"After years of hauling 50-lb. seed bags in our pickup, we decided there had to be a better way," says David Hartweg, who, along with his brother, Paul, built a soybean caddy that'll handle four 2,000-lb. bulk bags. Fitted with a drill fill auger, it loads the Hartweg's 20-ft. Great Plains drill in 10 minutes flat.

The Carthage, Ill., farmers built the 16-ft. long by 5-ft. wide caddy on an old Artsway 425 grinder chassis equipped with weigh bars. They lengthened the hitch with 6-in. channel iron so they could pull it behind their pickup. They framed the chassis with angle iron and used four wire hog floor panels for the platform. Each panel is fitted with a slide gate to let beans drop into the unloading augers.

A 6-in. dia. bin auger was cut down to 6 ft. long. It mounts beneath the rear of the caddy to carry seed from the two rear bags to the auger hopper near the front. The front two bags gravity-feed into the hopper and load via a 6-in. dia., 14-ft. long drill fill auger mounted on the side of the caddy. It rotates 180 degrees to permit filling their drill from almost any direction.

The caddy rides on two 12.16 by 5-in. truck tires. Bags are loaded onto it with a forklift. Power is supplied by a hydraulic system on the 1975 Ford F-250 pickup the Hartwegs use to pull it.

"It works great," says David. "We don't strain our backs lifting seed bags anymore. Best of all, the project only cost a lot less than the cost of a commercial bulk seed handler."