Hay, Feed and Fence Delivered Past the Cattle Guard

Usually, and the answer is decided before the truck is assigned rather than at the gate. What we need is gate width, whether there is a cattle guard and roughly what it will hold, overhead limbs, any low water crossing, the surface after recent rain, and whether there is room to turn a tractor trailer around at the pens. If the lane will not take a 53 foot van, the load moves on a shorter trailer, on a flatbed with a truck-mounted forklift, or to a staging point closer to pavement that you and the driver agree on at booking.

Three, and one of them has to be picked at booking. Your loader, hay spear or forklift meets the truck at the appointment. The trailer brings its own unload, meaning a truck-mounted forklift on a flatbed or a hay trailer set up to roll bales off. Or the freight goes to a staging point: headquarters, the feed store, a contractor's yard. There is no lumper service in a pasture, so a driver who arrives to find nobody and no equipment leaves with the load, and the redelivery costs a day.

No. We do not coordinate live animal transport. Livestock needs pot trailers or bull racks with the compartments, ventilation and flooring the animal requires, drivers trained in loading density and in what a long stop does to a loaded deck, plus brand inspection, a certificate of veterinary inspection and entry requirements that vary by state, with export health protocols on top for anything crossing into Mexico. Book a livestock carrier for the animals and use us for the hay, feed, mineral, fence, water and pens.

On weight and dimension, not on bale count. A 4x5 round bale can run anywhere from about 800 to 1200 pounds depending on species, density and how wet it was baled, so the same 36 bale order can scale 15 tons on one cutting and 22 on another. Send bale size, an honest average weight, the total count and whether the load needs to be tarped, and settle who furnishes and throws that tarp in writing, because rain into the outside of a stack costs you a moldy layer and scale weight you never quoted.

That requirement goes on the dispatch before a carrier accepts the freight. Animal feed sits under the same federal sanitary transportation rule as human food: the shipper specifies the sanitary conditions in writing, the carrier operates to them, and where a bulk vehicle is used the carrier discloses prior cargo and the most recent cleaning on request. Tell us on the first call what your mill or your buyer accepts as proof, because that format is set by them, and it gets confirmed against the specific trailer assigned rather than assumed from the equipment type.

No, it is an oversize load. Legal width in general highway service is 8 feet 6 inches, so a 10 foot tank needs permits for each state on the route, a route that clears it, and in some states a restriction on when it can travel. That is a planning item with a lead time, not a strap decision at the yard, so send the outside dimensions and the shipping height early. Poly tanks below that width still cube out a deck fast and need padded strapping at their molded cradle points, because a strap over a bare edge cracks the tank.

We coordinate cross-border freight through the South Texas crossings as weekly business. Two things to plan around on ranch inputs specifically. Feed and forage are regulated on both sides of the line: southbound, the Mexican animal health and plant health authorities set the import permit and the certification a load of feed or hay has to travel with, and northbound into the United States, animal food falls under FDA prior notice before arrival. And forage is a plant-health commodity in either direction, because hay and straw carry weed seed and pests, so inspection and certification are part of the load rather than paperwork you sort out afterward. Both get settled before the trailer stages, not at the gate.

Different page, and often the same week. Machinery, tractors, loaders, shredders, balers, feed trucks, ATVs and UTVs, is handled on our ranch equipment transport page, which is built around auction pickups and gate delivery. This page covers material: hay, feed, mineral, fence, pipe, water and pens. Send both lists at once and they get planned together.

Further than feels necessary, because the constraint is not the hay, it is the truck. Once standing forage is gone across a region, everyone buys in the same weeks from the same few states that got rain, so the outbound lanes out of those states tighten while your herd eats every day with no slack in the schedule. A week of lead time on a long forage haul usually buys a committed truck and a delivery date. Same-day into that market buys a rate nobody can hold. If you are feeding through a dry stretch, book the next load before the current one is fed out.