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Hay Bale Retriever, Stacker
"I've used it every year since 1974 with almost no trouble at all. Lets me retrieve and stack bales by myself," says Frank Murphy, Steamboat Springs, Colo., about the bale stacker loader he built from an old farm truck.
Murphy says quite a few local farmers made similar truck conversions 20 years ago or so but th
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Hay Bale Retriever, Stacker HAY & FORAGE HARVESTING Bale Handling (5) 13-6-3 "I've used it every year since 1974 with almost no trouble at all. Lets me retrieve and stack bales by myself," says Frank Murphy, Steamboat Springs, Colo., about the bale stacker loader he built from an old farm truck.
Murphy says quite a few local farmers made similar truck conversions 20 years ago or so but that his is about the only one still running.
He started with a 1 1/2 ton 1938 International truck. The cargo box was discarded and he moved the front axle back about 4 ft. to shorten the turning radius. He junked the original engine and transmission, re-placing them with the 396 cu. in. engine and 4-speed 400 transmission from a 1967 Chevrolet car. He flipped the truck's 2-speed rear end over to change the direction of travel. The cab was turned around and all controls were relocated and re-routed to be operated in the rear-facing direction. The engine mounts behind the cab as far as possible to provide a counter-weight for the bale loader at the other end of the machine.
A Dual loader is mounted on the truck frame, fitted with a 12-ft. wide bale fork that Murphy uses to scoop up square bales in the field after baling. "I can pick up ten to twelve 75-lb. bales at a time and carry them to a stack where I can climb out to unload them. The loader can lift bales up 13 ft. high. Lets one man do it by himself, or one man can retrieve bales with the stacker and another can stack. For the past several years I've had the help of a young woman who drives the stacker while I stay at the stack."
Murphy left the old truck wheels on the loader, fitting the drive axle with duals. For hydraulics, he put a sprocket on the engine crankshaft that chain-drives an 18 gpm pump. Murphy says the converted truck has plenty of power with the car engine and transmission and that the 2-speed rear end gears it down far enough for up-close maneuvering. "It'll spin its tires if you gun it," he says.
Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Frank Murphy, RR, Steamboat Springs, Colo. 80477 (ph 303 879-0379).
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