# Hauling small squares on pallets?????



## tnwalkingred (Jun 8, 2010)

I have been thinking about a way to deliver small square bales with minimal labor and I wanted to run this idea by you guys. I have a flat bed gooseneck that is 25' long and 102" wide. I was thinking about building pallets that would allow me to stack small square on them (25 at time?????), then strap them down and store them in the hay barn. Then when a customer called and needed hay I could use the forks on the tractor to load up 2 or 3 pallets (possibly more) on the trailer and still have room enough to load the tractor on the back to have it to unload them when I got to the customers location. I'm still struggling with the numbers and dimensions but I think as long as I had 10 to 12 feet at the back of the trailer for the tractor I would have enough room to load it. Do you guys think this would be feasible and/or worth the labor/time to build the pallets? Thanks for any suggestions.

Kyle


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## mulberrygrovefamilyfarm (Feb 11, 2009)

I guess if you can get enough for the hay to make the extra labor required to handle the pallets pay it would be worth trying if your customers wanted it in multiples of 25, but at some point I would think an accumulator would start to look mighty good.


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## Toyes Hill Angus (Dec 21, 2010)

seems like all of the same work as before just spread out through more of the year to me. Its a start, but there has got to be a better way. It seems like alot of bother of load a tractor, chain it down, go to where your are delivering, unchain the tractor, unload 75 bales and do it all over again but in reverse order.
Just my impression, I maybe didn't understand the idea fully.


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## Production Acres (Jul 29, 2008)

go see terry burris in unionville, tn
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## tnwalkingred (Jun 8, 2010)

Terry Burris lives just a few miles from myself and I know of him however I have not ever met him . I am not looking to operate on a scale like Terry. I have a full time job with the local phone company and only farm part time to supplement my income and also because I really enjoy it. I was just trying to come up with a idea to sell hay during the winter and not have to load and unload it all by hand (thus needing more labor other than myself).The accumalator and grapple would work great for loading it at your farm however you would likewise have to take the tractor with you to unload at the customers home as they will not most likely have a grapple. Plus then you have the costs of buying the accumaltor and grapple. My theory was since I have to stack it by hand in the barn anyways in the summer (when I'm putting hay up I have the extra help there already). Why not make these pallets, stack it on them, and be able to haul 50-75 at a time later on in the winter (when prices are at a premium) without much costs in labor. I could load and unload 50-75 bales by myself in less than 15 mins per site. 50 bales delivered at $6.00 a bale would be good money for 30 mins of work in the afternoon after work with very little labor involved. You could unload where the customer wanted and be on your way. Come back after they have fed it all or moved it off the pallets and pick up your pallets to use again. Thanks for your input guys.

Kyle


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## hay king (Feb 6, 2011)

sure sound good it aloows you to load without braken your back and if you want to you could unload by hand if you have to. But it still saves loading. Not a bad idea


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## Rodney R (Jun 11, 2008)

Do you only deliver 50-75 bales at a time? That would only be 2 or 3 pallets - You have to loadand unload the tractor/loader, and haul the thing around. That amount of hay could easily be haled by a flatbed truck. It would cost a lot more cause of the $$ for the extra fuel to haul the tractor, and to the pull the trailer. I can see that having hay on pallets would save time loading, but the unloading..... I think it's going to cost more than it might save.

Rodney


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## Blue Duck (Jun 4, 2009)

Before I got my bale wagon I used 6' x 8' pallets with 40 bales per pallet. I would load four empty pallets on the trailer and had my wife drive while I stacked the hay on the pallets. At the barn I used a wheel loader with long forks to move the pallets into the barn. When I delivered hay I could set six pallets on my 40ft GN trailer. The hay was then unloaded by hand off my trailer. It was also nice when customers came to pick hay up because someone could raise a pallet up as it was being unloaded and reduce the amount of work for the guy stacking the trailer (usually me). I figure the expense of the pallet over five years cost me around 12 to 15 cents a bale.

If I could find help that would drive a little slower then my wife I would consider going back to using the pallets. Her theory was to speed up until I would start getting behind stacking the hay and then drive at that speed or a little faster.


