Pickup trucks are good for a lot of things. They can tow massive amounts of cargo and haul thousands of pounds in their beds. With the right attachments, your average pickup truck can do a whole lot more, like become a piece of genuinely useful farming or industrial equipment.
A recently submitted patent application from one Justin Morgan Nelson of Townsend, Montana, that I stumbled across this morning does just that, showing off a piece of equipment that can bolt into the bed of a pickup and act as a modular forklift or hay bale loader, depending on the attachments it’s equipped with.
While there are plenty of similar pickup bed attachments like this, none of them that I could find have the kind of articulation presented by this idea. In addition to being able to fold flat onto the bed, it can also angle itself on different axes, making farm work or cargo maneuvering that much easier.
If you’ve ever worked on a farm or even driven past one on a highway, you’ve probably seen those gigantic cylindrical hay bales scattered throughout the fields. These haybales, which are usually used to feed livestock, are transported by loading them onto flatbeds. Because of their shape and composition, the best way to get haybales from the ground to the bed of a truck is to either stab them with big metal spears or squeeze them from the side with big grips and pick them up.
This can be done in many different ways with many different pieces of equipment, according to the patent application:
The management of small hay lease properties often results in haystacks at various locations. Transporting equipment between these sites to pick up hay is time-consuming and inefficient. Moving a tractor with a hay loader attachment can take hours and requires a second person for transportation logistics.
That’s where this modular, pickup-bed-mounted loader device comes in:
The present invention provides a solution that makes loading hay and other heavy objects a one-person job, while simultaneously reducing the need for multiple pieces of equipment.
Loading hay using a device that attaches to the back of a pickup bed is nothing new. Search online, and you’ll find dozens of attachments that mount to the trailer hitch, tailgate, or bed itself. A lot of them look something like this piece:
Or, for larger bales, there are devices like this:
For some context, here’s what these things look like when they’re actually moving haybales around:
Where this patent application differs is that it’s more than just a couple of spears that pivot on one axis. The device itself is an apparatus of metal beams constructed to resemble that of a front loader, hydraulically and electrically controlled to adjust on two axes, not just one. This means that in addition to being able to get haybales or pallets off the ground, they can be dropped or placed atop flatbeds with precision.
Being mounted to the bed of a pickup, the device can be tucked into the bed when not in use, allowing the driver to tow a trailer without having to remove it. According to the inventor, this effectively means you don’t need a second vehicle, like a tractor or front loader, to get haybale transport done. From the application:
Unlike a tractor, which is limited to around 15 mph, a pickup truck can travel at highway and dirt road speeds, significantly reducing transport time. The loader also enables a bumper pull trailer to be towed on the same vehicle, making it possible for one person to load and move hay independently. During winter feeding, an operator can drive to a hay stack, unhook the trailer, load the necessary bales, reattach the trailer, and continue feeding all without relying on a tractor, which may be difficult to start in cold weather. This solution is more time- and fuel-efficient, as it consolidates the work into a single vehicle operation.
What I like most about this thing is how easy it is to install and operate. It runs on a 12-volt car battery and can be charged either through a plug to the truck or through a solar panel. It can mount to any pickup with a fifth-wheel towing setup, with a towing ball in the bed, and secures with a standard gooseneck-style trailer latch.
It can also do more than just haybales. Though all of the drawings show the device with haybale spears, they can be removed and replaced with different attachments, such as forks for pallets, buckets for scooping dirt, or even man baskets, which are those buckets that people get into at the end of cherry pickers.
While the rear of an F-150 probably isn’t the best forklift substitute, it’s certainly better than having to go without a forklift at all, or having to buy a forklift or front loader just for a job you’ll have to do a few times a year. As the patent application says, this device is a nice all-in-one solution for someone who’s working by themselves, and would rather have a vehicle that can do it all as opposed to several more specialized pieces of farm equipment. In many cases, having something like this device is more cost-effective and, in some cases, less time-consuming than having to swap to a front-loader or forklift.
Top graphic images: USPTO; DepositPhotos.com
Forklift safety?
As usual, the Germans have already figured it out.
