The Post Knocker.
A tractor-mounted post driver. The single most useful item on this list and the one most likely to hurt somebody. £95 a day, machine only, collected from here.
The specification.
The machine
- Type
- Side-shift, mast-mounted, hydraulicNot a hand-held petrol driver
- Weight of drop hammer
- 250 kgWhich is what does the work
- Post capacity
- Up to 200 mm round, 3.0 m longStraining posts included
- Tractor required
- 60 hp with a decent rear endWeight matters more than power
In work
- Linkage
- Three-point, category IIAnd it needs a top link that is not seized
- Hydraulics
- Two double-acting spoolsSide shift and mast tilt
- Output, realistic
- 40–70 posts/dayOne person. Two people, about 90
- Rock spike
- IncludedAnd on this ground you will use it
Figures are from the machine itself rather than from a brochure. Where the two disagree, the brochure is wrong.
What it fits.
A 60 hp tractor with category II linkage, two spools and enough ballast on the front not to stand up. Read that last part again.
If you are not certain your tractor will do it, ring before you hitch up rather than after. We have had two people arrive with the wrong linkage category and one with no air brakes, and all three of those were avoidable phone calls.
Who has actually used it.
Named because a machine with a history is easier to trust than a machine with a specification. Where somebody broke something, it says so.
Kaleb Cooper
More than anybody. He is better with it than the rest of us combined
Two neighbouring estates
For deer fencing, which is a long and joyless week
A contractor from Burford
Every autumn, for stock fencing
Alan Townsend
Once, for a gate post, and he sent it back the same day
What it is bad at. It is genuinely dangerous. A 250 kilogram weight dropping down a mast beside a person holding a post is the single most hazardous thing we hire out, and the only item on this list that comes with a mandatory briefing rather than a leaflet. It is also miserable on Cotswold brash — you hit stone at about four hundred millimetres roughly one post in five, and either the post splits or you move it, and moving it is why a fence line wanders.
When it is free.
Half days are two thirds of the day rate, because the loading, the walk round and the clean take the same time either way.
Tuesday8 September
Thursday10 September
Monday15 September
Pick a time and we will hold it for ten minutes. Hold that day
This is a demonstration build. Nothing here books anything, no deposit is taken and no card details are collected at any point. Prices are indicative and are published so the arithmetic can be argued with.
The terms, in four lines.
£95 a day
Machine only. No fuel, no operator.
Your insurance
Hired-in plant cover, shown before it leaves.
Owner keeps first call
If it is our weather, it comes home.
Back clean and full
Or it comes back with an invoice.
The other seven.
The 6m Tine Drill
Six metres of tine drill, bought in a fit of optimism in 2021 and used for about nine days a…
The Cambridge Rolls
Twelve point three metres of ring rolls. The cheapest thing to hire here and the one with the longest waiting…
The 3m Topper
A three-metre flail topper for margins, paddocks and the parts of a field a combine is never going to see.
The Bale Wrapper
A trailed round-bale wrapper. Nobody hires this because they want to. They hire it because the forecast changed.
The Subsoiler
A three-leg low-disturbance subsoiler. The most misused machine in British arable farming and we have misused it ourselves.
The 16t Grain Trailer
Sixteen tonnes, sprung drawbar, commercial axles and a working tarpaulin, which is rarer than it should be.
The Hedge Cutter
A six-and-a-half metre reach flail hedge cutter. Legally unusable for six months of the year, which is the most important…
Before you hire anything.
Insurance, briefings, and the two things we will not hire out at all.
