Slip-In Loader Bucket Hitch

Slip-In Loader Bucket Hitch TRACTORS Loaders 34-4-20 This spring I decided to plant a garden on FARM SHOW's "back forty". I don't have a rototiller so I called a local landscaper to break the sod with a tractor-mounted unit. Ken Dreher arrived towing a Deere tractor on a flatbed trailer behind a pickup. He had a big tiller on back of the tractor, which was also fitted with a front-end loader. He also had compost in the back of the pickup that he was going to till into the ground. After a while I looked out my office window and noticed Ken slipping something into the tractor's loader bucket. Next thing I knew he was towing the flatbed around with a ball hitch on the bucket. I went out to investigate. "I needed a way to quickly add a hitch to my loader bucket," says Dreher. He had seen other ways of adding a ball hitch to a loader bucket but he didn't want to modify the bucket and he didn't want to have to bolt or unbolt anything. So, he came up with a slip-in hitch that he can insert in seconds and can remove simply by tipping the bucket toward the ground. "It holds a trailer as solidly as any bolted-on hitch," says Dreher, who is a retired engineer. He made the slip-in hitch from angle iron and a receiver hitch. The only modification to the bucket is a small bar tach-welded to the top of the inside of the bucket where it's not visible. If he ever sells the tractor he can easily remove the bar. By the way, with the great growing weather we've had this spring, and good compost that Ken tilled into the ground, my garden's growing great. Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Ken Dreher, 14040 Furlong Trail, Hastings, Minn. 55033 (ph 651-329-8068; kdactions@aol.com).

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