Just a variation of what the old-timers called a stone boat, which was a sled pulled behind horses/mules/oxen, for moving rocks out of fields and such. I used to sub for an old guy who had a 3'x4' sheet of steel, prolly 3/16" thick, with a chain welded to it that he pulled behind his 4-wheeler. His guys could roll a 700# chunk onto it, and he could slide it right across the nicest of yards doing no damage.
A Custy of mine has a large steel one her dad built for behind his little dozer. We use it to stack fire wood off the ground for her to trade handyman for labor. I should get a photo of it sometime. This one would tear b up a yard though
For fairly deep snow, sounds like sleds would be less work than a 200' mat highway (to the one remaining removal at same site), but I don't have a sled right now so guess I'll try the mats.
So I woke up at 5am and thought about the job for an hour. Figured a mat highway would be pretty good but that's a lot of mats to move by hand. Then all the sled info here got me thinking of an alturna mat 'sled' with smooth side down, could probably get a lot done-load it up and pull it out over the snow with a 150'+rope.
Got to the job and then thought of the the notion of Eskimos with their 100 different words for snow (sastrugi!!) as I saw the snow had morphed over the weekend from Fridays's thick crusted broken plates with corn snow underneath to a wetter, packable snow that nicely allowed the Kubota to harmlessly zip in and out and nuke the doug fir take down deep in the back yard. Lordy the ease was so welcomed. I was pumped up to try the mat idea in place of a sled which I don't own but was rather happy to find tractor access.
I would like some talented design people to put up a clever way to modify the AT to accept a tow-slug, so that it can be a trailer dolly.
So far, I'm thinking a piece of tube steel, run crosswise resting on the top pair of round tubes, that bolts, clamps, or sleeves over the 'bottom' two stake tubes, with apiece of hitch tube welded perpendicular, and on top of the crosswise square tube.
Alternately, a piece of 4x4 wood attached to the frame with a piece of hitch tube clamped on.
I'd like the attachment to be the weak link, rather than the AT. Be lightweight, and cheap.
For ball coupler's , it could be set up pretty easy like a gooseneck. A wide piece of wood or steel to span the frame, with the tow ball extending upward. For a pintle hook, it would seem to need to extend from the end of the AT.
Yes, but as is, it's too far away, the lever arm isn't in your favor. Keep the coupler inside the AT frame if possible, or just at the end at least. The two rear stake tubes may give you some troubles though with their height to make some sharp turns. They can't go easily under the trailer's tongue and will be in the way for maneuvering.
The hand-truck behind should be as simple to modify and easier to use.
I'm envisioning a metal version that bears the load on the axle/ main frame, stabilized by the basket.
I would prefer it takes tow slugs so I could use it on my 4400 pound chipper that has a pintle ring, not only on ball couplers.
It's really useful to be able to manually spin the chipper for chip-onsite jobs.
It needs plywood or pavement, and isn't the easiest with the wheeled tongue jack, currently (I can do it solo, if I try).
One man could do it with the trailer dolly easier, I believe, as it would roll better, and have more leverage for spinning when attached at the end of the tongue. Two men, a breeze.
I can picture a lightweight "x-plate" laying on the top of the basket's round top tubes. It would have hitch tube(or possibly a round pipe sleeve for the BMG hitch) vertically welded in the middle-ish area. This would accept a piece of 2" tubing vertically, to which a piece of 2" hitch tube can be welded horizontally, to accept tow slugs.
This would need to be positioned with clearance for the stake pockets at the corner of the frame, and bearing the weight over the axle, as Marc-Antoine (is Marc your first name?) correctly pointed out.
I could imagine the "plate" basically being an X made from two pieces of flat bar and/or angle iron welded in the middle. Cut or grind notches on the end of the X that would butt into the stake pocket part of the frame, holding it in place. Probably needs a simple way of securing at two or more corners.
Possibly need to extend the round pipe on the BMG L-bracket tow hitch to the right length to rest on the frame.
Different idea. A 1" plywood platform resting on top of the stake pockets, with wooden corners around the outside to prevent shifting. One idea I've used before on another project, is to use a giant nail through a slanted hole, drilled into the plywood, matching the opening of the stake pocket. These nails will lock it down, a little bit like easy-to-remove toe-nailing.
I will need a 2" ball on a riser post, welded to a small metal plate, to be bolted to the plywood platform over the axle.
For spinning/ moving the chipper, I can put the pintle ring over the ball.
Latest idea.
Plywood notched around the stake pocket tubes, steadying it in two dimensions.
A square plate welded to a nut will allow different size tow balls to simply screw onto the nut/base plate. I'll protect the exposed threads from the pintle ring, so as not to damage the tow ball for standard use, if ever needed.
The base plate will have spacer/ riser boards beneath it to get the height right in relation to the plywood platform.
That's funny, we don't have the same scale of the things. First, you spoke about a light weigh trailer. Well, I see that, I have one. Then, it appears that it could be the 4400 lbs chipper !
My light weigh trailer is (legally) 1100 lbs fully loaded
The chipper only has about 100 pounds of tongue weight. We get by moving it on the jack, at the moment.
I would like to be able to move my stump grinder/ trailer around. It has a lot more tongue weight (more than 10% of the trailer weight), when the trailer doesn't have a can of grinding debris. Its can go into a building, if I can roll it by hand. Too much trouble otherwise, and it gets tarped.
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