Tomato Harvesters

The Graybill Tomato Harvesters provided an innovative solution to a major challenge faced by local farmers during tomato harvest season. For years, growers struggled with a shortage of laborers willing to take on the demanding work of hand-picking tomatoes. At the same time, agricultural universities were developing new tomato varieties designed with firmer textures and more uniform ripening—characteristics that made them well-suited for machine harvesting.

These two forces—the labor scarcity and advancements in crop breeding—pushed farmers to explore alternatives to traditional hand-picking methods. Graybill Machines stepped up to meet this need, engineering a reliable tomato harvester that not only addressed the workforce shortage but also aligned perfectly with the evolving crop varieties. By bridging technology with agricultural progress, Graybill empowered local farmers to maintain productivity, reduce costs, and keep pace with modern farming practices.

The mechanical tomato harvesters in use in California’s sandy soils were unsuitable for a number of reasons: they were too large for the smaller Pennsylvania fields, they were too expensive for local farmers’ budgets, and they were unsuitable construction for the rocky soils and hills here.