Turning an old school bus into a calf shelter is pretty easy. Just cut the body free from the chassis at the floor. Moving it is more challenging unless you have Roger Gutschmidt’s lift-and-carry roof rail.

“It’s easy to overthink the problem of moving a school bus calf shelter,” says Gutschmidt. “When you take the shell off the bus, the sides have no support on the bottom. Guys usually bolt angle iron or oil field pipe to the bottoms, like a runner underneath.”

A customer approached him with an alternative. Gutschmidt had used support rails made of angle iron on a similar shelter 30 years earlier. These rails had loops at the ends to help pull the shelter around. It worked... but?

“The problem is the ground is frozen with hard manure clumps, and it has to ride over them,” says Gutschmidt. “My customer suggested a bar across the top of the bus shell that he could lift with forks on his tractor loader.”

Gutschmidt considered the structure with stringers every 2 ft. along the shell’s length. He noted that the roof itself is both strong and lightweight.

“I used 2 7/8-in. O.D. oil steel pipe for the lift rail and attached it to the bus roof every 4 ft., next to every other stringer,” he says. “I welded 4 by 10-in., 1/4-in. steel plates to the pipe and drilled 5/8-in. holes in it for bolts. I used more pipe of the same diameter to make 3-in. spacers.”

Inside the bus, he welded matching plates next to every other stringer.

“I didn’t go through them as that would have weakened them,” says Gutschmidt. “I bent all the plates slightly to match the curve of the roof.”

Once holes were drilled through the roof, Gutschmidt securely bolted the roof rail to the underside plates. He used 7-in. bolts because the roof thickness varied.

“My customer loves it,” says Gutschmidt. “He can’t believe he didn’t do it long ago. He can pick up the shelter and move it to fresh ground quickly and easily. With forks on his tractor loader, he has great visibility to pick up the shelter and move it as needed.”

Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Roger Gutschmidt, Gutschmidt Manufacturing, 6651 Hwy. 56, Gackle, N.D. 58442 (ph 701-698-2310; shopdoc@drtel.net).