Comment by PaulHoule

Comment by PaulHoule 3 days ago

Often these "farmers" are horse traders or people I know with a CDL who have the right equipment and also do other work for me like cut my hay. One of them is "retired" but he waved to me driving a dump truck when I was photographing a sign for my Uni that had a field of daffodils in front of it this morning.

The farmers I associate with care a lot about their animals and I expect them to take the same care with mine. As a rural person I judge people based on relationships and reputation and not on how much insurance they have. I'd trust any of these people to haul a horse in a big-ass trailer than I would trust myself or my wife.

HeyLaughingBoy 3 days ago

And for a horse that's not used to loading, a livestock trailer is often much easier because they're more comfortable getting into it than, e.g., a 2-horse slant.

Judging by the number of horses my wife hauls, most horse owners don't have their own truck/trailer. Which makes sense: for most people, the trailer won't be used very often, and hay is usually delivered by the farmer, so don't need a truck for that.

How did we get so far OT?

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x436413 3 days ago

you're limited to one horse at a time with livestock trailer, and if load is a problem, you can use a straight load and i guess remove center divider in a straight load. because i train rather than haul, i'd opt for taking time with load of course.
personal farms don't need to haul, there's no disagreement about that, but op suggested that you can run a horse business this way. it took me a while to realize that he has a vanity farm that's funded by his tech money, so you know he can gradually grow, he doesn't need to board, or train, or any of those other things people in the business diversify their income sources with.
i don't think we're OT at all. in horse business and generally farming you have two types of vehicles relevant to this conversation, trucks and gators. you absolutely need both. your truck can act as a gator, but your gator can't act a truck. you can use pretty much anything as a gator, i've got an old cherokee, an atv with a hitch and an actual gator doing the gator business. op uses a ford focus. the electric pickup from original post is probably a solid gator. kei trucks can be used as gators. but none of this stuff replaces a truck, which you still have to pay shit ton of money for.
usually in conversations like this it's horse people who come in and say "nah we need a truck to haul", but this time op suggested that you can in fact run a horse business with a gator, which prompted some questions from me

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x436413 3 days ago

you're not a rural person, c'mon, you're a wealthy cornell tech with a vanity farm. ithaca is dollar horse country, everyone knows that, so yeah i totally buy that in your fairly unique circumtances running a horse business off a back of a ford focus works. i read you as suggesting that the rest of the industry is silly for buying trucks, and you've got it figured out, but you simply punted on the hauling problem.

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