MORTLACH, Sask. – Barrels are becoming a more common way to deliver farm chemicals, so farmers often have to handle containers that weigh 100 kilograms or more.
That’s fine if they have a forklift or front end loader handy, but if they don’t, it can be an inconvenience.
Philip Simrose ran into this problem with his burnoff chemical.
“When I started getting Clearout barrels, I wanted some way I could dump them quickly. With pumps, I find that you spill quite a bit when you take the pump off the barrels. I wanted something so I could dump straight into my Handler, so I started working on it the first year I got Clearout,” said Simrose, who farms near Mortlach.
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“The other thing is, I don’t have a decent front end loader. I wanted something I could unload a pickup truck with.”
Simrose designed and built a dolly-type unit he calls a barrel lift. He used 1.5 inch square tubing, with two uprights and a cross member for the main frame.
“It has a sliding carriage that rides up and down on the cross member. The sliding carriage is lifted with a cable winch. The cable goes over the top, through pulleys and down the other side of the sliding system,” he said.
“That carriage has a plate on the bottom, similar to a dolly. You go up to a barrel, slide the plate underneath, then use a tie-down to strap the barrel on. To lift, you turn the winch and it lifts the barrel straight up.”
As it’s lifting the barrel, an arm goes over the back with a chain attached to the bottom of the frame. Simrose sets the chain to the height at which he wants to tip the barrel.
When the chain becomes tight, it starts tipping the barrel as the carriage keeps moving up. This means it lifts and tips at the same time.
“There are other barrel lifts on the market, but there’s none as simple as this,” Simrose said.
“Most have a different mechanism to tip it, from what lifts it. Because of that, and because I tip it through the centre of the uprights, it means I can make it a lot lighter and more inexpensive than some of the other ones.”
He mainly uses it for dumping chemical barrels and moving them around.
“There’s some barrels you can’t open up to dump; you have to pump them. But a lot of the ones I’ve used – all the Syngenta ones – you can dump. Bravo, Clearout, Target and Reglone. The nice thing with the chemical is it’s easy to clean out the barrels.”
When Simrose wants to empty a barrel, he’ll put a bung in the opening. When he’s done dumping the chemical, he puts a T on his Chem Handler with a one-inch pipe, sticks the pipe in the top hole, opens the valve on the T and it sends a one-inch jet of water into the barrel.
“I can have that barrel dumped and flushed out in less than a minute. It’s fast compared to pumping, especially for highly viscous chemicals like Bravo.”
Simrose said his barrel lift looks like a dolly, but there are two front wheels at the end of the lower arms, along with the two big wheels on the back of the frame. That allows him to move heavier loads, with the lift built to handle up to 500 pounds.
“It’s designed to lift a full 45 gallon barrel,” he said.
“The Clearout barrels are 110 litres. With them, you can use it like a dolly. With the 200 litre barrels, it will lift them, then you have to wheel them around on all four wheels.”
The front wheels make it easier to load the empty barrel lift into the back of a half ton truck.
“I can hook those over the edge of the pickup end gate and lift it up with the leverage of the unit. Even though it’s 100 pounds, it’s quite easy to lift onto the pickup if you know what you’re doing.”
While pesticide barrels are the main target for the barrel lift, Simrose said it also comes in handy for other jobs.
“It works for lifting heavy objects. I use it for loading and unloading trucks. It’ll lift about 42 inches, so it will put things on the back of a semi flat deck or into the back of a half ton,” Simrose said.
“I’ve used it for lifting heavy objects like a Mig welder. You could use it to lift aeration fans up into place, depending on how high they have to go.”
Simrose is also building the barrel lift to sell. He said he charges about $600, with the winch.
“I’ve got to sell it with a fairly expensive winch. If people have their own winch, then I’d sell it for $520 without the winch. But if people are going to put their own on, I’d recommend a self-braking winch, just for safety concerns.”
For more information, contact Simrose at 306-355-2709.
