Lloyd Elliott hauls a lot of firewood out of the woods near his Mindemoya, Ont., home. To make the job easier, he and his dad, Bill, built a pair of ATV-pulled trailers designed to haul logs one behind the other. Both trailers were made from a single 200-gal. fuel oil tank.

"The trailers cost us almost nothing to build, and they have a light foot print in our woods," says Lloyd. "Each trailer is 5 ft. long, 32 in. wide and has 8-in. high sides. We cut logs 16-in. long so we can stack them two wide."

They cut the tank in half and mounted each half tank on axles off old 2-wheeled cutting torch carts that were no longer usable. The cut tank sides were bent to make each trailer wider and lower, making loading and unloading an easier job. The back end of each trailer is open.

"Each trailer holds 1/3 of a face cord of wood, and if the wood is light we can load a half cord," says Elliott. "Last year we hauled about 80 face cords out of the woods. We use a 1997 Kawasaki Prairie 400 4-wheeler to pull both trailers fully loaded, and it handles the weight with no problem. We do have to be careful going downhill, as the ATV has just enough braking power. 

"At first we pulled each trailer individually, but we wanted to reduce the number of trips so we added a trailer ball hitch on back of one trailer. We thought we'd have trouble pulling the two trailers together through the woods, but wherever our 4-wheeler goes the trailers follow."

The Elliotts make maple syrup during the spring. "We're only taking out dead or dying trees. The trailers go through the woods without destroying healthy, growing trees and are a lot less destructive than a skidder," notes Lloyd.