Removable Truck-Mounted Round Bale Hauler

Removable Truck-Mounted Round Bale Hauler BALERS Matt Abbas Latimer Iowa couldn’t justify the cost of a pull-type bale hauler to haul round corn stalk bales for use on his cow-calf operation He already had an old Ford F-600 2-ton truck equipped with a hoist and grain box so he built a bolt-on bale-holding frame that replaces the grain box and can haul six bales at a time     “It’s less expensive than a side dump hay trailer and lets me go down the road at highway speeds It was relatively easy to build ” says Abba “I use a loader tractor to load bales onto the truck but I don’t need a tractor to unload them I just go down the road back up to the stack and slide the bales off the back end of the truck I use a loader tractor with pallet forks to both install and remove the frame The same loader tractor is used to remove the frame and re-install the grain box It requires removing just four bolts ”     The frame measures 16 ft long and is made from 2 by 6 channel iron with two cradle-shaped beds on each side It bolts onto metal brackets beside the truck’s stake pockets     The frame extends a couple of feet out the back end of the truck “The truck bed is 14 ft long but with 5-ft bales we had to build a longer frame in order to make room for six bales ” says Abbas “An 18-ft truck bed would probably work even better because you could build a 20-ft frame that would hold eight bales One problem with my 16-ft frame is that the bales fall some distance to the ground and if I don’t unload them just right they can flip over That wouldn’t happen with a 20-ft frame because the bales would be a little closer to the ground ”     He built the bale hauler last fall right after he was done combining corn and spent about $1 200 on the metal and welding work “You could probably save money by building the frame out of pipe instead of channel iron ” says Abbas who notes that old used straight trucks can often be purchased at farm sales at low cost     Contact: FARM SHOW Followup Matt Abbas 635 130th St Latimer Iowa 50452 ph 515-290-6123; massey1100@yahoo com

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