Hay Loading

[euclid]

ahh a bale waggon

Had we had that growing up we'd been in the right place and not worked so darn hard!

 

[Skidder]

Looks to be a lot a truck for a single drive axle

 

[bill onthehill]

We used hay loaders like those first pics behind mules at my grandpa's farm when I was young. take it back to the barn and unload with the drop forks on a trolley to roll into the top of the haymow. After my dad convinced gramps to get his first tractor in the late 50's he bought a new holland wire tie baler powered by a wisconsin motor but still pulled it with the mules. My sisters and I used to pray for those mules to slow down especially at the ends of the row. those were the heaviest bales I ever worked with. Took 2 of us to handle them. My sister would hang onto my belt while I reached out with the bale hook to drag it off the chute. no kickers back then. you learned the proper way to load a wagon or you got to do it again when it fell off.

 

[dirthog28]

Maybe you guys have seen this, but seems like a pretty neat idea to me, I don't know how well or tight it would stake them on the trailer though.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Df-yGhK7v5c
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiBQ6Yt94wk&feature=related

I guess it wouldn't tear up the strings?? Beats walking behind trailer throwing them!

 

[Cathandler]

Its not so much the loading the hay and straw from the field it was atleast according to my dad the cleaning the sheds out by hand that was the killer though it did get hot when stacking near the top of the barn

 

[bd797]

Around here, most growers use the balewagon to build the stacks. Most stacks will be either 8 large bales or 74-82 small bales. Using the hay squeeze(forklift) is the fastest way to move the hay from field to barn or to someone elses barn. The squeezes do have two sets of controls. One facing the squeeze for field operation and one for highway operation.

 

[Bigcountry_99]

The company that makes these is called Sunny "D" Manufacturing... home of The Oregon Roadrunner. Being from Central Cali, I seen alot of these. They are awesome to watch!

 

[Birken Vogt]

Tonka, Where are those photos from? I see you are from New Jersey, but they look like the type of California forklifts shown in some of the photos here in the ag section. Does this one have 2 steering wheels so you can drive in either direction? Who makes these forklifts?

Don't know who makes them but there is a local feed place here (Grass Valley, Ca) that has one of them mounted on the back of what looks to be an early 90s L8000. Probably just operated looking over the shoulder in that configuration but it looks like they are just starting out and don't have big money for one of those nice ones yet.

Also, I can't see much of the trailer is it a pup or a spread axle. I've seen some of the Calif guys have 2 pups with single axle tractors for hauling hay, but I don't know why they use that setup.

Almost all the hay setups seem to be 2 pups or a very long straight truck flatbed cabover with a pup and they are usually coming from Nevada where they grow a lot of hay when you see them in this area. In addition to other reasons specified, I suspect the main reason may be that hay tends to "cube out" before it grosses out so they need to maximize the length of available deck they have in use to haul as much as possible. In addition when they load large bales you will often see them hanging way off the back of the trailer deck in order to fit more on.

Nice rigs for sure.:usa

The hay haulers seem to really have caught the chrome and lights and chimney sized smoke stacks bug. I don't know what the economics are behind it but it looks like big money.

 

[roadbuilder6]

What i think works best is a kicker baler, i call em bommf balers, it reduces down time of picking them up manuly

 

[oregon96pd]

i never understood why they spend money on a forklift out there when a tractor does the same thing....we just bought a kicker baler this past winter so our days of picking them out of the field are over :drinkup builds good muscle though

Because a tractor cant do the same thing, or even close to it. A true road runner does exactly that, runs down the road. Ours would do 75 no problem, get to the field switch seats and load a truck with eight blocks of straw/hay in a couple minutes. (a tractor wont even pick up a block let alone load a truck as fast). Its about production, if your a hobby farmer then a tractor will do but a production farm just doesnt cut it.

 

[Jim D]

To add to what oregon said,

A hay seller will have a fleet of trucks, the delivery trips time may be long. If the seller buys from, and loads-out from, a few different locations the hay loader needs to be able to move fast to keep up with trucks. That's why the Roadrunner 'hay squeeze' (hay loader). Where I am, one hay contractor leases, grows, harvests and sells from many fields in a 5 by 10 mile valley. One Roadrunner loads-out for about twenty trucks.

Check out http://www.oregonroadrunner.com/about.htm