Hopper, Dump O/O's & Drivers

How well does your automatic tarp opener work when tarp is frozen?

 

Big John,i'm purty sure 7mouths hauled whole cottonseed when he was pulling a hopper,and i hauled it out of Burgreen & Black cotton gin in northern Alabama,can't for the life of me remember the town,when i was feeding it to our cows and hauling grain south for DeBruce.The trick to hauling it for me,at least,was to tie a good sized rope to your bow directly over the trap,leave about 2 to 3 ft. of slack at the top near the bow,which required getting in each hopper after they were about 2/3 to 3/4 full,and let about a foot of rope lay flat on the trap,with big knots tied in it every foot or so, the whole length of each rope in each hopper.The key was to have 1 feller pulling at the bottom while one feller was on top pulling,kinda like a sawing motion,that was the best way to get a good hole opened up.You had to be patient once the hole was opened up,and not push to much at the hole too fast,or it would clog,but it was do-able,and payed decent to get me back home when i took corn south.It still took a couple of hours to unload the dang stuff,but it worked a lot better than trying to drill or poke a hole through it like the folks on the video were doing,but most dairies had some type of pit to unload in,so that made it easier on the guy pulling the rope from the bottom. I think the most i ever got on the 41x66 hopper was 22.5T walked in, and it was a tad 'green'.

 

I use to load calcium over by Salisaw, OK bound for Guymon, OK, by the time I got their it set up like cement. I had to get in the trailer with a shovel and start digging, it sucked and by the time I was done I looked like casper the ghost. I think dynamite would work a lot better. I will put it on my list of things not to haul. lol

 

I guess when you have too much snow but you have to do it on the fuel island. I use to do this when I pulled hoppers back in my early twenties (I did a lot things in my early twenties I wouldn't do know, lol.) and wouldn't even think about trying this now.

 

Dairyman I use to feed whole cottonseed to my beef cows in the winter when it was cheap. We just got it local and used dumps. My dad used to get his own seed every year at the gin to feed. He hauled it on bobs and they scooped it out daily as needed. It's great feed but I can't imagine gettin it out of a hopper.

 

I took the pic of the guy on the trailer, but forget where. The videos were off youtube.com look up grain hauling or trucking etc... I have a bunch of pics of hoppers from old to new.

 

No kidding, that's what walking floors are for!