FARGO, N.D. – Farmers who want a liquid cart to follow closely in the tracks of their tractors or seeding implements may want to explore four-wheel steering carts.
This year’s Big Iron Show in Fargo debuted a pair of American-made four-wheel steering carts.
A more advanced all-wheel steering cart from Pattison Liquid Systems in Saskatchewan is also generating interest in the United States, though it hasn’t been shown there yet.
Redball
The Redball system is simple. The front and rear axles pivot left or right on greaseable turning plates. A hiem joint at the front left connects to the steering rod, which has another similar hiem joint at the right rear.
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“It has a tighter turning radius and does a better job of following your tractor or your planter in the corners,” said company spokesperson Tony Fath.
When the front axle turns one direction, the rod pushes the rear axle out to the opposite direction.
This puts the four tires into a symmetrical steering arc.
The two inner tires cramp up close to each other while the outer tires spread out to follow the larger radius. Turning radius is 11 feet 10 inches.
“Over 25 mph, four-wheel steering gets pretty squirrelly,” Fath said.
“So for transit, you simply disconnect from the front steering axle and connect it solid to the frame so you have conventional two-wheel steering.”
Four-wheel steering is standard equipment on all Redball 1,600 gallon liquid carts.
JD Skiles Co.
Engineers at JD Skiles have a slightly different steering design for their Row-Tracker cart, which they call all-wheel steering.
Instead of one steering rod tying the front and rear pivoting axles together, they use two rods that criss-cross in the middle of the cart chassis.
One steering rod runs from the front left to the right rear. The other runs from the front right to the left rear. In addition to the greaseable turning plates, they also use steel support casters to support the weight at the rear of the machine.
The extra steel may be necessary because the largest of the Row-Tracker carts has a liquid capacity of 2,000 gallons and a dry capacity of 195 bushels.
The company’s smaller carts have a turning radius of 12 feet while the larger carts have a turning radius of 22 feet.
Pattison
The all-wheel steering trend isn’t new to Rick Pattison at Lemberg, Sask.
He said Pattison Liquid Systems has built a number of such carts, but it uses a centre-articulated design.
“We watched some of the other carts in action in the field before we designed ours. That’s why ours articulates in the middle like a four-wheel drive tractor. So it truly follows behind the planter or tractor in the rows.”
He said there is no need for all-wheel steering in cereal crops. It’s mainly for row crops.
“You need it either at seeding, behind the corn planter, or if you go back to knife in some nitrogen later, so you don’t trample the rows. With a center articulating cart, it follows exactly between the rows.”
However, a center-articulated cart presents challenges when mounting a big liquid tank.
“That’s really not a problem because our customers often want to put down liquid nitrogen and starter phosphate. And they want to keep them separate because they’re putting it into two different places in the soil. So we have the bigger tank on the back for nitrogen and the smaller one on the front for phosphate.”
For more information, contact Tony Fath at 320-843-4932 or visit www.redballproducts.com, Rick Pattison at 306-335-2215 or www.liquidsystems.net and JD Skiles Co. at 785-626-9338 or www.jdskiles.com.
