My neighbor 100 feet up the street had her sycamore taken down yesterday, talked to her and the tree crew and had them leave me 9-10' of 30-31" clean trunk below where the branches started. Neighbor was anxious that I actually was going to be able to get the trunk out of her yard and wanted it done ASAP. Didn't bother asking if I could mill it in place because didn't seem likely. Winched it to the curb on my big PVC rollers but my little 2000 lb Warn on the side of my truck could barely manage that. Still don't own a proper big winch for my truck nor a trailer nor log arch nor anything sensible for moving big logs. But with a BobL style log jack and PVC rollers I can at least get logs moved across a yard without too much trouble. Thought of just skid hauling it down the street behind the truck once I had it in the road but wasn't sure how well that would work. So this morning I built a couple of beefy wood dollies with 4x4's and put all the casters I had lying around on them. I knew the 125 lb casters would probably fail but thought it worth a shot. Made one with 7 casters and one with 4 casters. The main thinking was not to spend any money on doing this, just use what I already had.
The 7 caster front dolly held up okay when I loaded the front of the log on it but when I rolled the log off the curb on to the rear dolly, it crushed every one of the 4 casters like a bug. Dragged it about ten feet like that leaving marks in the road before I thought I should jack the back of the log up and get the broken dolly out and let the log's back end lie on the pavement. Made it to my driveway fine with the front dolly still intact but I knew charging up the driveway into my yard the lip of the driveway was going to catch the caster wheels and ruin them. Sure enough, got all the way into the yard but lost the dolly along the way and mangled 3 of the casters. But got it done! Checked green weight from Sherrill's for sycamore and they say 52 lb/cubic ft . Going by that, the log is roughly around 2400 lbs, which seems about right. Biggest one I've moved yet by myself with next to no gear. Have been wanting to create a decent log/slab moving cart for yards and it seems like I could use these dolly frames I made and put big 500 lb casters with 8" flat-free rubber wheels on them and they'd work okay.
The 7 caster front dolly held up okay when I loaded the front of the log on it but when I rolled the log off the curb on to the rear dolly, it crushed every one of the 4 casters like a bug. Dragged it about ten feet like that leaving marks in the road before I thought I should jack the back of the log up and get the broken dolly out and let the log's back end lie on the pavement. Made it to my driveway fine with the front dolly still intact but I knew charging up the driveway into my yard the lip of the driveway was going to catch the caster wheels and ruin them. Sure enough, got all the way into the yard but lost the dolly along the way and mangled 3 of the casters. But got it done! Checked green weight from Sherrill's for sycamore and they say 52 lb/cubic ft . Going by that, the log is roughly around 2400 lbs, which seems about right. Biggest one I've moved yet by myself with next to no gear. Have been wanting to create a decent log/slab moving cart for yards and it seems like I could use these dolly frames I made and put big 500 lb casters with 8" flat-free rubber wheels on them and they'd work okay.
