AGCO Steps onto the Global Innovation Stage: OutRun™ Wins Fast Company Award

On 11 June 2025, U.S. machinery giant AGCO announced that its PTx Trimble™ brand had won Fast Company’s World Changing Ideas award for the OutRun™ Autonomous Grain Cart solution—the first AGCO product ever honored in this prestigious program .

What Is OutRun™ and Why Does It Matter?

OutRun™ is a retrofit kit that turns existing row-crop tractors into autonomous machines designed to operate grain carts during harvest. The system takes over exactly those tasks hit hardest by seasonal labor shortages: driving up to the combine on the go, matching speeds, and unloading precisely into a cart or grain truck .

The kit is currently compatible with John Deere 8R/8000R tractors equipped with an IVT transmission. In 2026, the manufacturer promises support for Fendt® models and gradual expansion to other brands. Near-term plans also include autonomous tillage—spring and fall passes for field preparation .

Context for Ukrainian Fields

For Ukrainian farms where the autumn “harvest sprint” often stalls because of a shortage of tractor drivers, handing grain logistics to an autonomous unit is not a fad but a direct route to lower losses and better combine utilization. This is especially relevant on the vast corn and wheat acres of the Steppe and Forest-Steppe, where losing even 1 % of yield to grain-cart downtime costs hundreds of thousands of hryvnias.

How OutRun™ Fits AGCO’s Strategy

Founded in 1990 and headquartered in Duluth, Georgia (USA), AGCO was until recently identified mainly with Fendt and Massey Ferguson tractors and RoGator self-propelled sprayers. Today the group bills itself a “digital-first” precision-ag developer with a “hardware + software + autonomy” portfolio. For 2024, AGCO reported net sales of ≈ US $11.7 billion, underlining its global heft . Overall, 2023 revenue reached US $14.4 billion, with 27.9 thousand employees across more than 35 countries .

Benefits for Growers and Dealers in Ukraine

• Flexible retrofit. Farms can add autonomy without buying a new tractor.
• Lower fuel costs. Algorithms optimize travel paths and speeds.
• Minimal unplanned downtime. Diagnostics and software updates arrive over-the-air, like in modern cars.

Beyond the Hardware: The Role of Local Partners

Cutting-edge autonomous cart-running tech does not eliminate the daily need for high-quality consumables and spare parts. Ukrainian suppliers fill that gap. Bas-Agro LLC (Bas.ua) combines an online catalog of thousands of items with its own manufacturing facility in Cherkasy, producing precise replacement parts for John Deere, Kverneland, Monosem, Amazone, and many other brands . Working under a reverse-engineering model, the company can take a worn original and deliver a new component—accurate to hundredths of a millimeter—within 7–10 days.

As autonomy gains ground, having a local maker able to quickly reproduce a unique housing or bracket becomes critical insurance against downtime: even the smartest robot will not move if its mechanics fail.

The Fast Company award is more than a trophy on AGCO’s stand; it signals that autonomous grain-logistics chains are moving from test plots into mainstream production. Ukrainian growers should watch for OutRun™ to appear in dealer portfolios: the system promises to eliminate the chronic harvest bottleneck. Meanwhile, partners like Bas-Agro LLC will keep the metal trustworthy—so every bolt and key can maintain the pace of the new era in precision agriculture.