Options For Manually Moving Material?

lxskllr

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Jul 21, 2019
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Anyone have any clever setups for moving material by hand? I'd like to find something better than a tarp, and cheaper than a mini. The two things I've looked at most seriously are the JetSled and ArborTrolley. The JetSled is attractively priced, and easy to deal with, while the ArborTrolley carries more weight, and is more feasible for loggy type things, though perhaps not as good for brush?
 
We will make sleds out of brush. Use larger on bottom and stack smaller up.
Bundle with rope. Great way to utilize some small cuttings of about 10 foot or more.
But we prefer our dingo or winch. Ant trail if they wont work in the situation.
Ant trail can and often includes over sized teenagers/young adults if possible.
Price accordingly and embrace the suck
 
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  • #4
I've done the brush sled thing, but the results aren't entirely satisfactory. Tying it better might work. What I usually do is big stuff on the bottom, smaller on top. then a running bowline around the end that I pull with. What happens is I sometimes get dig-ins when a branch submarines, and/or shed some of the load on the trip, where pieces fall off.
 
You dont pick up what falls off. Make next sled and add it as you get to it again.
Make sure larger bottom pieces butts are foward of the load. I lift those and sled the smaller on top. Nothing "digging " in.
Bundles is where we will bundle the brush and drag it sideways.
Either by hand or winch.
 
Is this something you need to be able to carry with you to another place, or will it be for one location?
 
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  • #8
Place to place. It needs to fit in the back of a small pickup. In the immediate case, a nissan frontier, but that's the size truck I like, so anything else in the future will likely be similar.

edit:
for prices I'm looking for, the ArborTrolley at $1k isn't prohibitive, but at that price or higher, it really needs to earn it's keep, and be worth the premium over the $110 JetSled.
 
Not this then...:).

 
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  • #10
I could work with that. I imagine it's heavy, but it's close enough to fitting in a frontier, and the work loading it would be more than offset by the work it could do.
 
Not so very heavy. I can lift the end of it without undue strain. With a pair of simple ramps it wouldn't be too taxing to load in a truck bed.

But you need something to pull it with. I've moved it a little bit by hand with a moderate load on...if the surface is flatish, smooth, and firm it's not too hard for a short distance...otherwise, forget it.
 
what ive used for the smaller stuff in the past was the tail of a 3" ratchet strap tied into a loop with a water knot, basically a 4-5ft loop runner
choke bundles of limbs, throw loop over your shoulder and carry it
its slow but its way faster than one or two limbs at a time by hand

never tried an arbor trolley (or the one Notch had), but I think they would work decent, the arbortrolly seems small IMO, I did look at one a while back at a treestuff party, not sold on it to be honest
@metaspencer made a DIY one a while back, he has a great video on it
 
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  • #15
I looked on HarborFreight in the 'Material Handling' section, and they didn't really have anything like that. That might work pretty well.

realtime edit:
or maybe not per Stephen :^D
 
Arbor trolleys work great, they even do ok for prying rounds on like a hand truck. If you are hand feeding a chipper i can't possibly imagine anything better for the brush, and since it's not being drug in the ground you have way less raking at the end of the day. Their limitation is that with the exception of the rounds you have to lift the material to load it. Tweaked my back one day lifting a log up on it, so i welded up a log arch so i didn't have to lift stuff, works great for the logs or leaving the limb whole to feed into a bigger chipper, until it's too big to straddle, but then you got the arbor trolley.

Once the logs are to the street you then have to load them, not a small task. I got by a long time with a duct hoist i salvaged, you crank it up, push it over the truck/ trailer, then roll it off. It's all manual, but you're using rigging to do it. I also had a harbor freight truck crane that worked very well, just had to back up to the logs and you could load a pickup truck in a few minutes. Had to tie it into the frame and wired up an atv winch on it, not a possibility for everyone. If i didn't have that i would have likely rigged up a gantry crane type setup, or used another tree for loading with a boom rigged, posted that one here once, i think in my derrick crane thread. Chain falls work well (as a fitter we use them all the time), but little sticks and stuff like to get stuck in them so it's kinda annoying, basically gotta keep it really clean and they do well. Keeping the chain in a bucket is another trick, it'll pay out with minimal management, that's how we work on grating without getting it stuck continuously. Also size the fall for the expected load, a half ton fall works much faster than a 1 ton, which is faster than a 2 ton.
 
i have a 1,8 t petrol capstan winch that i use a lot to move material. definitly get one where the capstan is not turning all the time, annoying :)
 
 
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  • #23
A winch is the other part of the equation I'm considering. Human power is my primary interest, but the option of adding mechanical power would be good.

Is ~2T a reasonable target for capacity?
 
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  • #24
On my fourth Jet Sled ...
I think Bingham is a fan of the JetSled too. That's two good recommendations, and a reasonable cheap starting point. Maybe it works great and I don't have to go any further, maybe it's insufficient, but it'll still get some work done, so the money wouldn't be wasted. What size do you like? The XL fits in the back of the truck. Is that the right size, or too big? Fits more stuff, but it still has to moved...
 
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