Today I spent majority of my day in the truck shed. The truck shed being the other part of the building that the shop is attached to. We refer to it as the truck shed being that where the trucks used to be parked until we built the big shed they’re currently in. Now we mainly use it for parking the pick ups.
As you can see there’s a lot going on here. It’s a bit of a catch all. We store oil and other fluids in the back. The wall is lined with lots of tractors weights. As well as a fair size pile of scrap metal. It’s all stuff we keep around to make or fix other things. Then there’s also the loft up top. We have our old air compressor still in the back. We’ve been planning to move it to the big newer shed once we have electric to it. We also store our netwrap for baling hay in the back. The blue barrels have the VP racing fuel that dad uses for the pulling tractors. Used oil is stored in barrels under the steps. Also my JD L along with a box full of its parts is currently stored in here. The white plastic shuttle in there is where I put a lot of the plastic jugs for recycling.
There was also a lot of cardboard in the back too. I always take it to the recycling center as well. There was enough to fill my truck bed all the way to the top of the camper shell. The big box from the 7230 windshield had to be cut up to fit.
Hard to see up in the loft since it was already dark. But after straightening up you can see it’s used for lots of miscellaneous storage. It’s where the air compressor for the shop is. There’s also larger parts stored up there too big for the parts loft in the shop. A few cultivator pieces and corn header snouts. Things like that. We also keep the chain saws and leaf blowers up there. Ratchet straps, gas jugs, buckets full of nails, screws, fence staples and the like. I also currently have the supplies from my service truck stored up there.
The loft in the truck shed has been an on going project for the last several years. About 6 or 7 years ago the loft was absolutely jam back full of ****. You could walk. You could find anything. It was a mess. During the winter I grew tired of it and finally starting moving things. There was tractor parts, old broken chain saws, herbicides and other chemicals, tires, rims, hydraulic hoses, busted hydraulic cylinders, trucks parts, pretty much anything.
Cleaning it up has taken the last several winters. I cleaned out all the chemicals. They were stored in a different shed until the University of Missouri Extension Office held a disposal program one weekend a few counties south of me. They took them all for proper disposal.
There was also somewhere around 36 five gallon buckets full of loads of different hardware. Finishing nails, ringshank nails, sheetmetal screws, bolts, nuts, washers, pieces of chain, and loads more. I commented about this on a few other threads here. These buckets were all filled from the days two of my dads other brothers worked for a local construction company. Every day they got done they’d empty their pouches in a bucket. As the buckets were filled they’d bring them to the shop. That project took me about 2 weeks to do on and off. I sorted every buckets. Several of things were off for scrap. I wasn’t wasting my time with old crusted over rusty nails. But all in all I condensed 36 buckets to about 12. Which are all clean, sorted, tagged and covered. It makes it a lot easier to find nails when you need them.
Also stored up there at one time was a bunch of tires and rims. I carried all of them down out of the loft one winter too. They were moved to the small grain bin beside the silo (you may have seen in some other pictures). It’s a small bin that used to hold corn just to use for grinding feed. But it hasn’t been used for that since I was a kid. So one weekend while dad and my uncle were off to a winter tractor pull I decided I was cleaning it out. The floor was covered with old dried shrunken corn so I cleaned it out. Then I tore out the old rusted floor. Then scooped out all the dust and dirt and mice nest that was under the floor. I also relocated all the cinder blocks that supported the floor as well.
Into the bin the tires went. This is still a project on the to do list though. Some tires need to be gotten rid of. Some rims need tires. It need to be cleaned up in there once. Also, I’d like to have a bit of an inventory list of what we have too. I feel like that just makes things easier.
The other real main project was getting all the old truck and tractor parts out of there. This was also around the same time I’d started to go through our parts loft so I’d already had a box full of obsolete (for us) parts and manuals for equipment that we had not had since I was a kid and some even before. So off to Craigslist most of it went. Between some of the parts, and some old tools and things like that I sold at least a couple thousand worth of stuff. I used that to buy tools and some manuals that I thought would be handy to have.
So getting back to today. I managed to get things picked up for the most part. At least enough to make things look decent for Friday. Hopefully it’ll say that way for awhile.
Dad went to a farm sale today in Illinois for awhile. There was a field cultivator and another truck there he was interested in to replace the wrecked one. He returned empty handed though. Said the truck was shot and the cultivator brought way more than he thought it was worth. Oh well.
We finished this evening by putting the new step on the 4020.
Dad can’t quite get up there like he used to since last year. So I ordered this back at he parts sale. It came in last week but dad just picked it up at JD today. It doesn’t seem too bad. Hopefully it won’t get in the way for anything. He seems to like it pretty well. We had to modify it a little bit to bolt it on since the loader is on there. But it worked.
Also, good thing it was easy to put together. The paper included with the step only had an instruction that said you had to contact your local JD dealer to download and print out the directions to assembly and mount the step. I thought that was a little ridiculous. But we didn’t need them anyway.
So I finished one thing on the to do list today. Also while cleaning the loft I went back through some things I haven’t been able to sell yet. Parts and things like that. So I plan on re-listing all of that stuff this week.
I’m also going to try to sell the likes of this too.
It’s an old bumper jack. I can say with confidence that I have never in my life seen anyone use it. I’d almost put money on saying that jack has been up there on the loft my whole life. I know it’s cool, it’s an old historic tool. It’s build great and it still works. But when it’s sitting around, not being used and taking up space, I just can’t justify holding on to it. I’d rather someone have it that would use it or like having it sit around more than me.
So we’ll see what happens. Lots more to do this week.