Unimogs have had forklift attachments for years but are an expensive niche vehicle. This looks unnecessarily elaborate for spearing hay bales,and is going to need something more substantial than a gooseneck hitch. As an aside you’ll need at least an F250 and more likely an F350 for this
Came here to make the same comment about a half-ton not working for this. I can’t imagine a standard F150 handling the weight of a round bale hanging off the ass-end of it unless it had some seriously upgraded suspension.
They actually don’t really mind it. Not an F150, but my grandpa/uncles have had second gen Dodge Ram 1500 (of the big rig bodystyle vintage) and a 70s Chevy pickup as farm trucks and I’ve driven both with hay bales on the back like that. There is definitely a little tilt up, but you’re still a long way from hitting the bump stops unless you find the really big ditches in the pasture.
In the bed is one thing, having it cantilevered off the end is totally different.
Sorry, wasn’t clear, I mean using one of the hydraulic spear lifters like shown in the article, so cantilevered off the back of the bed. https://images-stag.jazelc.com/uploads/theautopian-m2en/haybale-spear.jpg
Hay is for horses…ha ha
I have several conversations about whether farmers would use this
Yes
And whether they would use it safely
No
But the use cases would’ve better handled by one of these
https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http%3A%2F%2Fbale-buddy.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2024%2F09%2FThe-Bale-Buddy-Manual-Model.png&tbnid=ESBBEeivCF6xwM&vet=1&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Fbale-buddy.com%2F&docid=6xiJJaFE0dkToM&w=1164&h=688&hl=en-US&source=sh%2Fx%2Fim%2Fm4%2F0&kgs=17f0fd36baccd6bb
Edit button not working on my iPhone, but wanted to add that obviously agriculture related stuff is popular, maybe tractor Tuesdays should be a thing.
It’s farmer / rancher ingenuity. The amount of 12v hydraulic pumps that have been used by farmers / ranchers on niche solutions is way up there. Things that most people don’t even think about like manure spreading. It’s always been that way the first bobcat / skid steer was made because a turkey farmer was sick of mucking out his turkey house by hand.
A lot of ranchers already have such a device. I’ve only ever seen them on flatbeds. But they are primarily used to take a round bale out to feed cattle. They raise and lower with remote.
I’ve seen a homemade winch setup that did the same thing. It was mounted on a plate and then they had a receiver put on the front of their pickups. 500lbs of weight on the front of a pickup with nothing in the bed was a bad idea so they had tool boxes in the their pickup beds so started using them as counter weights or would fill a water tank up and use that.
We had a wwII 6×6 bomb loader truck that was great for that sort of stuff until someone needed a flatbed and torched it off “temporarily” then after 15 years or so it got made into an engine hoist. I think it was to put Oldsmobile CHP car engines into the 6x6s
MacGyver would have been totally believable if he’d been a farmer.
Especially a dairy farmer. The things you see on a dairy farm would make just about any inspector sans USDA or other AG cringe. Plus dairy farmers tend to get involved in different things.
We had a Gurnsey dairy farm. With terracotta barns designed by an architect, and mechanical systems designed by a CalTech engineer. It was the most famous Gurnsey Herd in the world, and got visitors from all over. I just packed up a picture of the US secretary of agriculture pouring a glass of milk for some foreign leader in our front yard.
I grew up thinking that was normal.
Like, everyone can take a cow on a cable car right?
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_CYV1CmTRK2N13TEr2LiR8snKQgR-s1k/view?usp=drive_open
Almost sounds like Pocantico. I can’t imagine milking cows in a marble barn but they did it. Now the robots are milking all the cows with less chaos. The Adohr heard?
I haven’t visited Pocantico, but I was invited to some sort of function there a dozen years ago. I used to live at her cousins’ estate up the road in Barrytown.
We had Cleverlands in northern California.
We bred Cleverlands Darimost Chrystal who was owned and shown by Lester Lurvey and Sons in Wisconsin and was the first Gurnsey to be World Dairy Expo Supreme Champion in 1979. And we sold a lot of breeding bulls. We produced more pounds of milk per cow than any of the small research herds and we had 700 cows,
My grandmother had a one page ad in Hoard’s Dairyman and the Gurnsey breeders journal every month for 30 years and eventually ran out of things to write about the cows and started writing about her grandchildren. I used to bet friends that I could walk into any county fair in the country and find a stranger that knew more about me than they did.
