Remember the pedal trike tractors from your early years? Here’s a king-size model for grown-ups. Even better, you also get paid for riding it. Now let’s walk around this three-wheeled leviathan to find out what its game is actually about.
Starting with the business end of the machine, a fully retractable Schouten liquid manure (aka slurry) injector. Rather than just spreading the manure on the pasture or farmland, it’s injected directly into the soil. The injector as seen here is typically used on pasture land.
You must have noticed that the trike is equipped with a rather small tank. It simply doesn’t need a bigger one, as a long umbilical hose, connected to a big tanker truck or container, constantly “feeds” the trike while it’s working on the land.
The manure is transported from the hose to the tank through this swinging arm.
Business as usual here, a three-pointed hitch.
Dutch manufacturer Vervaet introduced the Hydro Trike in the early nineties, with only minor changes and updates since. The company also makes beet harvesters.
Hydro Trikes have always been powered by a big DAF diesel, placed right underneath the cab; a 510 hp, 12.9 liter MX-13 engine in the latest models.
The expression climbing into the cab is highly appropriate here.
Glass all around, for a perfect view to all sides.
Two hydraulic Sauer-Danfoss pumps are used for the drive-system of the wheels. The front wheel has its own hydraulic motor. Yes, it’s a genuine AWD mega-trike.
Another hydraulic motor drives the mechanical rear axle. The on-road top speed of the Hydro Trike is 40 km/h (25 mph). I always prefer to park on the roadside, gently waiting, when an agri-juggernaut like this is coming straight at me on a narrow country road.
When driving in a straight line, there’s no track overlap of the three tires. Perfect.
A close-up of the tire inflation system. For more tire pressure when you want to hit the road, and less when you want to float on the pasture land.
This factory video, also featuring the article’s Hydro Trike, perfectly shows how things work. Maybe you wonder why the liquid manure isn’t just spreaded on the pasture land the easy and cheap way. The answer is simple: that’s illegal. Since the early nineties, as a matter of fact.
Johannes, you have outdone yourself with this one. What an extraordinary looking creature.
Well thank you Don!
Agreed: this is one bizarre, wonderful machine. Is traditional fertilizer-spreading illegal due to potential runoff issues?
I’m gonna guess it’s illegal, cause it stinks. I live completely surrounded by farm fields, and can always tell when they fertilize the fields, because it smells like poop for a day or so after. Septic tank pumping companies dump their stuff on the fields too, and I can smell that when it happens. Oh, and I’ve seen these 3-wheel monsters here in Wisconsin, too. Lots of agricultural equipment is fascinating, thank you for showing us what they use “across the pond”.
Traditional liquid manure spreading has become illegal for environmental reasons: the runoff issues you mention, the vaporization of ammonia into the air and -what Daan mentions- the smell.
Plus, with a strong wind, you don’t have to wipe/wash your windshield anymore when you pass by a liquid manure spreader…let alone what you don’t have to wipe/wash anymore if you pass by when riding a bicycle…
The single leg front wheel structure is interesting, done to facilitate wheel changes? a hefty piece of construction for sure
Take it there is no front suspension as I cannot see a floating hub, the low pressure tyre must be all there is.
Wouldn’t fancy washing this beast without a nose peg after a hard day on the farm though
The Vervaet agri-machinery is also exported to multiple countries, like the UK. Have a look here: http://www.jrileyagri.co.uk/trikechassis.html
Single-sided (non-)swing arm like a giant motorcycle. Probably a similar structure on all three wheels, just with the addition of steering for the front.
I’ve seen these in Australia, but not often. Instead it would be more common thing to have a the whole lot integrated into an implement towed behind a tractor rather than a dedicated machine. My cousin has been heavily into liquid fertilisers and matching the GPS-controlled distribution against crop yield figures for the past few years.
The main advantages of this trike are that it’s relatively light, with a perfect weight distribution and with 3 wide tires without track overlap, as I mentioned. It does all the work in one movement. No extra rides on and off the pasture land to get a “fresh” load at the farm, thanks to the umbilical hose.
In short: less damage to the grass and soil structure. Generally, the soil here is wet and soft.
Agreed it would be tonnes lighter than a tractor and trailed implement combo, which would have 6 wheels to spread the load, but would also cost a lot more – excluding the tractor. Either way there would be a truck to deliver the product.
Conditions can be too soft here too, I have seen a tractor get bogged in the space of 10 metres by driving through a section of paddock he was told to avoid, in Autumn.
I’d like to see more inside the cab. Does it have good air conditioning to cool off that fishbowl, and filters to knock down the smell? Is there a good stereo in there? You might be in there for hours, I want to know if it’s bad or not.
