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“Best Buy” Rare Hay Hauler
Ryan Preul, Truxton, Mo., recently sent FARM SHOW photos of a round bale hauler with an unusual history. It’s his “best buy”.
    “The Binkley hay hauler is a small 4-bale machine that can pick up, haul, and unload big round bales using a small tractor,” says Preul. “It came out at a time when commercial round bale haulers weren’t widely available. It has a simple design that was way ahead of its time. I can’t believe it never took off. Yet I’ve never been able to find out anything about this machine. It’s possible that only a couple of prototypes were ever made.
    “A local inventor named Bob Baxter invented the machine and sold it to my grandpa in 1982. Grandpa died in 1993, and my dad used the machine until 1998 when he got out of farming. He sold the machine to a farmer about 50 miles away. I knew where the guy lived and called him every couple of years. He said he parked it under a tree but never used it because he didn’t understand how it worked. I was finally able to buy it at an auction in 2016 for about $700. I replaced a hydraulic cylinder that had started to pit and put new tires on. The machine was designed to operate on 3 remote outlets, but my tractor only has 2 outlets so I mounted a control box on the hitch to adjust the machine’s width.”
    The machine is made entirely from 4-in. square tubing and has a pair of rails that raise and lower hydraulically. It’s equipped with a pair of long arms in front.
    “The operator lowers the rails to the ground, then drives forward to pick up the bales. The rails slide under the bale and the sides hold it in place. Bales are unloaded out the back by reversing the process,” says Preul. “The width of the rails can be hydraulically adjusted from 46 to 76 in. to fit any size bale. At 46 in. wide the machine can easily travel down a 2-lane highway.”
    The raised hitch can be hydraulically swung over to pick up bales from either side of the tractor. A hinged gate on back allows you to load bales while backing up.
     Binkley was a small company that made a line of farm equipment including disks, wagons, and so forth. The company later sold out to SAS Holland located in Warrenton, Mo., which makes fifth wheel hitches and landing gears for semis.
    You can watch a video of the machine at farmshow.com.
    Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Ryan Preul, P.O. Box 185, Truxton, Mo. 63381 (ph 636 295-0706; ryan@rplandco.com).


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2020 - Volume #44, Issue #1