Google Cleverlands Darimost Chrystal, she still has fans now – weird.
I saw Pocantico when was visiting a buddy who was playing professor at an ag school up there. The school has a some kind of deal with and uses Pocantico for things. I think their dairy heard is on the grounds there. The marble mosaic on the floor of the barn is something else. But the whole barn you really question who had this much money that they thought this was a good idea.
The people into show cattle are a bit out there almost like the thoroughbred people just less money but apparently they throw more money around in Brazil.
Well, when you have as much money as Rockefeller, as the saying goes.
And obviously they had exactly as much money as Rockefeller, so there you are.
Given the ph of what you find on the floor of a barn, marble would not be my first choice.
Marble isn’t even good for the floor of a kitchen.
I could use one of those for loading and unloading pallets every couple of years. A pallet of books is about 4000 pounds. Might want to stick some blocks between the frame and the rear axle to do it though.
Ruan has been using a forklift like this mounted on the rear of a tandem rear axle semi-tractor for years to unload construction materials from trailers on site.
They are driving all over on the highway around here. Gotta watch out for those blades when you pass them when they’re empty.
I’m not super familiar with gooseneck couplings, but a standard gooseneck will have a tongue load pressing down (compression) on top of the connection, and then a shear load laterally as the trailer is pulled.
This would be pivoting about the lift chassis and putting a tension load upwards on that ball connection. Is that ok for goosenecks?
It’s pretty common to load equipment on a gooseneck that will cause the trailer and raise up but will stay on ball. Granted it’s shock and not substained upwards force without other forces interacting. The actual receiver on the hay spike device might be bolted to help with that.
Not really the same but similar idea they make what they call a DTU for class 8 trucks that mounts to a fifth wheel. It allows them you to turn a class 8 truck in to a wrecker for other class 8 trucks.
Props to the fabricator that suggested a hammer finish on the weldments. Anytime I get pressure to reduce costs I get nothing but sass when I tell sales and engineering to spec a hammer finish to reduce fabrication costs.
Having driven a forklift, I don’t think this is going to be very useful. A real forklift has (nearly) zero radius steering, and a bunch of adjustments to help you get the forks where they need to be.
I can’t even imagine trying to back up a truck and get the forks aligned with the lifting points of a pallet. Even with a camera back there.
There are real forklifts on Marketplace for $2500 or less. There is no way this is less than that.
I think the hay bale application is the most useful aspect here. You could hook up a trailer to your truck with this attachment in the bed, drive out to a field, disconnect the trailer at the edge of the field, pick up bales with your truck and place them on the trailer, stow the attachment, hook up the trailer, and drive off to a storage barn faster than having to use a tractor for all of that.
Still though, anyone who needs to do this regularly probably already has a bale loader for their tractor, so I see this is a niche tool for a farmer that doesn’t need to do it a lot. Can’t be a huge market, but there’s something there.
Yeah, you can’t just drive any old forklift into the field. That said, I agree that anyone who has this much hay likely has a suitable tractor or bobcat for it. My mom has a tiny 10 acres and a tractor was, like, purchase number one.
I’m excited to know this, but am unsure of what shenanigans I can get into with a cheap Facebook forklift.
If you get extended forks and have a deathwish, a forklift can be a handy makeshift car lift.
Practice, plus hay bales are out in the open.
Being able to drive a few miles over fields or on the highway is the point of this, and most forklifts suck at that.
The more I look at and think about this thing the less I like it. The company trying to convince customers that it is safe to stick a very heavy weight well behind the truck’s center of mass and without an axle beneath it while driving at highway speeds sounds like a wrongful death lawsuit waiting to happen. They’re selling it as an expedient measure so you don’t have to bother with doing the work safely. If you need an 18 foot ladder then you need an 18 foot ladder, rigging your 12 foot ladder to sit on top of your 6 foot A-frame ladder is not a good solution.
what? where does it say you are driving down the highway carrying a load? the intent is to pull a normal flatbed trailer and use this to load the trailer in a field, then hook back up and go
“Unlike a tractor, which is limited to around 15 mph, a pickup truck can travel at highway and dirt road speeds, significantly reducing transport time.”
