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| ▲ | x436413 a day ago | parent [-] | | i'll be honest, if the rest of your profile wasn't at least somewhat corraborative, i'd say you're larping, but what you're saying is at least irresponsible. most farmers in rural area have livestock trailers, not horse trailers, hauling for hire (including if you're hauling for students at your barn or whatever) requires CDL and a bunch of other documentation, which you're not typically going to have as a farmer, and more documentation if you're hauling interstate (my vet is across a border), but would i even trust random joe dirt to haul for me? i've hired professionals to transport horses, and i have a handful of people who could haul in a bind and unlicensed but i wouldn't rely on them to be available in an emergency. last year i had to haul an old mare, she was colic, she laid down in the field, covered in sweet, and had to be put down at the vet, but overall it was less than an hour from load to vet. if i had to rely on "farmers", that would prolong her agony. now i just train, so i don't usually have freak accidents, but at riding barns, with students, on trail, something happens from time to time. riding barns i work with tell me horror stories all the time. i'll give you a benefit of the doubt, maybe your wife knows the details, and ithaca being horse country, maybe she's got a friendly neighbor on speed dial, but then you're at best outsourcing your responsibilities to someone else. what other things you can save on to make your operation profitable, at the expense of safety and well being of hoss? | | |
| ▲ | PaulHoule a day ago | parent | next [-] | | 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 a day ago | parent | next [-] | | 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? | | |
| ▲ | x436413 21 hours ago | parent [-] | | 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 a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | 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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| ▲ | bluGill a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Most farmers have a semi and thus a full class A license. Though often haul my horse is done as a labor trade - I'll haul your horse in the off season for me if you help me in my busy season, no money changes hands. | |
| ▲ | rpmisms a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | Wat. Horses are easy to haul. This happens all the time. | | |
| ▲ | alabastervlog a day ago | parent [-] | | My family background on one side was poor-rural and yeah, being surprised at this reads like a class difference to me. | | |
| ▲ | x436413 a day ago | parent [-] | | this whole subthread started with some cornell guy saying that you can run a horse business off a back of a gator, because your neighbors can haul for you, which is pretty much as cloud people as it goes. i'll venture that there's not a single horse farm in u.s. no matter how poor that is not subsidized with tech money that outsources its hauling. we're talking about running a business here, not hauling daisy to county fairgrounds three times a season. | | |
| ▲ | PaulHoule 18 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | We don't even have a gator. My wife does the material handling herself. Our bill for horse moving is probably less than $400 a year in a bad year, a payment on a big-ass truck is upwards of $800 a month. For that matter, in bad years my wife's business subsidized my tech activities and not the other way around. | |
| ▲ | Ancapistani 20 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | In my experience, most people who live in rural areas already have access to a suitable vehicle - because a 30-year-old pickup is the cheapest vehicle to own in those circumstances, long-term. |
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