Backwards Trucks Speeds Silage Harvest

Backwards Trucks Speeds Silage Harvest HAY & FORAGE HARVESTING Forage Harvesters 13-1-6 Chopping corn silage on the William Oehlke farm near Stewartville, Minn., looks a little odd from a distance because Oehlke pulls trucks backward by putting the rear drive wheels up on a special-built "tip-bed" trailer that's towed be-hind his forage harvester. "I use trucks with hydraulic dump boxes to unload silage into my bunker silo," says Oehlke, who chops 1,500 to 2,000 tons of corn silage a year on land up to four miles from his bunker silo. "We tried blowing silage into trucks driving alongside, but the trucks some-times became unstable when one side was loaded and the other was not." He pulls a 1968 Ford and a 1963 GMC behind the chopper with their rear wheels on the custom-built trailer. The trailer consists of two front axles removed from a couple of junked-out trucks. Oehlke hooked the axles' steering linkages together so that both axles swing in unison around corners. He ties the truck's steering wheel in place with a tarp strap to keep the front axle trailing in a straight line. The tip-bed trailer is equipped with a hitch on one end. Oehlke beefed up the hitch on the chopper frame to support the added weight of the truck. To "load" the truck, he simply backs it up onto ramps which are fastened to the tip-bed trailer by a pin that allows the ramps to pivot up and down. When Oehlke backs the truck onto the ramps, the rear tires drop into wheel wells that automatically raise the ramps off the ground. "I set the emergency brake and leave the truck in reverse so it can't fall off the trailer while it's being towed," says Oehlke. "After I've finished chop-ping the ramps automatically drop down again when I drive the truck forward." Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, William Oehlke, RR 1, Box 350, Stewartville, Minn. 55976 (ph 507 533-4871).

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