They are flat out saying you can use it that way.
I can see that interpretation, but I still think they mean you can use this unladen as a truck at car speeds, drive to a worksite, use it as a forklift, then stow the forklift hardware and use it as a car again.
Compare that to a tractor or forklift which is limited to low speeds regardless if it actually hauling anything or not.
I see what you mean. Maybe they will clarify that if it goes to market. I interpreted it as saying you could move an individual bale down the road without having to use a tractor to load it on to a trailer and then tie it down.
From the diagrams, I’m not sure you can, or should hook a trailer up while having this mounted on the truck. Not to mention payload capacity being occupied by this lift.
Someone will, 100%, load this up with a round bale and drive down the highway
Here the semi tractors converted to forklifts haul 1500 pound bales on the highway all the time.
It’s much more efficient that taking a truck and trailer and a forklift to a field with two drivers loading up the trailer with the forklift, driving the truck and trailer and the forklift to the customer, and unloading the trailer when you could just have the driver with the forklift make three trips. Plus, the trailer might have trouble maneuvering at someone’s horse barn or dairy.
Do the forks on the converted semis lift the bales up and over the rear wheels? It looks like this system is designed to pivot upright, but clearance aside putting that much weight above the bed of a pickup seems like a really bad idea. A semi should be able to do it though.
Farming has by far the highest occupational death rate except for a few niche industries. Ever wonder why?
“One thing about living in Santa Carla I never could stomach; all the damn vampires.”
I’m trying to visualize the Venn diagram of “Who needs this” and “Who doesn’t already have equipment to do the job”. I can’t imagine there’s much overlap.
And given the weight this thing would be lifting and the distance from the rear axle, I’m guessing you’d want a 350/3500 pickup at a minimum, to get the stronger axel and extra leaf spring. That probably makes any overlap in that Venn diagram even smaller.
Add some wheels that extend down below or behind the pickup bed to relieve the stress on the rear axle and maybe it improves the mechanics, but still a pretty hard sell.
Really neat idea; not commercially viable.
There’s a Venn diagram, but you’re also missing a circle for the group of people who don’t have a proper tool, and should never operate a tool like this, but will want this as an excuse for not getting an appropriate tool for the few times that they should have borrowed the proper tool from a someone who has one.
Good point. That, plus the YouTubers that would buy it and abuse it to the point of destruction just for clicks…
So, yeah, you’re right – there does need to be some additional areas on the diagram. 🙂
Don’t almost all cars fit into the same situation?
Or washing machines, TV sets, I don’t know, how about shoes? Don’t most shoe customers already have shoes?
Except at the beach, My daughter worked a concession stand at Coney Island for a couple summers and a remarkable number of people bought shoes because they lost them at the beach.
This looks like what they have on the back of HD Semis for getting their forklift on and off
I love how the article mentions turning a F-150 into a forklift, yet in the actual article photos, none of the trucks shown are an F-150.
I sure as hell wouldn’t trust a 1/2 ton truck to handle a large hay bale hanging off its back end. The idea of some yahoo sticking a 600lb bale on the back of their family sedan spec truck and trying to go down the highway with it is pretty scary.
I’m sure they totally won’t go trundling down roads at high speeds from the farm they picked up the bale for “a quick 45min drive” back home.
Pinky swear.
Those big bales are 1000-1500 pounds, and the rear axle will be taking twice that load since something is going to have to balance that.
People definitely drive big bales down the road, but not with this on a f150.
I mean, my dad would try, he drove a set of caterpillar tracks to be refurbished in the back of a Datsun 720 pick up, but he was an expert in breaking things, then welting in a bunch more steel and finding the second weakest part.
It’ll be fine bud!
Worst case, you go over a bump, the front of the truck points at the sky, but that’ll bring the bale down onto the road, where it’ll get pulled off the tines, and the truck will slam back down on to it’s wheels.
