Pole Carrier

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The mill where William works receives machine clothing rolled up on steel poles thirty-five feet long, eight inches inside diameter, with one-quarter inch thick walls. The mill gets twenty to thirty a year, and only has uses for a few. The recycler doesn't like them because they don't fit the bins he puts out around the mill - special handling takes all the profit out. The landfill just said, "No." So they let the employees have them.

They make good culverts for the hunt club (and one under our lower drive), but they're hard to get home. The only way they'll fit in our trailer is cut in three pieces. That's a lot of extra work, especially if you want longer pieces and have to weld them back together. So William designed and built a carrier to pull them home behind the car full length.

These pictures are the first trial using a 12 ft. section.

Here the carrier is used to pull the pipe out into the tractor shed driveway:

And here it's reversed to lift the front end of the pipe, where the trailer hitch, which is also used to pull the carrier when running empty,  is already bolted on:

After the front is lifted,

it's ready to hitch:

Then the carrier is rolled back:

and reversed again to lift the rear:

Once the rear end is up:

The pipe is tightened against teeth at the top of the frame, the neat and legal strap replaces the temporary rope on the carrier tongue, the second ratchet binder goes across at the axle to take the strain off the top corners, and it's ready to go:

The longest part of the process is drilling the 3/4" hole for the trailer hitch.

A week later the carrier got its first real trial - bringing home a thirty-five foot, 950 lb. pole. It rode well enough, although it started to bouce a little side-to-side over fifty.

And taking the long view -