Loader-Mounted Scaffold Made From Truck Lift Cage TRACTORS Loaders 29-4-11 A loader-mounted scaffold built from an old truck lift cage saves a lot of time for John Swanson of Cedar Point, Iowa. "It's a lot safer than a ladder, and I have a lot of room to work. I can have everything with me," says Swanson, who says his brother Ron and father-in-law David Karr helped with the project. The scaffold measures 3 ft. wide by 5 ft. long and 42 in. high and stands about 8 ft. above the loader bucket. It bolts to the bucket and can be easily removed for storage. There's a safety railing around the top. The cage came complete with floor, sides and door. The cage bolts onto steel legs via metal plates welded to both the cage and legs. There are four bolts in each plate. A pair of steel reinforcement bars extend at an angle from the top of the loader bucket to the cage for added strength. Holes were drilled in the bucket floor so the legs could be bolted on. The men also welded rungs on front of the legs to form a ladder. "We can get two or three men in the basket, along with all the tools we need. If we need something extra we have a bucket on a rope that we can send down for additional tools," says John. "The bucket can reach about 12 ft. high so a man standing in the scaffold can safely reach up about 27 ft. "We've used it for a variety of jobs. When a tornado came through causing trees to fall onto our home, we used the scaffold to reach the roof. We had a steel roof put on about a year ago, and the roofers used the man lift to do much of the work. It also works great for trimming and topping trees. My wife has even used the scaffold to paint our two-story farm house." Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, John Swanson, 5681 32nd Ave., Center Point, Iowa 52213 (ph 319 443-2540).

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