No, it just naturally sheds whenever you load it, as Midwinter pointed out to me. Every time I loaded in her driveway, I left a calling card apparently.
you made it fit and very nicely may i add! Nice job campinspecter Very picturesque with the view and frosty cover!
LOL = nope ; not even close to overloaded . Tires aren't inside out in that picture , toss on a few more next time. Don't be scared
How far are you travelling? Y.R. Forrest to north of Waukon by chance? I used a Astro and then a Venture for a couple years. I'd load them N.S. even up to the windows (all seats but the fronts removed) and taper my rounds up towards the center after that. Guess I should have taken more pics Tires were always my concern. I just took back roads ultra slow! Wish I still had a van for hauling stuff around. Easy to load. Good mileage. Cheap maintenance etc. We will certainly need pics here.....
Tire bulge is my main concern...but I usually just watch how far she drops...maybe overloaded a few times....lol. First pic is all green silver maple and ash. Stacked to the gills, close to home. Second pic is green sugar maple, heavy stuff, farther from home, and 2 miles down a rough dirt road.
iowahiker could you just bring along a bathroom scale and get a weight before you load each round? Seems you could set the scale so the tare weight is a round number and then calculate from there. For me, I’d adjust the scale so when I step on it, it says 200 lbs. Then if I step on with a round and it says 260 lbs, I know that the weight of the wood is 60. Could keep a running total of the wood weight in your head. Once you get a good true 1000 lbs load, measure the height of the bumper off the ground and make future loads match that height.
I did a google search the other day and found a calculator for weight of rounds , You enter diameter , length and wood type. Granted you can't do this for every round as you load but can get the general idea for an average log prior to loading. It adds up faster than I would have imagined.
I am good with numbers and carry a tape measure to measure my stack of wood in the Astro, did LxWxH, and calculated the share of a cord weight very quickly for each wood specie. The cord weights I was using are wrong for stacks of rounds since they use 80-85 cubic feet of wood in a cord. Doing the same LxWxH times 0.8 (0.78 rounded) times 60 pounds per cubic feet for bitternut (55 for sugar maple, 45 for white ash) is actually easier math. Oddly, I can remember numbers but not peoples names.
Not sure what all the calculations total but it sounds like the solution is a dump trailer. x=dump trailer y~2=diesel truck
This is why I'm looking for a 1 ton or larger truck. I drive a 99 F150 with a 6.5 ft. I have hauled wood a foot over the bed rails several times and level with the bed rails so the wood fits under a bed cover. To compensate for the potential weight I have 8 ply LT tires on it. I wore out the factory rear springs and replaced them with the highest weight capacity springs offered from the factory. Spring rate was 1180# per spring set and now its 2200# per spring set.
No idea what the weight is (heavy!) but this is (4) ~30"-ish Red Oak rounds cut to 20" long and then quartered, plus some chunks from cutting the stump flush (the chunks on top at the back) made my '03 F250 8' sit about level...as opposed to its normal nose down attitude