Sure, the bale might be a bit of a problem for vehicles behind you, but hey, they’re behind you, and your truck is now much lighter, easy get away!
It requires a gooseneck trailer hitch, those are pretty rare on 150s, can’t remember the last time I saw one, if ever
Mine has one. It’s useful for the two horse trailer I have. I’ll also use it for moving the flatbed when it’s not loaded. Once I went to a gooseneck setup, I had no intention of buying another bumper pull, even for the two horse. It’s just so much nicer.
I actually saw a 150 towing a gooseneck a few days ago. Granted, it was an older beat-up farm truck, towing some farming equipment, on a farm, and something tells me the farmer doesn’t actually use that truck anywhere except the farm, but I still saw it.
That’s one of the things I’ve noticed about Silvestro’s articles. He plays a little fast and loose with things and fills in blanks that aren’t supported/supportable, or throws out opinions I just majorly disagree with.
I guess maybe a lot of the other writers here do some of that too, but Silvestro seems to trigger a lot more “um, what?” when I read his stuff. Frequently I see the byline and just skip the article completely.
I feel like this is purpose-built for farmers that need to quickly grab bales, but aren’t at the level where they need a dedicated Hay Squeeze.
As a Certified Forklift instructor, I’d like to point out that trying to do any high lift work with something that has suspension at the fulcrum axle, is a recipe for a workplace accident.
Agree, I don’t think I’d lift anything that much heavier than a haybale super high in the air with this thing
Round bales can get upwards of 1600lbs, I wouldn’t want to do that either.
8 inches is plenty high.
And I’d carry some blocks for the suspension since you’re going to be on the bump stops anyway.
“8 inches is plenty”
That’s what she said…
Length or diameter?
I sure could use a dedicated Hay Squeeze right about now….
What’s a little squeeze between friends?
This would have saved Vlad the Impaler so much time.
Most farmers who routinely move hay bales already have bale spears for their tractors. I could see this being useful for people who have a few horses and want to use the machine they already have to move bales around instead of buying a tractor heavy enough to do it. Think of it as a homeowner’s forklift since large farms and construction sites will already have dedicated machines that can do the work much better than something you stick on the back of a pickup.
Seems to be pretty specific – you want to pick up one bale and move it at road speed rather than tractor speed, and maybe pull a smaller trailer while you do it. If it could lift round bales to flatbed height, you could load a flatbed without bringing a tractor over, but you’re probably having to muscle those bales around and that gets old quick.
Our baby Kubota can juuust handle a ~500# round bale, and that’s good enough for our purposes.
That’s when you realize that you should get small square bales, instead.
I struggle to understand who this is for- a real farmer will have better tools and a cosplay farmer will not want to turn their truck into a dedicated hay mover.
I don’t farm but I do have acreage and the need to move pallets around occasionally. I’d rather not spend the money, space, and maintenance time on a dedicated skid steer or tractor if I don’t need to, so something like this might fit the bill for me.
If I’m understanding right, the only permanent part is the 5th wheel hitch, the rest is removable from the truck bed.
Looks heavy enough that you’re gonna be using a hoist, tractor bucket or telehandler to pick it on and off the bed though.
I wonder if one could build a stationary structure where they can back up, stick the prongs into the wall and use the machine to lift itself off of the truck, just like those little forklifts you see stabbed into the back of semi trailers, having apparently lifted themselves into that position. Should be a fairly simple apparatus for loading/unloading this device if the user is short on space and doesn’t want a single-purpose hoist.
I have a hoist, but yeah that would be a concern too.
Jack it up, and back the truck under it. Just like a slide in camper.
That’s my use case as an ex-farmer. There are a few times where a pallet jack isn’t enough, and a forklift is necessary. This thing isn’t the right tool, but it gives me an idea.
What I really need is something like this, but able to lift verticaly 52 inches.
Available for rent would be good. I need it in a couple of weeks and maybe for a couple hours a year.
If it cost twice as much as hiring a forklift and driver for an afternoon, it would be a great product.
I keep eyeing those walk-behind electric stackers for that kind of thing, but being able to operate on rough ground would be a plus. I’d get 3-point pallet forks for my baby Kubota but they only lift things 12″ or so.
