Making it through another year, '23-'24

[Magicman]

Wow Gary, what is the weight rating on that single axle? 

[Old Greenhorn]

Well, it's another idea Howard, but it takes me further from the goal and 7x12 is just too big. Those things are heavy too not to mention the trailer I would need. The goal is to pack and unpack a minimum number of times per show and not have to pack and unpack at home. If it's small enough I can park it right in my booth at many outdoor shows. Easy in and out. I'll find something, I have to. It just takes time, persistence, and some money.
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Well I think today was a pretty good day. I think that because my back is pretty sore. We planned a later start because it was pretty cold this morning and Bill had family stuff to do in the morning. I headed down just after noon and sent Bill a text. I brought my trailer down and picked up a load of previously cut logs, then moved and got another pile, then dropped the trailer in an out of the way place to use for staging. I have been cutting and just stacking, or not even that with logs for later pickup. This way I can just run around with the machine and grab logs for a few hours one day. Maybe tomorrow. or another day. The main thing is getting them cut. Collecting can be back breaking.
Anyway, Bill and Inga came around as I was setting up to take a tree in a tricky spot, a stack of smaller 18" steel trusses on one side, a stack of 1,000 gallon gas tanks on the other side and a stack of big 36" trusses on the third side. The tree was heavy enough that it might hurt the other stuff, so I laid it right on the 36" truss tops. Worked out perfect, Bill was almost impressed because he was pretty sure it would fall backwards from what I wanted. So I hacked that up and pretty much left it lay for later pickup. We all headed to the southeast back end of the property where there were 4 trees I needed mechanical assistance with. They were on a side hill, pretty steep and if they went the way they were leaning they would fall over the bank into a (currently) inaccessible area. Bill got distracted by that point and started looking for a trail 'down there'. Next thing I know we are clearing trail and moving the SxS forward a little at a time. All the wood was bucked up for the OWB and I got 3 little WO logs for 'shrooms. They had a load on, so headed out to drop them off, I thought. I went back up to my 4 trees and took the one easy one (I thought). It was bent and leaning out over the bank and a tough swing to keep it up on ground I could (almost) stand on. I wanted to pull it and swing it right over the trail, but forgot to account for the bend in the tree. DUH! Well, I got it to fall, the hinge was perfect and held (I really thought it couldn't with what I was asking) and that tree went right where the notch was. However, because of the bend in the tree, rather than cross the trail it laid pretty much right down along the edge of it. This was more perfecter than I planned. There are some rougher logs to carry out near the butt end, but the rest are right along the road. Accidents happen. While I was bucking it up I couldn't even put the saw down, it would slide right over the bank. I never thought of a saw tether for ground work, but I could have used one today. Still I am surprised I could pull that tree about 90° from it's dominant lean.

As I was collecting my gear and headed back up the hill I realized that I did not take 'the easy tree' which still stood there as proud as you please, I took one of 'the hard ones' I was worried about. I guess everything is relative, now i have an easier one to take. I threw my gear in the truck and Bill and Inga showed back up, they never went back to the house and were cruising trees for me and other stuff (Inga found a neat rock formation and she was planning how to build it into a little shelter, it had stairs and everything!) But Bill didn't have any flagging. I gave him a roll last year, but it was in another machine. So I gave him the one I had and on the way out he flagged 4 more trees. I gotta order some more flagging rolls from  Madsen's and put a roll in every truck he has. I'd better get a sleeve of them.
All in all a pretty good day. I'm tired, but rough count tells me I have well over 70 logs, maybe 80, which is a good start for the first week. My 1st order was small and the client asked to push it out for a couple of weeks, so the next one in line is 200 logs and I am almost halfway there. Then I have a a 150 log order, followed by 102, 40, 35, 40, and 100. But the last one will take up to 1,000, I only promised him 100, plus he wants a Loginator I have to assemble.
So not a bad day and tomorrow is another one, right?

[Old Greenhorn]

Wow Gary, what is the weight rating on that single axle? 

