best specs for hauling hay

A John Deere and a hay wagon

 

Or two...or three.

In all seriousness, the only consistency to hay haulers I've seen is that most are open-deck. Though I know first hand of an outfit that hauls hay in vans in the northeast.

 

Whatever gets good mpg... Unless the bales are damp there is rarely any issue with weight. Only people I know that run hay are part of a co-op, and they load from the field and offload into the feedstores. Hay is just something to run after harvest to keep busy, can't imagine it paying too well unless a region is very drought stricken.

 

@rank @Cottonmouth85

 

Depends on bale size. You can have 50k net with (60) 3x3x8 ft 825 lb bales on a 53 ft trailer so a light tare is good.

 

Around here, the trucks, trailers and bales are all held together with baling twine.....

 

It's actually very easy to be overweight if hauling round or big square bales, not so much with small squares(idiot cubes). I run a 48x102 all aluminum flat with a 4' extension on the back, and only haul big bales. If hauling small bales then a step deck is definitaly the way to go.

 

Boom!

 

Being a part time farmer and owning a trucking outfit, I haul hay from time to time. It's always short hauls of 20 miles or so though.

I've hauled both small squares and rolls on flatbed, step, and van. Step works the best IMO. Lots of tractors can't reach high enough to fully load a flat and if you are loading small squares by hand, flatbed can be murder.

We've got a couple of old vans that we will load small squares in and just leave it there until it's fed.

Although I've never hauled them, the big squares look like the easiest to haul. Small squares and rolls are a pain to tie down. If we are just hauling on the farm, we won't use securement. It will stay on pretty well if you load it right.