Hauling Cattle as a Business
Beef InsiderUpdated: 02/09/2015 @ 2:30pm
By: Raylene Nickel
Since moving into semiretirement after selling their cow herd and farmland, Waldo and Kathy Westrum of Turtle Lake, North Dakota, now focus on their side business: custom-hauling cattle. With the purchase of a new trailer, their client base and service area has expanded, doubling their cattle-hauling miles.
“Custom-hauling cattle is a good side business for a ranch because it provides cash flow,” says Waldo. “The extra income the business earns helps justify the purchase of a good stock trailer for our own ranch use.”Waldo bought his first gooseneck trailer for hauling his own cattle back in 1992. Soon after, neighbors began asking him to haul their cattle. The business grew from there.
The Westrums’ new, custom-built trailer plays a key role in the present growth of their business. They took what they learned over many years of hauling and ordered a custom-built trailer that increases the ease of loading cattle.
The following specialized features reduce their stress and labor, and help minimize breakdowns.
• Steel construction. Relative ease of repair figured in their decision to buy a trailer constructed of steel rather than aluminum.
“If we have to repair a steel sidewall, for instance, this can be done at a regular welding shop,” says Waldo. “Repairs to aluminum have to be done at a specialized shop.”
• Heavy-duty undercarriage. The 34-foot-long trailer has three axles, each rated at 8,000 pounds. Wheels are heavy-duty, and the tires are 14 ply.
“This gives us good carrying capacity, and we’ve got more stopping power with the bigger brakes,” says Waldo. “Tire blowouts are common with stock trailers, but we’ve only had two flats in the last 26,000 miles. Those resulted from two small nails we happened to pick up.”
• Two-speed gearbox on the jack. Because the steel construction increases the weight of the trailer, the Westrums added a two-speed gearbox to the jack. The gear reduction makes it easier to crank the jack to lift the hitch out of the pickup bed.
• Double-wall design. Smooth interior walls are easy to clean and reflect light, brightening the interior. Outside walls are of horizontally designed construction materials, which tend to deflect gravel.
“Vertical structures on the outside catch rocks and chip the paint, giving rust a place to get started,” says Waldo. The trailer interior is 80 inches wide with straight sidewalls all around.
• Light interior. The interior and the exterior of the trailer are painted white. “Cattle are easier to load into a trailer that’s light inside rather than dark,” notes Kathy.
• Rubber flooring. At the factory, the floor of the trailer was coated with a ½-inch layer of a material made from recycled rubber. “It adds a layer of cushioning to the floor that makes it more comfortable for the cattle to stand on,” explains Kathy. “It’s easy to clean.”
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