I would bet it's a 3500 pound axle, that's pretty standard for that trailer. I would prefer a sprung axle as opposed to a torsion axle, but I have seen both on the 12's. Seems like the older ones are sprung, the newer are mostly torsion. Taking the trailer weight into account it gives you around 2500-2900 pounds of cargo. Yes, backing and all that would be easier and the room would be nice too for sticking in a 2' x 8' nice table down the center, but fitting a 12' trailer into the booth area with the ramp off the back is pushing it a bit. Plus, for a trailer that size, I would really want electric brakes for going over the mountains, or should I say, for going DOWN those mountains.

[WV Sawmiller]

    Since its not my money - what is the possibility/feasibility of a good used box truck if you can find one that is reasonably mechanically and structurally sound?  I'm wondering if they might be more readily available than a box trailer?

[Old Greenhorn]

As bad as finding a trailer is, trucks are worse AND more expensive, plus I would have the engine, drivetrain, extra insurance costs and the whole nine to worry about all the time, every year. You are getting farther afield on this one Howard.  Although I admit, your suggestion would help burn up my cash a lot faster, so there is that.

[Nebraska]

How about a two or a 3 horse trailer. I had a little two horse size before I got a larger 3 horse the sides were closed with wooden slats and it was pretty weather proof.  Weight wise it's pretty close to an enclosed trailer, the 3 horse has two axles. Probably just as hard to find a good one though.

[gspren]

Wow Gary, what is the weight rating on that single axle? 

OGH gave a pretty good idea on weights. When I was searching for a new one several years ago I found only a slight weight increase going from 10' to 12' but quite a bit more weight going to a tandem axle. I wanted to be able to haul my Harley Trike behind a SUV not a truck. Since owning it it has proven great at hauling furniture and boxes of "stuff" when we moved and even a few loads of junk to the landfill.

[Magicman]

It sounds like I have the identical size trailer/axle which has made many trips to Colorado hauling an ATV, ice chest, and all of our camping gear.  It is a "just right" size for our use.

[Old Greenhorn]

The 6x12 is a nice size, no doubt and if I find one at the right price I would consider it, of course. I just want to keep the hauling weight as low as possible for those over the mountain run with my 1500. Nebraska's idea is one I had also considered and I've looked at a bunch, but although we have horses and livestock around here, we don't have a lot of that and what I have seen has been parked in a field for 20 years and needs a lot of work. I need something that is weatherproof right through the winter and all or my stuff will get aged and ruined.
 Forgot to mention for the 'rent first' crowd, if I did want to do that, Bill has a 12' that he uses for the landscaping crew setup and I could borrow that for free, I just have to unload the gear, and then repack his stuff in it when I bring it back. Also, I can't mess up his mowing schedule. He also has a 14' unit that I found for him a couple of years ago. Pretty sure he paid less for that than I will for a 10 or 12' unit.

[Jeff]

Short trailers are a bugger to backup!

[WV Sawmiller]

  Yeah. If I had to back a short trailer a lot I'd probably put a ball on the front of my truck. I've seen that done with boat trailers and such and it is much easier to push one into place than back it in. I also found it was much easier to back a 53 tractor trailer than a 6' utility trailer.

[Resonator]

And keep in mind Tom if you purchased a trailer for your business, you could write it off on your taxes as a business expense. With money that you would have had to pay to Uncle Sam in taxes anyway, you could have an asset to help grow your business. You could also put colorful eye-catching graphics on the side, advertising that you are THE OG Mushroom Logger!

[Larry]

I bought a new 6' X 10' many years ago to haul stuff to a second home I was building 300 miles from home base. Only bought new because used were scarce and a time sap to investigate. It was easily to pull, park, and didn't take much room to store. New ones don't normally have roof leaks either..... After I got the home complete the wife and myself used it for craft shows. Put in a few shelves and it was the perfect size for products, tables, and stuff. Really a good solution. We only used it a couple of years and lost interest. Sold it for about same price I paid and it had a few scraps where a guy in a RV backed into the side.

[Oth]

Time to build one out of wood.

