Simple Wood Hauler for tractor forks

[lowroadacres]

This spring I finally got around to putting a simple wood hauler together for moving wood around on the yard. This afternoon I started moving wood around to where it can go straight into the house. It is a pain in the rear end moving wood around but we have made it easier by building this simple two pallet and 2 triangles of OSB I had laying around. We have had to patch it a couple of times but we can put a fair amount of wood in it and given that it is on the front end of the tractor we can get it into some pretty tight spots.

We are having to move some of the wood around because we are working to expand our backyard rink. If I had my way all of our firewood would be moved to the corner of our house at this time of the year so we didn't have to use the tractor to move the wood around later. It is actually getting interesting now that we have wood cut and split through to the end of 2011-12. We aren't able to just put it any old place as we have to plan for accessing the wood in the proper order.

 

[SolarAndWood]

I like it. Moving any real quantity of wood with the 5' bucket on the Ford gets old. Put another one on the 3 pt and you will be able to keep the rear wheels on the ground.

 

[lowroadacres]

We are thinking of putting some sort of pallet fork on the three point hitch for exactly that reason. Right now we leave either the cultivator in the summer or the grader blade in the winter on the three point as a counter weight. We have also learned, the hard way, to keep the load reaaaal low when we load it full. It also depends partly on the type of wood we are hauling. Tonight I pushed it a bit because it was shoulder season-bordering on punky elm. I need to get it out of the way not only for the rink but for stacking the wood we split last weekend.

That is this week's firewood tasks. I can't imagine what I would weigh if it weren't for firewood work

 

[golfandwoodnut]

Just think, if you built a bunch of these you could just move them from the wood pile to the house, or whereever you wanted them, one load at a time and never restack them. That would be the ticket. I once saw metal bins that were for sale on craigslist and thought that would be great to use forks and move the bin close to the house when I needed it. I always hate the idea of restacking and redoing. Get it down right the first time. Or is it just being lazy?

 

[lowroadacres]

I find myself day dreaming about how to streamline the process of heating with wood, particularly the cutting/splitting/stacking process.

There have been all sorts of ideas in my head such as making a whole row of pallet boxes as you suggest. I have considered finding an old livestock trailer or trailers that I could drag to the bush to fill up with stacked wood and bring home to park in a row until the wood seasons. Old truck cube van bodies, Old grain truck boxes, old camper trailers gutted, all of which would need some form of ventilation to season the wood.

There are those enterprising souls who convert semi-trailers or shipping containers to be large firewood kilns....

Bottom line I find is that if someone did the math, the same number of man hours are going to be used to heat with wood no matter how much we "simplify" the process.

Following the example of the posters on here with seniority would lead me to believe that slow and steady wins the race. Cutting a bit at a time, splitting and stacking in the best possibly site on one's yard is the best way of getting it done.

That being said, I am still learning and I will continue to look at ways to streamline my wood harvesting and storage process on a limited budget.

The one real luxury we have is the tractor that is actually my Dad's he chooses to store it on our yard is a huge bonus.

 

[Backwoods Savage]

Looks like it should work like a charm.