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Guess I could argue both sides and yes you will need a quarter turn. When by yourself, as I am much of the time, It would be nice. However there are some considerations that should be figured in. In my case, older equipment � JD 893 rake, Ford baler, 2 pull wagons and an 18� flat bed truck. I can rake up, and bale a dozen or so acres in bout 3 hours. Include pickup and move, roughly 350+ bales in a day (noon till bout 6). But tend to limit that to 300 a day for transport reasons. I also have some help with pickup (local HS kids driving and stacking). I bale odd rows (direction) that place�s two rows together. Saves a trip or the need for someone to work the other side of wagon. Get about 70 on a wagon and go transfer it to the flat bed. Truck holds ~160. Then fill both wagons, (another 140). Cart 300+ home by dinner time. If I was to replace the driver with a with a bale wagon. Using a 55 bale wagon would actually cost me both money and time. Driver cost $5 hour for 4 hours. ($20). Average of 3000 bales a year, 10 cuttings puts my labor charge at $200 a year. Modest wagon - $1800. Nine (9) years to break even, not counting any maintenance cost. I figure with a 30 year old machine I am going to get 5 years out of it. That puts it at $260 a year. For me it�s not worth it, but if you �can�t� get help it may be. The last few years weather in Ohio has not been friendly to the hay farmer. In a good week we might get four days in a row that is dry. So by the time you get to mow, dry, ted, dry, rake and bale. You�re looking at storm clouds. That�s why I tend not to mow any more than I know can get done a �no� rain window. Pickup is some what time consuming but not to bad. He parks where I can get to bout 10 bales. He stacks the ten as I bring them over. We move up. Takes bout 40 min to do 70 bale. We can do the transfer in about 15 min (same level, just restacking). 3 hours to pickup and 20 min back to barn (slow trip pulling two wagons). Now if I used a bale wagon total time to load is 10 min per 50. 6 loads put me at an hour. But I have to unload. Unloading at the end of field is no good so I�d have 6 trips to the barn. Figure 5 at 20 mins each (round trip) minus the first and final 10, that�s little less than 2 hours, now I am back to about 3 hours. So it saves me something like half hour maybe. But with my storage, most of my hay goes in a loft, dropping without restacking is not an option. Dropping in the barn would hinder loading the loft and may have clearance issues. So I would be dropping in front of the barn. Here again, If I am trying to beat the rain as is the norm, stacks outside would have to be moved inside adding more time to an already limited day. If on wheels I can park under roof and move out to place in the loft. In the end would have cost me more time. If you can drop right where you want to store it, well, that�s a different story. If you haven�t been here there is a lot of info on bale wagons.
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