[WV Sawmiller]

Tom,

   Do you ever cut and use Buckeye for mushroom logs or do they even grow up there? They are a real soft, fast growing hardwood and when you cut one down, 5-6 will grow back from the stump. They sound like they would be the perfect size for what you describe as mushroom logs -3-10 inches diameter is normal, pretty straight, few limbs and 30-40 ft tall in a few years. Really old ones will get taller and bigger but most don't make it that long.. They are generally considered a trash wood as they are light and not much count as firewood and poor quality lumber.

   I have cut some into 1/2" boards, stickered and dried them and planed them for use as wood burning blanks. 

[Old Greenhorn]

Well, I am goona be short here tonight. I am pretty exhausted. I have a utility trailer that has about the same axle to hitch distance as the enclosed trailer would and I have no issues backing it up. I also have a shorter one that is a bit more 'challenging'. Jeff and WV, if you are ever in need of a cheap belly laugh, put somebody on a garden tractor with a little garden dump trailer loaded with dirt or stone and ask them to back it in directly over a specific hole. Entertainment for the whole family!
Larry your trailer is exactly what I am looking for. I have some specific questions for you about it, but that will have to wait for a more lucid time, perhaps tomorrow evening if the day is a bit easier than today was. My brain is closing down.
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Today did not go entirely as planned. I did get the wife to her procedure, and they did give her another cortisone shot, then injected the lubricant stuff ( I call it a grease job) into her knee and I got her home, she thinks it is feeling better, but they say it takes a week or more. Then I changed (had to get those lined jeans off, geez!) and headed to the woods. I took the two trees I had in mind, one was another tricky fall that went perfect, and then found another lousy lay tree Bill had marked. It had no choice but the fall on another broken hung up tree, long dead. SO I swung it as much as I could and it still landed on that tree, no surprise, but I managed to miss other ugly stuff. Now I had my tree laying across a gully and except for the butt, most of it was 15' above grade. But as I worked my way up, bucking along, it slid down and what looked to be the tree from heck, turned out to be not so bad and I didn't have to abandon any of it. It took a while and a lot of leg muscles, but I got it all. I left it lay for pickup on Wednesday when it's supposed to rain. So I added about 25 logs to the tally and was happy and tired.
Bill and the boys were working at the shop so I stopped in to say 'hi'. They were just finishing lunch, and when I walked up Bill (magically) thought of this 'emergency tree job' they had to fit in this week and decided I could get logs out of it, so why not now? OK, so they grabbed the chip truck, chipper, and bucket truck and I head home, grab a quick sammich and follow them over. It's a 100' hickory, bad damage (lightening?) 25' up, and yeah it's gonna take out the power pole transformer and wires when it goes, it really badly cracked. 28" on the stump Even as a bucket job it was dangerous to piece down and Bill's bucket wouldn't make the top. We had to rope some stuff down, dropped the rest. We chipped all the small stuff, I got a very full truckload of logs, a bit over 50 if I counted right. I was shot.
On the drive home I realized I had to get the truck unloaded tonight because he has another tree job 3 doors down from me they start at 8am tomorrow, which he offered me to get the logs from. I think this one is mostly oak. I got home at around 4:30, unloaded by about 5pm, then had to do the chores, bring in two carts of shop firewood, restart the shop stove which burned flat out during my unplanned excursion to get extra logs, then a cart full of wood into the house stove and dinner was ready. I am SO tired. Happy to have the logs, but pretty dang sore because for me it was like working a double shift. I wore myself out on those 3 trees I did earlier, then had to keep up with these young guys feeding the chipper and also trying to stay ahead and out of their way cutting my onw logs. They say it keeps you young, right? I am just hoping it doesn't kill me when I get days like this.
Tomorrow is another day and maybe we will get enough logs to close out the first order and start on the next one.

See I told you I'd keep it short.

 Edit to add: Howard, we don't get buckeye here, out of the range. It is not good for shiitakes, but Oyster and Chestnut mushrooms. None of my clients grow those, that I know of. Also, I have only heard of it referred to as horse chestnut or something like that.

