Multi-wheel bale trailer is easy on the soil
Thank goodness it is a challenge which we rarely have to beat, so feats such as Bolt’s running or Felix Baumgartner’s leap from space provide us with a sense of wonder and disbelief, rather than a need to join in.
This week, I have a record-breaking piece of farm equipment which could be imitated by others who can see the benefits.
It’s a feasible workshop project which would catch the imagination of friends and neighbours, and become quite a talking point.
Here we have Chris Huck carting a load of bales on his record-breaking trailer, which has no fewer than 24 wheels.
He has built four trailers to the same design, and uses them to collect off the field and to deliver to customers.
With each trailer taking 256 conventional bales in eight layers of 32, plus a few more on top, he has transport for more than 1,000 bales.
All his straw is baled small, because there is good demand from stables and liveries in his area.
But the big question is, “Why not run it on a set of super singles on two or three commercial axles?” — and the answer lies in the soil.
Chris believes in looking after the condition of the soil on his Gloucestershire farm.
It may not be particularly heavy, it may not compact as badly as soils on some other farms, but he knows that each time a loaded tyre rolls over it, the soil particles are forced together. and its performance deteriorates.
He also knows that totally repairing this compaction is not possible by mechanical means alone. Subsoilers and cultivators can lift and rip up chunks the size of horses’ heads, and break these into very much smaller lumps, and power harrows can grind the lumps so they become much smaller again, but it is the action of weather, in particular, frost, that creates a soil which we call “friable”.
Chris believes in minimising the damage in the first place, and that means spreading the load out over a wide area. The trailer rolling gear is made up of three bogies which have walking beam axles, and each axle carries a pair of 13-inch car wheels, the kind found on Fiestas, Astras and so on.
The first trailer he made like this was fitted with 10 inch Mini wheels, which were common at the time, but these have now all but disappeared.
The front bogie is mounted on a turntable, and has a drawbar for the tractor. Some of the wheels retain the hydraulic brakes fitted to the original car, and these are coupled to the tractor hydraulics.
The loaded weight averages at less than 30lbs per square inch, and the distribution when travelling is quite even, because so many wheels are involved.
Farmers interested in the details can find them in issue 18-3 of Practical Farm Ideas.
