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The TyreShift mounts onto pallet tines and features a heavy-duty boom that incorporates a hydraulically driven chain with specially made links that grip the tyres.
With the maize harvesting season just starting, there will be lots of farmers and their workforces getting enthused about putting old tyres up onto the clamp to keep the sheet weighted down. Only joking! There really can’t be anyone out there who likes throwing heavy, dirty tyres, no doubt filled with cold dirty water since they were taken off the clamp last winter.
A clever inventor from County Tyrone in Northern Ireland named Albert O’Neill was recently crowned runner-up in the UK’s Farmers Weekly Inventions Competition with his clever device for lifting used tyres up onto silage clamps.
The TyreShift mounts onto pallet tines and features a heavy-duty boom that incorporates a hydraulically driven chain with specially made links that grip the tyres, or increasingly popular sidewalls, and flicks them onto the sheet. The system works a little like a large chainsaw, with what would be the cutters replaced by the gripping lugs. Although originally designed to work with lorry tyres and sidewalls, the designer says it can also handle car and tractor tyres if needed.
Operators just pick up a row of tyres, drive onto the clamp and then use the third hydraulic service to wind them off in the desired location.
As well as depositing tyres on the clamp, the unit can be run in reverse to pick tyres up and collect them on the arm. The machine also features a tray/cradle for carrying a roll of plastic up onto the clamp. O’Neill says the invention has halved the time it takes to cover the farm’s clamps and it has dramatically reduced the amount of manual labour required to complete a very unpopular job.
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