[WV Sawmiller]

   Yes it is sometimes called horse chestnut. The biggest one I ever saw was on the white house lawn back around 1977. I am not sure it has survived the excess fertilization in the area since then.

    It was supposed to be good luck and help rheumatism and such to keep one in your pocket. I am sure my paternal grandfather had one on him when he died.

    It has very thin bark and is a light weight tree but pretty low value. Thanks for the specific mushroom value of it.

[Nebraska]

Sounds like you got a bunch done.  Long day but  good one

[Old Greenhorn]

Well I am about as pooped tonight as I was yesterday at this time, but now I have the added joy of legs cramps sending waves of joy through my body.
I am not use to 'working hours' as normal folks think of them, being retired, But the guys start at 8am, so I did my bes to get up on time, do my morning stove chores, and make breakfast and get it down. I drove to the job site, 3 doors down. Nobody there. I came back and did some other stuff, then headed to Bill's. Yeah, they started at 8, working in the shop on equipment PM's, skidder and 2 excavators. Turned out Bill was going to use the skidder bucket that is parked in my driveway, so I came home to do some of my own stuff.
 They came and fired up the bucket skidder and plodded down the road. Quite the sight, that's a pretty big machine with a 75' reach.. We took down 5 big Oaks mostly around 30" on the stump. I figure 90' tall because Bill had to fly out the top 20' he couldn't reach. All in pretty tight quarters. It was a full day job and I bucked a bunch of my logs between feeding the chipper and limbing leaders and such. We stacked some stuff for later bucking. Bill swapped out the skidder bucket for his log truck and picked up everything he could reach, which is most of it. But some is down in the trees and brush and he will go back with a smaller ground machine and grab out the rest. Those guys all left around 5 and I backed my truck in loaded more logs as I chatted with the homeowners. I didn't really know them at all before today, although we always wave.... for 30+ years. They are fine with me coming back for a few days to pick up the rest of the wood. There is a bunch and I can still cut a few more logs, the rest will go into my firewood pile. Likely when we are back in that season and have a Saturday night fire, I'll knock on their door and invite them over.
 I got home around 5:30 but didn't unload, the shop stove and house stove were both slap cold. So I worked on them, had dinner, and need to get back and get the shop stove setup now that it's fired up. Tomorrow is predicted to be a rain out. I'll try to continue to collect logs depending on how heavy the rain is. I still have a lot of logs to cut, and I have logs waiting for pickup all over Bill's woods, plus this last stuff. I only have a rough idea how many I have, but I know I have the first order done. I am gonna be pretty stiff in the morning, I think. Two days in a row like this wears on an old guy.
 Funny little story. Sometime in the late afternoon, the homeowner asked me a question about the job plan and I told him that I didn't know, he'd have to ask the boss and I pointed at Bill up in the bucket, I told him I am just a laborer on this job. He commented that it didn't look that way to him, he says "looks to me like you are outworking these young guys and I can clearly see that you can outwork any 3 young guys on my jobs." I just laughed and laughed, but he might be right, I dunno.  I don't like to stand around and I try to keep moving (so I don't fall down). It's hard because when you are working a bucket job, you HAVE to keep your eyes on the man in the bucket and know what he is doing, when he is doing it, and where that notch is pointed. Bill sometimes gets a tiny bit annoyed with me because I try to keep working while the other guys are standing and watching him. Sometimes he right, but in my defense, when I am looking up into the sun it can be hard to see exactly where his notch is going. And yeah, maybe I cut it a little closer than I should sometimes.
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Little tidbit that occurred to me last night: My best single day cutting logs ever was 72 in a single day, but it was one of the rare (only) times I had a helper with me for the day and he worked well and hard. Best I can count, yesterday between the 2 work sessions (morning in the woods, and afternoon at the residential job) was over 75 logs. Not that I did it alone by ANY means, but no wonder I was tired.
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I do have enough coherent energy tonight to ask @Larry the questions I had last night (although I am fading fast here). Larry, with that trailer, did you do mostly outdoor or indoor shows? Were you able to park your trailer in or next to your booth at the outdoor shows? What sized booths did you mostly get? I ask that to find out how much stuff you displayed at a show, that is, a 6x10 trailer would hold a heck of a lot more stuff that you could display in a 12x12 booth. In general, I wonder if you could expand a bit on how you used the trailer, the types of shows, etc.. 6x10 is the size I am focused on after giving it a LOT of thought. I think you have confirmed I am pretty close. I don't know what number of larger items you had, but I am guessing there were a few at least like benches, tables, or chairs/stools. I am jut trying to get a feeling how you used this and what difference the trailer made for you as well as any tips you might care to pass along. Did you store your stuff in the trailer during non-show periods?

