Tractor wheel off

[Fowler VF]

Gillon, yeah what a guy.

Had an Ontop tractor on hire from him once, he drove it himself down from Scotland to Herefordshire, towing a trailer and then his van hooked on the back of it all. Red diesel all the way and his theory was that the rig was so fast that no-one noticed that it shouldn't have been on the motorway on a tractor licence!!

Tractor was based on a Bedford, trailer was back end of a Leyland Reiver, with a propsahft from tractor to trailer, so you got a driven axle on the tractor and two driven axles on the trailer. This thing would go anywhere in a straight line but had an awful tendency for the trailer axle to try to overtake the tractor and push you into a jacknife if you went round corners in muddy going. Nonetheless an awsome piece of kit, well built and well designed, nothing could touch it to shift 12 tonnes of spuds or chicken sh*t at 50mph plus down the road and then get across some boggy field. It knocked spots off the Unimogs we ran alongside it and walked all over the Fastracs.

[DaveS]

Hi Nick,

Yes, that's typical!

I pass his yard near Perth regularly and there is still a fair bit going on, and they still spread lime. He had a really nice 'classic' Unimog of his own so he had something to compare performance when building stuff.

They were good engineers too, and made quite a few machines, including a towable hopper/bunker for trucks to dump lime in and fill the spreaders by belt conveyor and a towable grab loader for lime too.

Dave. S.

[Gordon 2]

Hi Richard the county 1184 and log crane made about 14 grand. i think. We didn't venture into forestry this year but i would like to. We picked up four earthmoving jobs and a nice job next door to our yard. we have moved about 20 thousand metres of soil to our yard in dumptrucks at two thirds of muck away rates which makes it seven times more than on site muckshifting. It has all to be screened and i have a Finlay 883 arriving this week. We will sell most of it ! god knows we could do with the cash. Our county super six is still in kit form !! its a slow process but she'll be a goodan when we get her finished. I bought a cracking good D6MXL today from fenland tractors makes a change as most of our dozers are LGP configuration.
Regards Gordon.

[RichardJW~]

Hello Gordon, Good to see you back here. It's surprising how something so abused as forestry Countys still make good money.
Brother still uses my 1174 for ploughing and round baling but the 1004 is pensioned off now; mind you I do like to spend a day on it in summer with the flail topper out in the sunshine.

At the risk of veering the topic away from lime spreaders I'll drop in a pic from January......brother widening our lane for loading bigger grain lorries



FT seem to have some really nice equipment up there, pity it's so far from Salcombe....would love to go up for a mooch about during the holidays.

[Renaultman]

Thats a nice looking county, my boss just bought a roadless 115, what an animal. He collects vintage Blue.

[RichardJW~]

Thats a nice looking county, my boss just bought a roadless 115, what an animal. He collects vintage Blue.

I'll put a few more pics up in the "County tractors" thread