False Front Silage wagons

[peteL]

I got my first farm job loading hay bales on false front silage wagons. The front was pulled to the rear and had a wedge shape. It was tough getting bales loaded correctly against that incline. My question is how was pipe rotated at the back to pull the false front back? A second question is how did the false front get returned to the front of the wagon?
 

[Bernie/MA]

At the silo there was an electric motor geared down with a rachet arrangement similar to a ticking clock. It had a telescoping shaft that slipped into the pipe. I think manpower was used to pull it back. Been 60 years since I was involved with it.
 

[RayP(MI)]

There was a hook-on gear reduction electric motor that rotated the pipe in the back, winding the cables, and pulling the "front" to the rear, unloading the silage into the conveyor on the blower. Special forks were used to pull the pile down as it advanced. Forks were like long handled manure forks, with tines bent downward 90 degrees. Unloader guy stood on ground on other side of conveyor "hoeing" down the load. After the wagon was emptied, someone climbed up in the wagon, and manually dragged the false front back to the front. Most had a loop of rope to pull on. I don"t miss forage chopping/silo filling much. (Others may have had better setups.)
 

[WGWKy2]

We used one of those electric gizmos, also the newer blowers had a driveshaft to extend to the unloader.
 

[Dave Sherburne NY]

My fil was using that type when I started hanging out up there. Check out this article from Popular Mechanics magazine
Popular Mechanics

 

[casecollectorsc]

The Case blower was equiped with a drive shaft to unload the barge wagons. Square shaft in a round pipe that wound the cable that was attached to the false endgate. Pulled the false endgate back by hand.
 

[wolfman]

We had two (still have one). One was homemade, light cables from bottom of false front gate to pipe across back; attached to pipe was a car wheel with flanges welded to it ; a rope wound around the wheel. At trench silo, tie the rope to a post and drive the wagon forward til unloaded. At upright silo, had to pull the rope with a light tractor. The other wagon had a kit PTO driven which would rachet and pull the endgate back by means of cables. To pull gate back to front,disengage rachet and crank (part of kit) the gate forward. Pretty slick. We still have this one in the back of a shed!
 

[Shetland Sheepdog]

Farm I worked on when in high school had 2 trucks for silage. One had the false headboard, and the other had a canvas that was pulled out on the floor of the body and draped up over the headboard. Drove the trucks alongsise the Gehl chopper with Continental Red Seal powwer unit pulled by a Farmall F-14!
 

[Ron Troester]

We had three of these on the farm. An electric motor ran a gear box that reduced the speed and pulled the false front toward the back of the wagon. Using the 90 degree bent fork, we could dig out silage or dry haylage quickly. Our chopper boxes had removeable sides. For picking ear corn, we took the removable sides off (it left the bottom 30 inch sides on the wagon) and the false front slowly brought the ear corn to the back of the wagon. If the wagon was loaded correctly, I barely had to use the bent fork to unload. When the wagon was empty, I took the gearbox off the frame and used a handle to return the false front to front of the wagon box.
 

[AJB-830]

Pete, The attached picture I took in about 1968 or so shows the electric motor attachmnent that was connected to the roller on the back of the wagon to rachet the load back. When the load was empty, you manually pulled the front back. My dad had two wagons like this. I still have the fork that was used to unload. Hope this helps explain how it worked. My dad used these from about 1948 to about 1975 when we got self unloading wagons. Al

 

[paul]

I still have this, dad had a cart with an old 3 speed tranny on it, put the H on it with a pto shaft from the cemnt mixer, and their was another pto shaft that would go to the pipe on the back of the wagon I think low was used mostly, would pull the false front at about the right speed. Dad and 3 other neighbors would do the silage run, uncle had the chopper pulled by his Oliver, dad owned the blower, other 2 neighbors each had something.

Had a crank you stuck in the front pipe, would crank it and pull the false front back to the front.

You are making me think, they quit filling our silo after I turned 6, so it takes something to come up with the memories.

My uncle rigged up an electric motor to the tranny cart, used it a couple years that way at his place.

--->Paul
 

[JMS./MN]

Here it was common to have a commercially made electric powered ratchet unloader that hooked via drive shaft to the rear pipe on the wagon....pipe on the wagon had a square that the shaft coupling went in to. When the wagon was empty (typically 12 foot long box), the false endgate was manhandled back to the front. Yes, some mfgrs of blowers had the drive assy on the blower that would hook up to the box.
 

[Sparktrician]

Ron Troester, If you dont mind saying, where are you from? My last name is very simialar to yours, and our geneology records show our name spelled like yours in germany.....just curious, as that is not a common name.
 

[ET]

We had two of these wagons. Our Gehl blower had a ratchet arangement on it like what ran the apron on the manure spreader. A telescoping shaft hooked to the tube on the back of the wagon. One wagon had cables to pull the front and the other had chains. You could start and stop the feed with a lever on the blower. We had a curved fork and a potato hook so work the silage onto the blower table evenly. To return the front of the wagon one had a tube you put a crank on and wound it back with light chains and the other one had a couple of pieces of baler twine on it to get ahold of and pull it back. Five or six loads was a good afternoons work.
 

[sammydwm]

Our blower had a mechanism to ratchet the end gate back while unloading, had to pull it forward manually