 Tomorrow is supposed to be a rain out, but I am fairly determined to make a productive outdoor work day out of it anyway, unless it REALLY rains. I don't trust forecasts anymore. I will believe it after it happens. 

Well the shop temp is up to 68 and the den here is at 75, so I guess I got both stoves rolling again. Gotta go out and set up the shop stove for the overnight.
 Tomorrow is, after all, another day.

[thecfarm]

Old Greenhorn, I suppose you drink water while out working the 3 young guys. 
I know we are all different, but water does it for me. Sometimes I work outside at below freezing temps and don't drink water. I pay for it in the night!!!!! I drink a bunch of water and the cramp goes away. Then I am up 2-3-4 times to the bathroom. 

[Old Greenhorn]

Great point Ray, I hadn't thought of it. Yesterday I did well on hydrating, today, not so much. I should get in the habit of grabbing a bottle of water out of my truck along with the saw. I did have 3 glasses of Pepsi at lunch which was some help I guess, but I almost never drink soft drinks because of the sugar and chemicals. This was not a 'have a beer with lunch ' day. So I went with soda. Yeah, I gotta work on the water habit. Thanks for the reminder. I should know better.

[Larry]

I did outdoor craft shows only. Products were mostly cutting boards along with a few smaller wood items. I guess the space was 12' X 12' normally with a pop up tent thing and 3 tables. Only did two a year but these were really big shows with large crowds and 3 long days. Had plenty of space in the trailer but did not store much of my stuff in the trailer between shows. These shows never allowed any vehicle near the booth but I could drive to my spot early, unload, and pull out the trailer to the vendor parking.

Wife did lots of outdoor shows but they were all the flea market type and usually one day. She could easily fill the trailer and never unloaded between shows. Normally I could pull the trailer to the show, unhook, and she would sell right out of the trailer. Might pull out a table or two. It was pretty easy, she enjoyed it, and one might say I did not so I dropped the trailer and split until I got the call to come back.

You can see all the tubs on the ground and in the trailer.

I sorta wish I still had the trailer as we now have a good maker market with indoor spaces.

[thecfarm]

Old Greenhorn, I have a jug that I keep with me. Easy for me here on The Farm, it's on the tractor. May not be clean on the outside, but the inside is. Holds a gallon. I also use some of the packets that supposed to help out on certain things you need to keep me upright. 
Even at work I keep water going, summer I use those packets too. I get to work, I start the car, winter time, put my lunch in the fridge, reach in the freezer for a half bottle of frozen water, put some water in with it and my day has started.

[gspren]

I can see that for your shows the double doors would be better than a ramp. Most of what I see around here are ramp back doors which is nice for using a hand truck. Nothing is perfect all the time.

[21incher]

My 6 x 12 that I recently sold was set up for 2 Harley softtails and had the 6ft 6 door height that made it easy to load along with more versatile for machinery and things like appliances. The torsion axles have a very smooth ride if you have concern about the contents and brakes are a must if driving in hilly areas. The trouble with a ramp door is that it reduces the load capacity by almost 500 pounds due to the torsion spring, extra latches and door weldment. Bought it in 2002 for $2500. custom ordered to match our motorhome color with the 2 5/16 ball to match everything else I own and sold it in 2022 for more after 20 years of use so they seem to be a good investment.