I receive many inquiries about our Implement Carrier and what is the task for which it is designed. First off, the name has become somewhat outdated. Originally in 1962 Jim Donahue was looking for a way to quickly and conveniently transport many of the smaller drag-behind implements used on a farm. In those days, many farmers had cable-drawn peg harrows, packers, cultivators and spring tooth harrows. They rarely had transport wheels and were used way before hydraulics and sophisticated undercarriages.
The object was to simply lay the bed of the trailer on the ground, drive over it with the tractor pulling the implement and position the implement on the bed. Once unhooked from the implement, the tractor would hook up to the implement carrier, push the bed back onto the carrier’s undercarriage and move to the next field. This put the implement at a ninety degree angle to ease transportation widths and prevented road damage from dragging equipment on the ground.
Amazingly, 57 years and over 50,000 units later, Donahue continues to see a wide variety of customers utilizing this same technology in providing simple and cost-effective transportation of a wide variety of applications. The practicality of the implement carrier extends well beyond the initial concept and now includes transportation solutions for combine headers, seed totes, field harvesting of vegetables, round and square bale retrieval. Some more creative uses have includes being used in pumpkin patches and even a self-contained BBQ smoker and server. The name of the trailer could be changed to “Universal Mechanical Lay Flat Trailer”.
Once the features and ease of use are fully understood, it is easy to see how this unassuming trailer can aid in taking items from the ground and making them easily portable. With less than a five inch bed height on the ground, watermelons, pumpkins and a wide variety of truck farm vegetables can be easily deposited upon the trailer without a need for mechanical retrieval or additional labor. Since it is flat to the ground, less effort is needed to move larger items around, since there is virtually no lifting required, just drag the item onto the bed and then raise it on the wheels to go down the road.
So how does the bed get from the ground to a rolling trailer configuration? It is a simple action of pushing the bed up the pivoting undercarriage roller guides and securing the bed to the undercarriage. It has even been upgraded to include a similar lifting capability for the tongue which virtually eliminates the need for time-consuming crank jacking. The front hitch is equipped with the Donahue Rolling Hitch which brings the front of the bed from the ground into transportation mode by simply backing up. The undercarriage stays in place by using an industry exclusive locking bar system.
If you have not seen one in action, it takes a while to fully appreciate the straight forward easiness in which this trailer can be used. Ask some experienced farmers and many will remember using one in the past. In fact, many refer to it as “The Donahue Trailer” and don’t realize that Donahue actually makes an extensive line of trailers from Flatbeds and Stock Trailers to other unique trailers to safely transport swathers, grain, contracting materials and wide loads. I’ll get to those later.
Please stop by your local Farm Equipment Dealer and inquire about the Donahue Implement Carrier. We offer this trailer to any dealer in the country to help solve the many different transportation need associated with agricultural work. You may be surprised at the economical solutions a particular Donahue Trailer can provide.
Like our saying goes, “When there’s work to do; Donahue!”