Pull steel fence post quickly...how?

Greenfrog

Member
I have two fences that I am taking out. What is a good fast simple way to pull the steel posts...that is, a fast way to attach a chain to the post and then pull up with front end loader?
...rather than hooking chain every time. Will a couple of wraps/ half hitches around the post work? Is there some kind of bracket, ring, link, Plate, hook, etc. that can be attached quickly? There is surely some sort of barnyard engineering out there that works for this. There are quite a few posts.
Thx in advance.
 

How about this:


Speeco T-post puller.

Or some plate steel and a torch/plasma cutter.
Or pieces of flat bar welded up.

667339.jpg
 
i use a piece of c channel about a foot long. cut a hole on one end so it slips over the t post. cut a hole on the other end to hook up a chain. drop the piece over the t post and lift. the iron will kind of pivot and grab the post and pop it right out.
 
Just pull up to the post with your loader or drive along side of them. Make two wraps around the post with a chain then lift it out.No need to hook the chain it will bind on itself. If you have a helper to walk along and work the chain you barely have to stop at each post. I’ve pulled hundreds this way. A small chain like 1/4” will bite the best. If they’re real tight or you need to pull some wood post you may have to use a 5/16”. Tony
 

A loop of chain suspended from the loader and a hard steel shank or screwdriver through one of the wire holes in the post . Let the loop drape over the horizontal shaft and lift away .
 
I saw a guy with a later model tractor he put a clam shell style bucket on the loader just for that reason to pull posts.
 
We pull a ton of broken metal posts every year in the grape vineyard, and use a couple of tools like pictured above. One is a scrap press die about the same size that is just two rectangles, it works fine. We also burned out a small plate of half-inch steel, made a tee-shaped hole and a slot for the chain hook. That worked really well for short stumps, but, alas, it has been lost to the great tool hiding place in the sky. Can't find it for the life of me, and probably only have myself to blame.

I'm still searching for a better way to pull broken wooden post stumps- we lose 50-100 per year. Most are 4 inch, some larger. I am engineering a rotary digger that could make a slot around the stump, then use a looped steel cable to drop in the slot and grab the stump. If pulled, we often reuse the hole for the new wooden post, so less disturbance* is better. Right now we're so dry I cannot even pull wooden stumps with the loader tractor

I made a lever system for pulling the stumps with a chain and the t-post hook plate or just a chain around the wooden ones. It is very rudimentary and an accident waiting to happen. The hard part is finding parts sturdy enough to really lean into and pry with that don't weigh a ton to carry around. I need to flesh out my design of a highly-modified floor jack post puller.

* (I got arrested for a noise violation with a guy named Les Disturbance, once. Not really, but it sounded funny.)
 
I bought a used tractor/w loader, the loader bucket has a grab hook welded to the bucket which is handy, for things like that.
 
I bought a used tractor/w loader, the loader bucket has a grab hook welded to the bucket which is handy, for things like that.

My loader has hooks as well. Right now there is at least one wooden post stump I cannot get out, even with the loader, 5400 John Deere MFWD with 540 loader and loaded rear tires. It just twists the rear tires off the ground.

When the soil is moist, I can toss my lever set in the Gator and pull either steel or wood easily, just not in July.
 
The last couple years Dad farmed we removed several fences. Originally the farm was 4 acres of the farmstead, 16 acres right south of the buildings, and 20 acres with no fence south of the 16 acres. West of that were two 20 acre fields with fences all 4 sides, and west of that two 40 acre fields fenced all 4 sides. We changed it into the 16+20 acres, then the 20 beside the buildings and a 60 in the back of the farm, the back 20 and back 40. Think we took a couple more fences out later. In the 48 years since we moved off that farm ALL the fences, even all the property line fences are gone.
 
Two wraps of the chain around the post over lapping the the first wrap. I use a 1/4" chain for pulling posts. It works the same with the larger chain but is more difficult for me. I have a short chain with a chain hook welded to my loader bucket center top. I use the same 1/4" chain and bucket hook to set hog fence panels to the tee posts or remove them.
 

Rather than spending time climbing on and off the tractor to hook to the post I use a manual puller, I found it's faster than repositioning the tractor at every post.

mvphoto59332.jpg
 
A couple of wraps and a half hitch has always worked for me. Hold the dangling chain away from the post with my left hand and twirl the end of the chain around the post with my right hand. Then lay the unused twelve or sixteen inches of chain over top the chain coming down from the loader and pull. Ive done it thousands of times. The one drawback to this method is sometimes unwrapping the chain can be awkward. Sometimes the post will twirl and the chain will unwrap itself after it is out of the ground, sometimes not.
 

I bought one of these to pull out about 800' of T posts:

https://www.runnings.com/field-tuff-manual-t-post-puller-pg-07.html

It worked well.

I would have used a boom attachment w/chain on the 3pt but it was just me working and would have been too much time messing around crawling up/down from the tractor to deal with the chain and a 2nd trip with the pickup to gather all the posts in the tall grass. The price of this was worth the time savings. Pull the posts and toss in the truck directly, once and done.
 
When I was a kid I helped? him pull some posts and small trees. He used a John Deere B tractor with spoked wheels. He would put the rear wheel close to the post and chain the post and a bottom spoke together, then, from the ground, he would ease the hand clutch forward. As the spoke rose, it would easily pull the post and he never had to get on or off the tractor!
 
(quoted from post at 12:35:14 07/29/20)
Rather than spending time climbing on and off the tractor to hook to the post I use a manual puller, I found it's faster than repositioning the tractor at every post.

mvphoto59332.jpg

Yes! I have one of those and it is very efficient!
 
I've used that one for years and years. Quick and easy. No tractor, Rhino side by side with a small snowmoble trailer. You're in and out in a flash the system really
works. Larry
 
A few years ago I needed to remove 1/2 mile of fence that had steel fence posts of different types. Also a few wooden post were mixed in. The fence was woven wire with 2 strands of barbed wire. I just took the loader which had manure forks on it and drove up to the posts putting forks on either side of the posts and lifted up. I put it at ground level. It lifted up the posts and wire all in one swoop. It worked for the wood posts as well.
 
i used to use a safety chain the big loop on one end just dropped over post and pulled. nowdays have skidloader and tree puller use it for posts also.
 
I easily pulled 100 T-posts one evening after work using a hand post driver turned upside down with the weighted end on the ground and the hollow end against the nubs on the post. It works like a ratchet - push the top of the post away to engage a nub then pull the top toward you for lift. Repeat about three times and the post is out of the ground. Works good if the ground is dry - not so good in soggy soil conditions.
 
FYI.....replying to my own post...I came up with a jig for pulling posts that works good. Uses a dolly type car jack. 4x5 , or so, block of wood and a piece of quarter inch flat metal with a three inch hole on one end and two half inch holes, these bolted to the block.
cvphoto52264.jpg
 
I first started with that block by sawing a groove in one edge and C clamp it to the post. This worked also.
cvphoto52265.jpg
 

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