Modern agri-machinery offers sublime ergonomics, comfort (like a seat with air suspension and good cab sound insulation), climate control, a stereo, etc.
Yes, you can use them as a comfortable workplace the whole day long. Don’t compare them with the loud, cabless boneshakers of yore.
Awww! “Hydro trike” sounds so fun, then turns out to be a piece of farm machinery.
You must have missed the “Liquid Manure”-part in the title.
Runoff is indeed an issue. But there is also the indescribable smell, and potentially dangerous environmental qualities, of liquid animal manure that has been fermenting (or whatever it does, I don’t really need to know) in a pit. Dad had a manure pit under the hog “finishing shed” built into the first floor of one of our barns on the farm, and his system for disposal involved a tank like this, pulled behind a tractor, that simply sprayed the manure onto a hay field. It greatly simplified the task of handling of animal waste, as you did not have to first line the floor of the barn with straw or other bedding and then have to remove the bedding as well as the waste mechanically.
The biggest hurdle to building this system was overcome when he cut a deal with Mom in which 1. He would only spread manure when the prevailing breeze was from the south (our farm faced the north side of the county road) and, 2. He would do his own laundry in the aftermath, using some of Mom’s homemade lye soap. “the smell of money,” indeed.
Fascinating. And reminds me of the solid (as it were) 45 minutes I spent behind a horse-drawn Amish manure spreader on a twisty, 2-lane Central Pennsylvania road many years ago…
Gotta love those articles from Johannes Dutch!
I remember our 1980 summer holiday in Germany. We were driving to a small town outside Waldshut-Tiengen for evening meal. The farmers just spread the manure on the fields, and the eye-watering stench hit us. I was ‘suffocating’ because I couldn’t avoid smelling it while breathing through my mouth.
My grandfather was very insistent on having the country meal at a farm restaurant. Either we oblige to his whim or suffer long night of his incessant bickering about wasting petrol and time (typical old school German is he). At the restaurant, I expected to see it empty due to the stench. Surprisingly, lot of people were not even perturbed by the stench and carried on with conversations over beers and meals.
Over the time, I’ve developed the detachment from the stench…
Vielen Dank!
Peak manure-smelling-experience: storing/spreading champost. That’s champignon manure, coming from champignon growers. Excellent fertilizer though!
Reminds me of the portaloos at Glastonbury in the ’90s. You would try to hold your breath, then you would breathe with your mouth. And immediately, you realized you could taste it. Put me off big rock festivals for ever.
Great post, Johannes. Never suspected these existed.
Liquid Manure Injection – now that’s a badge I’d like to see on cars driven by arseholes. “Look at that Golf LMI passing on the right!”
A Golf LMI with the optional fart can exhaust – that does it!
Golf CIS LS. Continuously Injecting Sh*t. Liquid Sh*t.
No need to change emblems.
Very occasionally, a field in our midwest area will get “treated” to liquid manure, whether drilled in or sprayed, I’ve thankfully never been close enough to know.
There are some apartments that cater to an ag college not to far from us. Across the road is a hog farm. The apartments are aptly named, “Country Aire Apartments.”
When we had chickens (~50 layers) we’d do one big cleanout each fall and spread the bedding/manure on the hay field. We’ve had beef animals the past 5-6 years, so it’s the barn that gets an annual muck out these days.
There are actually a lot of those low-flotation trikes used in our area, but they’re spraying insecticides, pesticides, etc. I have a tire from one laying on its side out in the pasture that our goats (when we had ’em) used to love to jump up on or hide inside.
Oh, you have one of the good old John Deere manure spreaders! Ours, unfortunately, had steel sides (not one of Waterloo’s better ideas) which of, of course, rusted out, bottom of the side first. We were relieved when Dad finally bought a nice, new New Idea spreader (with the hydraulically operated gate to hold in the liquids until you got to the field), so that you did not have to begin each loading by strategically placing old paper feed sacks to cover the holes. “Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without.”
You did get used to the smell, sort of, though you didn’t have picnics outside unless the wind was from the proper direction (south, of course, see above).
Interesting, Doing that tanker job last year we notice many many tankers coming and going while we loaded cream all oldmodel trucks, they cart waste whey for irrigation/fertilizer on dairy farms I assumed they just drove around and sprayed it now you have me thinking, perhaps machines like this are in use, I;ll keep an eye out for them if I end up on day shift in that area this year.
Fascinating machine…great article Johannes.
The operator in the cab had a joystick looking contraption attached to the steering wheel that reminded me of the knobs on hot rodders’ steering wheels in the 1950s