What can you tell me about it? Seems very useful. Things like size, weight capacity, brand, how operates, price (if you don't mind).
Thanks
It's great. I bought it to move firewood from my wood lot up to the house, since I like to keep all the mess and bugs associated with processing and primary storage at least a few hundred feet from the house. I can load up this wagon and just park it under my porch, rather than playing the old tedious game of unloading wood from a regular trailer or loader bucket into racks at the house.
The wagon is 4' x 8' with removable 17" high sides made of three separate 1x6's, so you can remove one plank to lower the height of the sides, or all three to make it a flatbed. The front and back walls are also removable, in fact you have to lift out the back wall to dump, easy heavy sheetmetal panels.
I'll have to go and double-check to be sure, it's been at least 10 years since I assembled the thing, but I
think corners are bolted on. So also removeable if you ever really needed to, I have not.
It's rated for "2-tons", and believe me... I've had it loaded at
least that heavy, many times.
I bought it without the lift cylinder, initially only ever planning to use it for the firewood you see above, but then one year I had to move 110 cu.yd. of mulch with a 0.25 yd3 loader bucket... so 440 trips across my lawn with tiny loads of mulch. That's when I added the cylinder and a log splitter SCV over the rear tire on one side to control the thing from my Power Beyond (always live, open-center) power take-off on the back of my old JD 855 tractor:
The valve has the auto-return detent, like most log splitter valves, which is real nice for automatically lowering the bed after you've dumped. I can let the auto-return feature lower the bed while I'm busy re-installing the tailgate, so I'm ready to roll right after dumping. Also, having the valve on the tractor means it will work with any old machine having a live loop, no need for third channel controls on the rear of the tractor, although that could work just as well. I like having the valve at the back of the wagon, since that's where I want to be when dumping, in case I need to grab a rake or shovel to coax things out.
The wagon is made by Country Mfg. I don't remember what I paid, it wasn't cheap, but it's a quality item... well worth whatever it cost. They probably have their current pricing posted on their site.
The wagon comes pre-configured for attaching a dump cylinder, so no fab work was needed there. The only welding or fab work I've ever done on this wagon was replacing the ears that attach the drawbar to the front axle steering mechansim, the originals were a bit light and I broke them with my regular maneuver of jack-knifing the wagon onto that porch shown in my first photo.
I probably bought the cylinder and valve from Surplus Center, I used to use them for a lot of my hydrualics, but again... too long ago to really even remember price or details. Probably $300 - $400 for the valve + cylinder, and I'd guess another $150 for the long hoses and couplers.
They also make a regular tandem-axle semi-trailer version of this, which would obviously take less brain power to reverse into tight quarters, but wouldn't be stable when loaded with a few thousand pounds of firewood and not attached to a tractor. Likewise, when moving dirt or mulch, I can disconnect this wagon from the tractor, and use my FEL to load the wagon, with zero concern for it tipping on me.
Oh, and for those talking about using your tractor's drawbar to move wagons... good luck doing that with this rig! When backing an articulated wagon like this, you really need the hitch to be far aft of the rear axle of the tractor, in order to get sufficient swing on the drawbar to steer the thing.
Obviously, there's two steering reversals happening, when you have articulated steering on a wagon, versus a regular semi-trailer. Most people think it's impossible to back these trailers into any tight space, but you can see I do it every 2 - 3 weeks thru or entire heating season, without too much trouble. It does take practice, but it's do-able with the same finesse and accuracy of a regular trailer, by the time you've done it a few hundred times.
