My firewood storage and handling system...

I thought I had posted this on FHC before, but when I went looking for the thread earlier today, I realized that I had only posted a bit of it on somebody else's thread. So now here is the full deal. I just copied this from an earlier post from a couple years ago on another site.
I am a couple years in doing it this way now, and I am pretty happy with it all...except last winter, it was so warm I couldn't always get to the wood shed with the forklift due to the muddy yard...some strategically placed concrete will remedy that though. Normally I can sneak across the yard first thing in the morning before things thaw out, even on warmer days.

So I've been mulling over a way to manually handle my firewood less. My system has evolved over time to this. I cut to length (usually) right where I drop the tree, load on the truck, then split right off the truck, and stack immediately from the splitter onto my stacks at the back of the property. In the past, I built 8' long racks that allowed me to load up ~1/2 cord at a time right out of my main stacks, then I would carry them to the woodshed (using my dads 5k# AC forklift). This worked great, but, then I gotta hump wood into the house every day all winter long. I thought about carrying a rack at a time into the attached garage, but that means borrowing dads forklift each time I wanna move a rack, and those 8' long racks would take up too much room in the garage.

So I started looking for a small 4x4 loader tractor...too expensive, went looking for a small forklift...all the affordable stuff was junk. Then I thought, wait a minute! I know the perfect machine! Dad has a Prime Mover L-812 mini forklift that he had plans for many moons ago (never happened though). A lot of you guys would recognize this machine as a "stander" with a concrete dumper on the front, this is the less popular (rare) optional forklift model, and it has been modified to be a "rider". The ole girl has just been sitting in the back of the machinery shed sinking into the ground for going on 25-30 years now. Dad said I was welcome to have it if I could use it, so I went and dug it out. The new Honda motor that was on it had long been scrounged for a log splitter project, but I had a used replacement laying around, so no biggie there. I got 'er running in short order and after some quick measurements, I realized this was gonna be perfect! I built a dozen new tall/narrow racks that hold roughly a 1/3 of a cord each, and a heavy duty wheeled cart to set the racks on so that I can wheel a rack full of wood right into my furnace room.

I still load the racks out of the "main hoard stacks", then store the racks in the woodshed nice and dry for the winter, now I only have to "fetch wood" every couple weeks using my new toy!
At some point...whenever I get "caught up",I plan on giving my lil workhorse a proper fresh paint job, she's earned it.

The racks. 4' wide x 5.5' tall and 20" deep, they hold about 1/3 cord or so of 22" long wood. The bottom lumber is just landscape timbers and the rest is 2x4 PT, with a lil metal reinforcement in the bottom corners and across the top.
The HD cart I built to wheel the racks right into the furnace room through the basement garage. I used this the first year, but have since quit doing it this way due to bug issues in the house. Now I just leave the rack sitting on the forklift out in the attached garage, it's only 30' or so away from the furnace and I can still load the furnace in mah bloomers if I wanna...and sometimes it happens! (want pics proof of that Eric VW ?)
This is a rack mounted on the HD cart. Also, notice the forklift just has the single drive wheels at this point, I later fabbed up dual wheel adapters to make treks across the yard "less evident"...works surprisingly well considering how small the tires are and how much weight is on 'em when loaded. Duals are on in the next pic.
A full rack of Oak is about as much as she wants to handle. (~1000#)
This is about where I park it now. In this pic I was loading onto the HD cart. (the oily cardboard is from having the van newly oil sprayed...life in the rust belt is great)
Wheeling a couple weeks worth of BTUs right through the basement door here.
This is where I was parking the rack when I was still taking it into the basement. Right next to the Yukon...as seen in the next pic.
I now have the Yukon wood/oil whole house furnace on standby duty the last couple winters... I installed a Drolet Tundra wood furnace as an add-on to the Yukon...kind of a long story...its basically an experiment.

 

I stack my "shorts" and "uglys" in a couple of those metal 275 gallon oil tote crates...and a couple of crates I made using quartered hog panels and a pallet.

This is where I stack the stove chow for my little stove in the fireplace upstairs...we use it in the spring/fall when there is need for just a little heat, but not enough to warrant firing the furnace downstairs. These large crates were great when I was using dads AC forklift, but they are too large for my lil dude now, so I have been converting to using smaller crates that I built out of small pallets, easily handled by my forklift with its lil ole 24" forks. I'll have to get some pics of the small crates tomorrow.

 

Wow very nice set up.

 

It sure is a great setup man that little fork lift is way cool

 

Thanks guys! Yeah it works pretty well for me. The lil forklift won't win an beauty contests any time soon, but it is handier than a shirt pocket! I find myself using it all the time, for all kinds of chores. I even put a hitch on it to pull the splitter around the yard.

 

I can't tell, does that lift have one wheel or two wheels on the back?

 

Ok, here's the pics I promised of the small crates I made. I had to brave 98* temps to get these for y'all today...just so ya know. The small crates are 30x30x30 (ish) and all "reclaimed lumber"...even most of the screws and nails are reclaimed from other pallets that I tore apart. The metal that is on top was cut out of large industrial air ducts that I bought from a scrapper for $20...I have made covers for most of my rack and still have quite a bit of that metal left.

The little crates

The my original racks 8'x4', about (~1/2 cord each)
The main stack. 50'L x 5.5' tall x 44" wide...about 8 cord
The other side of the main stack

The main stack from the end

Another stack, 2 or 3 cords here in total
Notice how much the wood has shrunk since I put it in these racks 6-8 weeks ago, it was stuffed full to the top. This is slabwood that has been CSS for over a year before I racked it
The other side of the stack above.
This is not all my stacks...just the purtier ones

 

Two, but both in the center, like an old tricycle front end tractor

 

Quick steering that way

 

Impressive setup brenndatomu... way to go...

 

I think you've figured it out!

 

Yeah, it'll come around quick, the steer tires can go completely sideways. It's "armstrong" power steering so it is best to steer when moving...kinda hard sitting still, unless you have a full rack on the forks, steers real easy then!

 

I didn't drive fork trucks for my job in the factory, but I did drive them occasionally, hard to steer when your back wheels are off the ground though

 

I don't generally have issues with the steer tire coming off the ground...but it does get pretty light sometimes.
Originally you would have stood on a platform behind the steer tires to operate this machine, but dad had it changed to sitting in front of the engine, so I imagine a bit of its lift capacity has been lost as a result.

 

11, 000 pound fork truck bumper cars out back on the weekends but fun

 

You right...
When I worked at the bike shop, the Christmas party would invariably end up with us clearing the shop out, soapy water on the floor and do some drifting on mini quads

 

You don't even want to know how we abused the brand new cars coming off the assembly line in route to the rail lots and parking lots