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New-Style Bale-Hauling System
"It completely eliminates the need for a tractor and greatly speeds up transport time between fields. And, only one person is needed to operate it," says Joe Ellis, Cedar Creek, Texas, about his self-contained bale handling system that's designed to load and unload bales onto a trailer.
The system consists of tw
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New-Style Bale-Hauling System BALE HANDLING Bale Handling (31B) 26-1-9 "It completely eliminates the need for a tractor and greatly speeds up transport time between fields. And, only one person is needed to operate it," says Joe Ellis, Cedar Creek, Texas, about his self-contained bale handling system that's designed to load and unload bales onto a trailer.
The system consists of two separate machines that are designed to be hooked up together in the field - the "Bale Flipper", which loads and unloads the bales, and the bale trailer itself, which has four separate bale cradles. The two machines can be pulled together in-line for transport down the road.
In the field, a pair of guide arms are used to hook the Bale Flipper up to the trailer. The operator simply backs up the trailer to lock it in place.
To load bales, the driver moves forward until the bale is enclosed by the Bale Flipper arms. The bale hits a trip switch, which causes a hydraulic cylinder to automatically squeeze the arm tight onto the bale. The arm then lifts the bale 180 degrees up and over the cradle. The bale is released and the loading arm returns to its original position, ready for the next bale. As the loading arm comes down, a latch on the rail is tripped and a brake on the Bale Flipper is applied, causing the machine to slide back to the next cradle as the pickup continues to drive forward. The bale loading process is then repeated.
After four bales are loaded, the Bale Flipper slides off the back of the trailer and an automatic kill switch shuts it off.
To unload bales, the operator manually releases a latch on the first cradle, then lifts the cradle to dump the bale off. As a safety precaution, the cradle remains tripped until he pulls it back. The process is repeated for each of the other cradles.
The Bale Flipper hooks on behind the trailer for transport.
"It's a one-man system that works fast," says Ellis, who is in the custom hay hauling business. "I built three trailers, so as soon as one trailer is loaded I can hook the Bale Flipper up to the next one. It takes only about 10 minutes to load four bales, including hooking the Bale Flipper up to the trailer. As a result I can haul a lot of hay in one day. Once I hauled 100 bales in only nine hours to a yard that was 1 1/2 miles from the field.
"All controls on the Bale Flipper are mechanical so there are no batteries or electronics to maintain. If I want, I can use a manually-operated lever to extend the Bale Flipper's loading arm or to start or stop the loading cycle at any time. I mounted a window with red and green flags on an upright on front of the loader so that I know when to stop for each bale."
Ellis says he plans to develop a higher-capacity gooseneck trailer model that will haul 10 4-ft. by 6-ft. dia. bales, placing them two bales wide by five bales long. "I also plan to develop a gooseneck model that will handle 4 by 4 by 8-ft. big square bales two wide and three bales long," he notes.
Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Joe Ellis, Bale Flipper, Inc., 358 Watts Lane, Cedar Creek, Texas 78612 (ph 512 303-0491; E-mail: Izyefarm@aol.com; Website: www.baleflipper.com).
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