Obviously, I have been spending a lot of time at work. It is good to be busy, especially after the past two years of little rain. The Dragon Lady has been taking care of does and kids. I’ve been doing the rest in the dark in the morning and in the dark of an evening.

Yesterday, an empty semi rolls into the store yard right at 8 am. He came in with a copy of a purchase order. He was from Minnesota and was to pick up a 12 row corn header that I sold a dealer in Minnesota back in March. We weren’t expecting a truck that morning and were somewhat unprepared to load him.

The corn header was sitting on a header trailer on the north end of the lot. We only had two combines on the lot. One in the shop with the feeder house off. This meant I couldn’t use that one. Another older combine was in line to go into the shop. It had the right feederhouse attachment to fit the corn head, but it might not have enough lift to pick it up. For those that don’t know, a 12 row corn header weighs a lot and is designed for newer, bigger combines. A 9610 combine like the one I was going to try to use is better suited for an 8 row header. But I was determined to try it. It would take two big forklifts to pick it up if this combine couldn’t do it. And we have one big one and one little forklift. I really needed this combine to work.

I pulled the trailer out front with my pickup. I lined the combine up and got the feederhouse hooked up. I hit the hydraulics to start to lift. It was picking it up. The truck driver was watching the clearance from the header to the trailer. I got it lifted as high as it would go. The driver was still signaling for me to lift it higher. I gave it more rpms and hit the lift button some more. The ass end of the combine was a little light. There wasn’t any more lift. I crawled off the combine and examined the situation. I might be able to just put it in reverse and drag the header off the trailer. Nope, there was still too much weight on the trailer. The trailer just drug with it.

I climbed off again. It looked like I only needed a couple of inches and I could get the trailer out from under it. Jake, one of our mechanics, walked out to see what I was getting ready to screw up. He asked, “What are you thinking?” I said, “Two inches and I could pull the trailer forward and be clear of the trailer. Let’s flatten the trailer tires.” He got a valve stem remover and we made all four tires flat. I slowly pulled the trailer out from under the header. We were free.

Luckily, the semi trailer was a low deck detach trailer, so I just drove the combine up to it and sat the header down on it. Problem solved. Now, we just had to air the tires back up on the header trailer. Such is life in my world. Probably wasn’t the ideal method, but it worked.