"With a capacity of 100 cu. yds. they hold about 30 cu. yds. more than most semi-truck dump boxes," says Loren Weaver who built a pair of giant forage wagons that dump out the back in less than two minutes.

"We don't know of a larger dump wagon on the market," says the Wooster, Ohio, farmer. "We built them this spring to streamline our silo-filling operation. When we were using trucks we needed three or four men. With the wagons, we're down to a two-man operation. One drives the chopper and one uses our new 185 hp JCB Fastrac to pull the wagons back to our bunk silos which are up to 20 miles away from some fields. The JCB travels at speeds of up to 40 mph fully loaded."

The home-built wagons are 30 ft. long by 10 ft. wide by 7 ft. high. The boxes are made of 12 ga. steel with the framework made out of 1/4-in. thick steel. They have heavy-duty, triple axles off semi trailers used to transport automobiles. The axles are equipped with air brakes, as is the Fastrac, for fast stops. They're fitted with 22.5 by 18 in. flotation tires.

Wagons feature self-opening tailgates that open with chains when they're raised for dumping. They're equipped with 50-ton hoists and dumping takes 1 1/2 minutes. "Our Deere 610 self-propelled forage chopper equipped with a 375 hp Cummins diesel pulls them easily on flat ground but has its hands full on hills," Weaver notes.

After building the first wagon in March, the framework of the second wagon was reinforced with a second thickness of 1/4-in. steel, Weaver says. "The framework underneath has to be extremely stable and we didn't think one thickness was quite adequate," he says.

Weaver, who puts up 20,000 to 25,000 tons of silage every year, says he would consider building a few wagons for others if there's interest.