Grow the Pie & Get the Pie — By Bike

[Larry Leveen]

I am the Executive Director of ForeverGreen Trails, a nonprofit trail advocacy organization serving Pierce County, WA. We support the buildout of our planned regional trail system. This entails many different things that I sometimes describe as "growing the pie of trail funding, and helping our local governments to get a piece of the pie."

In fact, under that piece of trail funding pie is close to 200 lbs. of woodchips I hauled with my heavy duty utility trailer. I've hauled countless loads that way. Garden soil too. Analog but with good low gears. I mostly wish I had an e-assist torso/arms to lift the bins I usually use for this purpose.

 

[Timberdoodle]

Hey! Welcome!

oh yeah for sure, power arms and torsos would defs help.

one of the things I have been thinking about is getting a Carla and retrofitting it with a deck system similar to a C17 Globemaster. frickin wheels built into the floor with special aircraft pallets that help with rapid loading/unloading, and feature spring-loaded locking clips so you can sploot the entire loadout in about 30 seconds during a taxi-drop (we did that in the Airborne for airfield seizures to get our vehicles etc in after the initial assault). Just picture a cargo aircraft taking a huge dump while going down a taxiway at 30+mph and you get the idea.

Carlas already have a ton going for them, but I'm into crazy tinkering stuff.

 

[Larry Leveen]

Well, I guess if you are dropping it onto a smooth surface that small wheels can roll on, or onto another kind of surface that a forklift can move, that could work. You're not expecting to poop it out on the go like "rapid dragon" style, right? Otherwise, maneuvering the load into place via the Carla — or the trailer I have with a high seatpost-mount is pretty ideal.

For me, the off-trailer part is getting harder as we have tall garden beds (visibile in that pix) that it is difficult to lift the bins over to dump compost into. Maybe I should just concentrate on finding smaller bins that would weigh less when full. #divideandconquer

BTW, TIMBERDOODLE!! Woot for Woodcocks!

 

[Timberdoodle]

lol very few people know em by that name, so it's always fun when folks catch on.

yeah so with the Globemaster system, the rollers are in the floor of the cargo bay. the pallets have a flat bottom where the rollers are and you can just push them. it wouldn't be hard to modify a hand truck or some such thing in a similar manner for loading and off-loading. I'm not thinking of doing a rapid dragon, no, but that capability also makes it super easy to unload an entire C17 in like 10 minutes with four or five people just pushing palletized gear. in the case of the Carla, you could just back up to a spot and slide the whole cargo assembly onto a roller rack.

the pallet idea might not confer any advantage for your application. but for me it'd be great because I have a ton of ridiculous plans for when I do get an eCarla