MINTON, Sask. – For Ken Tatarliov, the quest for an affordable front-end loader didn’t end at a farm auction sale with a traditional bucket or grapple.
Tatarliov was looking through a newspaper and noticed a forklift mast was available.
He checked it out and because forklift masts can lift a lot of weight, he thought there might be a way to retrofit one to his tractor. He didn’t have to buy the complete forklift – just the mast was for sale – so the price, less than $1,000, was right.
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“We have a good tractor here, a John Deere 4240, but we couldn’t swing the cash to put on a front-end loader that would suit the tractor. A good used one would be up to $8,000. We had to find something else,” said Tatarliov.
“I cut up an old cultivator, made a frame for the mast and mounted it where the dozer blade used to hook up to.”
The mast attaches the same way the blade does. The existing jacks on the frame offer fore and aft tilt. The cylinder on the mast moves everything up and down. Because it’s only a single acting cylinder, Tatarliov said there’s only one hose on the mast.
“The mast extends three times, to provide a lift more than 16 feet high. There are a couple of sets of spears that I’ve built for it. One spear will handle one bale, or I’ve got a tandem spear where I can haul two bales at once.”
The forklift can handle two bales, but Tatarliov has to be careful with the tractor.
“I learned to watch the tires on the tractor. Initially, I was looking at the frame to see if it was under too much stress. But one time I looked down and noticed the tires were fairly low. You could tell they were carrying more weight than they were rated for. So I watch the tires now. The frame is strong enough to withstand it.”
The area surrounding Tatarliov’s farm in southern Saskatchewan often runs short of hay. When that happens, he buys hay and hauls it with a semi-trailer.
“With most of the front-end loaders that we’ve seen and used, it’s always kind of a tussle trying to unload a semi. They never seem to reach high enough. With this forklift mast, it’s a complete dream unloading a semi. You can reach up to 16 feet, so you’re never short on height,” he said.
“Even with our feedlot and hay storage area, it’s better for us to stack our bales higher and leave spaces between them for fire hazards. Since we’ve started using this forklift, we can stack our bales four rows high. I think that sheds water better and it certainly helps stop snow in the winter.”
Since building the setup, the forklift has been one of Tatarliov’s best tools.
“There’s not a lot of oil movement in it and in winter that’s a good thing. It will lift pretty much anything I want it to lift. I’ve lifted corner posts, grain bins, bales and other things I probably shouldn’t have and it’s stood up really well.
“For moving stones off the field, I’ll go over and pick it up with the forklift and carry it over to the rock pile and set it down. If I had any concern about it, it’s that there’s no downward pressure, but I shouldn’t be digging into the ground with this anyways.”
Attaching and removing the forklift mast involves two big steel pins and one hydraulic hose. The mast mounts on a frame that originally carried a dozer blade.
With the dozer blade removed, Tatarliov started eyeing up his older front-end loader tractor.
“This is an old 146A John Deere front-end loader, brand new in 1965. The tractor has been excellent, but the front-end loader has always been a concern.”
Tatarliov built a frame for the 10-foot dozer blade so it would fit on the arms of the old front-end loader when he takes off the bucket.
“When you’re cleaning six inches or a foot of snow out of the yard and you can do it with 10 feet, it goes a lot quicker than it would with four, five or six feet of bucket. It saves us time there,” he said.
“I’m the main driver of that outfit. I know its limitations, from having to do the welding, so I know how big a lump I can push, how fast I can push it, or if there’s ice in snow, that’s a problem. It does have its limitations, but for light jobs, it’s excellent.”
Tatarliov said using the dozer blade on the original frame caused a problem because he could not lift the blade enough to push snow up high and away.
The new setup also works for light jobs in the corral.
“Cleaning manure in corrals, it works well but you’ve got to watch. You can’t push everything all at once, but when you do work it out of the shed or corral and up into a compost pile, you can stack it almost as high as you want,” he said.
“It’s not like using the conventional blade hookup, where you can lift two feet, your front tires sink down and you’re stuck. That doesn’t happen with this. Because it’s mounted on an old front-end loader, the bucket has tilt. If you do get stuck, you can weasel yourself out like you do with a bucket.
“I also make a luge run for my daughters. With the bucket, it was too hard. With the blade you could never get high enough. With this blade on the front of this old tractor, we can push snow as high, or anywhere we want now.”
