I have two business facilities and we're about to move our headquarters from one location to the other. I get truckloads of supplies all the time, but my heaviest loads are pallets of nursery grade soil on pallets from Canada that top out of 2300lbs depending on their moisture content. A lot of them weigh in around 1800, but the wet ones go a little over 2200.

Right now, I have a Yale forklift, heavy rubber tires, non-pneumatic, that we run on concrete and packed gravel to unload these trucks. Occasionally, it finds a soft spot in the gravel, and you can't believe how hard it is to pull out of soft dirt.

My second location, we're pouring some new concrete, but it's not practical to pour it everywhere we really need to go with these pallets.

I have a John Deere 4066M with a hydrostatic drive, it's beast of a small tractor for plowing or bush hogging and it's stupid easy to drive, but whoever designed the hydraulics on the thing, I don't think actually ever sat on a tractor. The front end loader and backhoe attachments are over-driven and touchy, yet the front end loader is rated to lift 2500lbs.*

You see that asterisk? Down in the fine print, it says "2500lbs 24 inches behind the lift arms." So what does that mean? The guys at the John Deere dealership says it means 1700lbs at the bucket. To means it means some marketing ahole is pencil whipping the specs.

Looking at John Deere's website to get 2500lbs at the bucket, I'd have to go to a 5045E or 5065E tractor with a 3500lb* rated loader. Slightly bigger tractor, but not huge. No hydrostatic drive :( so it's either a power reverser or syncshuttle which doesn't sound nearly so easy to drive (as in unloading a truck and clutching and shifting gears). It would still fit through 8 ft wide/tall doors.

I'm not particularly found of JD's 5000 series offerings.

Is anyone using another tractor of similar size that can pick up that kind of weight?

I also looked at some of JD's skid steers last week, I didn't check the specs, but they are huge. Bigger than my forklift. So I'm not exactly happy with those either.

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Kubota M62 would fit the bill.


But, I believe the limiting factor for most tractors isn't the loader, it's the ballast.  Meaning you don't have the weight to pick up the material.


The M62 has a backhoe hanging off of it.  It's still HST. And can lift almost 4000lbs.


If you're doing this regularly however.  You might want to look at the JCB Teleskid.

You need a forklift meant for off-concrete work. My dad has one for the farm, it rarely gets stuck and he goes everywhere with it. I think he paid $1200 for it at govt auction, listed "as-is, condition unknown". He showed up with a winch expecting to winch it on the trailer, the guy said "No need for that, it runs just fine".

A tractor with a fork capacity of 2500 (that's 24" in front of the bucket) is a good size tractor, an expensive tractor.

What kind of forklift do you have now?

3500 lbs. + soft dirt = tracked skid steer.  

I wouldn't even consider a tractor for this.

A forklift it the best thing for lifting pallets, especially with that weight. Getting better road base in your yard would be better. I’d get a good skid steer if I were looking to buy another piece of equipment. You’ll still find the forklift easier to run if working with pallets.

Rough terrain forklift or skidsteer.

or an older full size backhoe would do it.

The FEL weight ratings on tractors is annoying, it seems like every brand rates them differently.  I've had a 5055E for a couple of years and it's been a good machine.  When I was shopping Kubota, MF and JD, the 5055 was the heaviest, and it's still not heavy enough for what you're doing.  What makes matters worse, a lot (probably most) newer tractors with FEL's try to get as much reach out of them as possible.  That's great for getting light loads higher or further away, but it comes at a cost of stability.  I suppose with enough ballast on the ass it could do what you need done, but as others have said, I don't think a tractor is going to be ideal for your application.

I would get a used telehandler.  If you are going to occasionally be unloading this stuff on the dirt you will want the ability to tilt the boom/forks left or right to compensate for the uneven terrain.  Most if not all of them are 4x4 and some like Lull will even slide the entire boom forward which can be nice.  Telehandlers were made for stuff like this.

A good video illustrating this point:

I agree or a 100hp tractor we used a silage bale slicer that weighed 1,800 plus silage bale that weighed 1,600 for 3,400 pounds lifting nine feet to load the mixer. I bought a tracked skidsteer. The tipping weight is 2,700 and it’s not nearly as squirrelly as the tractor. Plus the cylinder rods are bigger on the skidsteer. Most of my silage bales average 1,200 pounds but every once in a while you get one with a little more moisture and the weight jumps quickly.

Personally I’d rent a 100 hp skidsteer until you can move the forklift. But in a nursery I’m sure you will buy one if you rent one for any time period. I did with the chicken houses. They handle oversized buckets so much better than tractors and allow you to maneuver around obstacles so easily. At this point I would be devastated trying to relearn how to use a tractor for certain jobs on my farm.

Another great choice. My neighbor uses his too stack silage bales. But he has a construction business and the telehandler is used quite often.

Don’t know about John Deere but;

24” is the rated load center on fork lifts. Everything calculates from that point.

That's an interesting video.

I have a basic Yale diesel forklift right now. It's basically a warehouse model. Small, but extremely heavy with a 6000lb lift capacity.

The problem with the forklift is that it steers with it's ass and it's very unforgiving if you mess up. We don't let anyone on it unless they've been trained, and even then, I have two f'd up walls because of my employees. The bathroom door wouldn't close a few weeks ago. Sure enough someone bumped the corner of the wall with the forklift.

So I actually want something smaller and lighter to use inside my buildings, because we don't move anything heavier than about 800lbs inside the building. Something with a 1200lb capacity that won't crush feet would be perfect. Outside is where I need a heavier lift capacity. And as far as reach, it only needs to lift high enough to load and unload a semi.

