Belgian manufacturer Joskin – best known here in Ireland for its range of slurry tankers – is now equipping its Wago bale trailers with hydraulic sides – to hold the bales in place whilst hurtling up and down the road.
While these trailers, with their front-dolly design, may not in themselves have mass appeal here in Ireland (there are already plenty of home-grown trailer manufacturers), the concept of fitting hydraulic ‘sides’ is gaining momentum.
Late last year, for example, we brought you news of SlurryKat’s latest trailer – which sports a bale clamping system (consisting of of full-length, galvanised steel ‘clamps’ on each side of the trailer).
This Joskin trailer follows a broadly similar theme; the manufacturer says that its hydraulic ‘side ladders’ enable you to “rapidly and safely secure a load of bales” – by simply operating a hydraulic spool valve.
The ‘side ladders’, and consequently the bales, are then held in position by check-valves. Joskin says that the use of straps, and the constant checking and tightening, is no longer needed.
The ‘side ladders’ can be lowered on both sides, so you can load or unload from either the right or the left.
The hydraulic ‘ladders’ are designed to be used with bales with “most common dimensions” – a double row of three (piled up) 90cm-high square bales; four (piled up) 70cm-high square bales; or two or three round bales with a diameter from 1.2m right up to even 2m.
Round tubing is used to minimize bale damage.
Will we see more (bale) trailers adopt this approach? Is it worthwhile or is it an over-engineered answer to a question that few were asking? Watch this space…