Could see something with a plate that slides into the bed and a tongue that slides into a square receiver hitch, but it’ll be kinda limited since you’re basically working with your truck’s rated tongue weight, not payload or towing weight.
I don’t know what you mean about “real” farmers, since all the ones I’ve met will use anything at their disposal in the most creative ways. That someone actually came up with something like this in their barn for picking up bales with their pickup – also see the less sophisticated bale lifters – is proof that a farmer would rather use what they have instead of borrowing the telehandler from down the road. Especially since having more things to get bales off the field makes the work quicker and more efficient.
Spending all day fluxing around with this gadget is not more efficient than a hay dolly that has no battery, no complex mechanical parts, and is already abundantly available in both used and new options. Real farmers are the ones that make money, not the ones that are stuck in the past welding together angle iron bed frames to make their own plow.
These things are kind of scary when used as intended, but they have so many off label uses that they were one of my favorite pieces of farm equipment
https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fd3j17a2r8lnfte.cloudfront.net%2Fbkr2%2F2023%2F3%2Flarge%2FqhfLvJ7lspgRncnHQvCwHdq4.jpeg&tbnid=Brw5poQLI-6Z_M&vet=1&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bookerauction.co%2Fauctions%2F8740%2Flot%2F19998-implement-carrier&docid=tp1Q0UnCG4S1CM&w=2000&h=1500&hl=en-US&source=sh%2Fx%2Fim%2Fm4%2F0&kgs=253bcb2b8bade97b
Can’t beat them for picking things up and putting them down, and carefully moving them. Do they tip over when you move them? Yes, quite frequently.
We built one from plans that the university of California distributed.
“I struggle to understand who this is for”
OBVIOUSLY Vlad The Impaler
The example of it on the flatbed is what you want. I wouldn’t trust a 1/2 ton doing this long term, but I like to baby 1/2 tons compared to some, I wouldn’t plow with one either.
Might be useful for a farm truck you’ve got no use for otherwise, but taking the whole bed over like that really limits the trucks utility in the future. Not something to take in and out easily.
This falls into “you could, but should” territory.
It uses the gooseneck hitch, so looks likke a relatively simple on/off operation.
you can lift that by hand and stash it away neatly? Sounds easy!
Of course not, but just like you need a jack to change tires, there’s proper equipment for doing this, and it doesn’t necessarily require another vehicle. With a hoist or equivalent, the install time/complexity seems trivial.
Is there a reason this can’t be used in any truck with a Gooseneck hitch? What makes this F150 specific?
It might work, but what’s holding the truck in place when needed, or doing the moving for the digging attachments?
I’d also say the bigger reason is that it was designed with specifically for some guys f-150, and that’s where we know it works. Until you, or someone else tries it on a gooseneck, no one will know.
I think you’d have to chock the wheels every time you use it to pick up or put down something. It’s doable but also highlights the limitations and iffy safety of the system IMO.
I wasn’t speculating on if it works, though after having thought through it based on yours and several other comments I can see this being a pretty limited tool, certainly a hammer looking for a nail. I guess I would expect it to read “Turn Your Pickup Truck Into A Real-Deal Forklift**”
**Only tested on one particular F150, YMMV
I want this for the next time I am tailgated by some impatient Chevy Silverado.
You could just put one of those fork tines into your trailer hitch.
Bonus points if you have a pair of truck nutz dangling under the hitch.
Are those still around? I feel like when gender became a public topic those faded away.
They are still around, but I see them used ironically as often as I see them on trucks. Watching truck nuts dangle barely above the pavement off the back of a Ford Fusion made me chuckle.
Which has the added bonus of making them toxic to the type of ppl who would put them on their trucks unironically. Doing the Lord’s work…
I have an idea for Jason’s 2CV….
Truck nuts are still selling on Amazon. Whether installing those nutz on a gender fluid truck prays the they/them away is unknown.
I forget where but I read there are two ppl claiming to have invented truck nuts. The two “originals” have different designs. If I recall correctly, one features veins. This difference is apparently significant to the feuding inventors.
You win the internet today!