The Yale will never go to the other property. It's not just suited well enough for the ground over there and I doubt the existing concrete is going to hold up to 7000lb loads on a small concentrated footprint for long.

I think the issue is trying to end up with 2 pieces of equipment that can do everything and stay off that $75k price tag for one tractor.

I need a brush hog, I need a FEL/backhoe, I need a heavy pallet mover. Then I need a smaller, separate piece of equipment, to move light pallets.

Look for a 6000 lb telehandler like a gradall. Smaller telehandler will have 6000 lb capacity retracted.


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Yeah, tractor isn't the game.

Telehandler seems pretty adaptable, but there are "off-road" forklifts I see farmers around me use.  Work well for moving and loading pallets onto trucks in their fields.  The off road forklifts are also probably smaller if you have space restrictions.

I've never used a telehandler but they look very versatile on Barnwood Builders.

Everything I learned about telehandlers is by watching Andrew Camarata.  

When I was ten dad declared me old enough to lift him up on a pallet when he limbed trees. Later we were doing some logging and with the larger machines we just push the small and medium trees over with the lift.

You will best be served with a telescopic forklift.  There are a number of reasons, the first is it is easier to see the forks and hit the holes on the pallet.  Tractors suck at this and if you have a number of people using the machine without a lot of experience, you will have more damage to your skids and products.  Soft soil will not bother them, and you can always push or pull yourself out of a wet spot (pushing is easier, stick the forks in the ground and extend the boom).  They are extremely convenient for many other uses.

The downside.  Depending on the design, the arm may block your view on the right side.  If you bump something light you will not notice at first.  If you have smaller people running the machine it will be hard for them to see, particularity on that right hand side.

JCB has a good name, Manitou (makes new holland) has worked well for us, they have a really nice small one for tight areas.  The one on our farm is an old Traverse lift, it is a 50' 10K lift machine, and we use it a lot, not daily, but enough that we are not going to be without one anymore.

If you have to have that PTO, Dieci offers one, others may also.  I have never used this one, but a neighboring farm has one, and I have not seen it setting broke down yer.

While we're on the subject, I'm going to hijack the thread to request useful information.

I have a JD 6405 with 106 hp.  It has a JD620 loader.  I can lift 42 80lb bags of concrete a few inches...just enough to get the full pallet off of the trailer.  That's ~3,400 lbs.  Lift capacity at full height is almost 5,200 lbs per JD specs.

My weight is centered around 24", but it extends out further.  My buddy tells me he's never seen a tractor that couldn't pull the back wheels off the ground with the loader.  Mine doesn't even come close.

Is my loader functioning as it should?

We had an older 40XX series (I forget) that we bought used from another guy around that same time period. That tractor would lift 2200lbs if we used a counter weight on back. But it had real hydraulic cylinders on FEL, not these puny things they put on there now.

Tracked skidsteer. Go ahead and get the CAT299, and buy a few attachments so it's not JUST a forklift

Pressure relief valve is giving up before the wheels come off the ground. That’s not a bad way to have your tractor adjusted. It will save seal’s and front end damage.

We use it to unload round bales move pallets of feed and seed push chicken litter out of the houses and load litter trucks. The machine gets almost 200 hrs a year. Plus there’s more and more attachments being offered. And if you do roll one over they are much safer than a tractor. The little telehandlers are awesome too. The rubber tired skidsteer is another option. I used my little John Deere hard before I got the tracked machine.

A tractor is not the right piece of equipment for the job. You really want a rear steer off road fork lift.

There are multiple ways to tackle this. They're all expensive except an off-road forklift.

There is some good advice in here. A skidsteer/CTL is a very capable machine and would exceed the capabilities of a tractor on the front end while giving up a few capabilities for rear-mount implements and attachments. A backhoe will give you a lot of capability as well as telehandlers or telescopic forklifts. However, I can tell you from experience running most of those, visibility sucks when grabbing pallets, it will be painful to unload a semi and you'll need an extra person to guide you in. Maneuverability is also awful on many of those. A skidsteer will offer the best visibility and maneuverability of those multifunction options. Unfortunately, they're all $50k+ unless you're looking at used options. Even then, used options on some of those are still spendy bc they hold their value.

All-terrain forklift will be the cheapest. It's also a uni-tasker. You can't put a bucket on it and move dirt etc.

My dad's is like this one. He has lugged skidsteer tires on the front and tractor steer tires on the rear. Its geared like a manual truck with a low granny gear. It would have to get pretty wet to get stuck.


They also put duals on them...



If you need cheap I would go all-terrain forklift.

If you can swing the cost I think you will come to love a skidloader/CTL and the versatility offered by acquiring new attachments.

They make an attachment now for skidsteer and tellehandlers that allow you to rotate the forks a little bit. If you’re unloading a lot of pallets it’s a must have plus it drops the forks some for better visibility. I just figured in a nursery application the skidsteer would be the most versatile next to the tractor. My cousin used an old Waldo loader in their nursery but I don’t know if you can still find them. They were used primarily to mix fertilizer and rotted away. Be careful with used all terrain fork lifts. Those used in the poultry industry get used hard and neglected. I think Clark made a really good one the Moffet brand seems a little to low to the ground and occasionally gets stuck in the litter. But it’s quick and nimble.

Waldon Compact Industrial Eq.?

They're still in business, several others make compact loaders like them. My local fertilizer joint has a Kubota.

They're definitely handy, they have some advantages over a skidsteer/CTL and some disadvantages.

Definitely harder to find used.

Probably a Waldon  the n probably got scratched off. We always called it the Waldo. Yeah Cat and Kubota both make them but you hardly ever see them used unless they are wore out.