s invention, workers can stay outside of a silo or grain bin and let the machine do all the work instead.

To protect his invention, Mason has filed for a patent that he now owns. His goal is for a grain bin company to license the patent from him and have that company be within the United States. If you are a company or a farmer that has an interest in his machine. you can email him at [email protected].