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## Mike120 (May 4, 2009)

Someone on here, about a year ago, talked about hand strapping bundles together (like a Bale Bandit or Bale Baron) with plastic strapping. As long as you are handling the bales, that may be a better solution. You could package them any way you wanted, still load with forks and reuse the plastic strapping. It would save you the time and effort of the pallets (and a lot of extra weight). You might even be able to use a couple of cheap cargo straps per bundle.


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## tnwalkingred (Jun 8, 2010)

Rodney,

During the summer months the average request around here is anywhere from 100-300. In the winter months people call and normally want 50-100. I agree that it would cost a little more in fuel but normally I'm no longer driving any further than 30 mins. I don't own a flat bed truck so my gooseneck trailer is what I would be hauling them with regardless of how I'm loading and unloading. So the only additonal fuel costs to myself would be how much more the truck burnt by having the extra weight of the tractor on it. I believe it would be considerably less time and effort to load/unload a tractor as it would 75 bales of hay by hand.

Kyle



Rodney R said:


> Do you only deliver 50-75 bales at a time? That would only be 2 or 3 pallets - You have to loadand unload the tractor/loader, and haul the thing around. That amount of hay could easily be haled by a flatbed truck. It would cost a lot more cause of the $$ for the extra fuel to haul the tractor, and to the pull the trailer. I can see that having hay on pallets would save time loading, but the unloading..... I think it's going to cost more than it might save.
> 
> Rodney


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## hay hauler (Feb 6, 2010)

We do something kind of like that with a bobcat and grapple. Works great, would think you could use the pallet idea in the same way, our bobcat will lift 1000 pounds i think. So maybe not 25 bales, but it will take a lot less space on the back of your trailer...

If you cut one chain to length, drive on the trailer back up till it is tight, then jump out and bind the back of the tractor you can have a tractor loaded in no time...

Only problem we have had is delivering hay to a place that we can't get into with the machine... Something to think about...


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## NDVA HAYMAN (Nov 24, 2009)

My first thought with all of this would be the weight of the tractor on the back of the gooseneck. That seems like an awful lot of weight on the rear of a gooseneck.


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## rjmoses (Apr 4, 2010)

Mike120 said:


> Someone on here, about a year ago, talked about hand strapping bundles together (like a Bale Bandit or Bale Baron) with plastic strapping.


That was me. And I'm still trying to find a fabricator to modify a NH bale wagon. I have a 1012 that I would offer to use as a prototype.

Ralph


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## Mike120 (May 4, 2009)

rjmoses said:


> That was me. And I'm still trying to find a fabricator to modify a NH bale wagon. I have a 1012 that I would offer to use as a prototype.
> 
> Ralph


Considering the cost of a Bandit or a Baron.....I thought it was a pretty good idea!


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## dbergh (Jun 3, 2010)

We do something along these lines. We use standard size pallets and stack 1/2 ton per pallet and then use a bander tool to secure them to the pallet. Takes a bit of labor but is not too bad using a grapple on our loader. We then store these in our shed to take care of small orders during the winter season so we don't have to untarp stacks during inclement weather to load just a few bales. This also allows us to leave only complete loads in the stack-yards tarped up safe and secure. We can set these pallets on a trailer or pickup using the forklift or we can haul 4 at a time using our retriever and set them down at the customer's location. We do most of our palletizing during the season when we have some additional labor available and it has worked great for the past couple of seasons.


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## slowzuki (Mar 8, 2011)

I've read of a fellow who builds pallets that slip onto the rear most rack uprights of a NH bale wagon. I think he hauls a stack of pallets to the field and loads them all using the wagon.

I've been interested in a old Chilton or Browns bale grab. It picks up stacks of 56 I think. Back in the day it was meant for a 3 point hitch but todays loaders can handle it ok. I've never seen one in person but a pair of them, one on front one in the rear could work. Haven't figured out the stack building part yet. The brits used a drag type accumulator and grapple to build a pile. Not sure if a bale wagon stack would be compatible to pick up. I think it could be adapted to at least a stabilizing twine tie to help in future handling.

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