Does this exist - Tracked puller, ideally battery powered

If this is an invention, please make millions off it and kick some back to me :)

I would love to buy a small machine that is about the size of a push mower.  It has one or two big tracks to propel it over grass, mud or snow.  It probably weighs 200 lbs to give good traction.  It has a handle just like a lawnmower with speed controls.  To turn it you just treat it like a push lawnmower.  It has a hitch to drag a big sled.  You can stand in the sled and it drags you along and you still steer it with the handle.  Maybe it has a one mile range before recharging.  You can slog through snow and mud to get to the woods, cut firewood, load it in the sled and drag it back home.  Or go ice fishing with it.  Or maybe attach a snow plow to the front somehow.  Or rig up a dump wheelbarrow on top of it.  Or other creative ways to harness it's power.  

I just want it to get firewood out of my wet/snowy/muddy woods and to haul buckets of sap out of those same woods in March.

Does something like this already exist???  If not, who's going to build a bunch and give me one ;)

Try searching for motorised wheelbarrow. There are some tracked ones and some electric. Dunno if there are any tracked electric ones available where you are.

Or even walk behind tractor.

I’m pretty sure there was something like that on ‘Edwardian farm’ as well.

Thanks James!  I'm thinking something more like just the tracked part.  That search lead me to this home built device.  Overly complicated with the robotics but the motor/track/battery idea is spot on.  I'd aim to drag a sled with it and steer it manually with leverage from behind.

https://community.robotshop.com/robots/show/trac-drive-mower-and-snow-plower

James Alun wrote:Or even walk behind tractor.

Yeah, gas-powered BCSes weigh on the order of 300 lbs and I know people convert them to electric because Sean at Edible Acres has one -- not sure of the weight with motor and batteries instead of engine. But there's a utility trailer with a seat. It shouldn't be too awfully hard to swap out the wheels for skids/skis.

Dave Lotte bought this one:
I'm guessing it's gas. He's moved a lot of yards of material with it!

He discusses buying it earlier in the thread: https://permies.com/t/360/180629/Hobbit-Home-Progress

Probably a bit different than what you were envisioning, but see these 'stand-on' snowmobiles here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qN4aFdjcW8k

Because they are coming from the snowmobile world, they naturally are gas-powered at this point.  Yet from recent searches, companies like Polaris and Arctic Cat are already issuing electric UTVs and Taiga is making electric snowmobiles.  May not be far behind to get a stand-on electric tracked unit, but I suspect price will be steep initially.  Looks like a fun and useful design!

Ski Doo made one a few years ago that was half engine and track, and half toboggan that pulled behind it, but it must not have been a big seller. I know they existed because my local dealer had one, but kept saying, "next year they are selling them". I think it was to gauge interest, but I did not see them on their website for sale now.

BCS makes a two wheel tractor that is very much what you describe too. It can be configured into having tracks, and thus pulls loads. You can buy either steel or rubber tracks. Some people have converted them over to being electric powered, either by battery or via a tether cable.

Myself, I do not have the typical tractor most people think of, but having limited acreage I get by with a mini-tracked skid steer. It is not electric, but has a small gasoline engine that drives it. They are quickly becoming VERY popular, mostly because they are so cheap. I have said to others on here I see a lot of Permie People buying them because they are so versatile yet do a lot of work.

Brand new this was only $7000.

Search "Trailer Valet RVR"

Could be modified with brackets...remote control is kinda cool :)

A SnowDog is probably not exactly what you are looking for, but it may be closest:
https://snowdog.com/
There are quite a few homemade versions, using a dead snowmobile.  Some are electric, but most use a small 4-stroke gas engine for power.  The term of the art is "track sled" for these critters.  I have looked at the SnowDogs in the local dealership.  They cost more than I am willing to pay for a roadworthy work truck, so new off the shelf is not happening for me.  DIY?  Maybe.  Dead snowmobiles are quite cheaply had.  I already have several ragged tracks (not safe for high speed trail riding anymore, but would be OK at 5 or 10 mph).  A couple of years ago, I saw several videos on a battery powered electric version which was being marketed as a snow-bike (fat tire) trail groomer.  The price point seemed rather extravagant to me (but see above - I'm as tight as two coats of paint!), and it was quite heavy.  Heavy seems bad if it gets stuck in deep snow.  (On edit: https://mtt136.com/, https://www.youtube.com/@mtt-136technologie8/videos - I saw a list price of $18k and change, though that was probably Canadian, which might soften the blow - slightly - yikes!).

Locally, our Wacker-Neuson dealer has a small tracked dumper on display, similar to what Christopher Jay Angler (sorry, Jay!) showed.  I believe the display model has a turntable under the dump box, so that it can dump elsewhere than directly in front of the track drive chassis.  I didn't notice a self loader, but it may have had one.  Again, probably not quite what you want:
https://www.wackerneuson.com/us/products/dumpers/track-dumpers

Europeans have a lot of "right sized" construction equipment available to them, made to sneak into compact city building sites, through doorways, etc. most of which doesn't make it over here to the US.  For whatever reason.

The Lennartsfors/Jonsered Iron Horse (Jarnhasten - with umlauts - two dots - over the "a"s) is a gas powered (I think Honda GX270 or 390) tracked walk-behind (or, rather, walk in front), but which can also be used as a ride-on device.  They are tiller steered (the standard steering position is leading out in front, swinging the tiller to steer), and have an amazing variety of accessories in the catalog.  They are intended for draft work (hence the name), mainly light selective cut logging, but the number of accessories available broadens that out a bit.  Some of the accessories mount to a center pin or ball, like a gooseneck trailer, (a log bunk, for example) which might be used as a hitch point for trailers.  There was an older Iron Horse posted on Craigslist quite cheaply, about 6 hours drive from where I live, a couple of years ago.  I was sorely tempted, but again, my thrifty nature prevailed.
https://lennartsfors.com/en/jarnhasten/
I have a couple of their older catalogs (somewhere in the digital hoard), downloaded from them or perhaps elsewhere, in PDF format.  If you are interested, I could post one, so that you can see the accessories available.

There are (or were) plans available for constructing a small track drive sub-frame to mount under a standard garden tractor, converting it to a crawler.  These are usually brake steered, with the brakes "geared" to the half shaft using chains and sprockets to increase the mechanical advantage of the brakes.  Mechanical or hydraulic disk brakes (AirHeart, for example) are used on these auxiliary shafts to effect a turn.  Not particularly efficient, but reasonably functional.  It would be a lot of fab work.

I have come to the conclusion that DIY is the path for me.  Either I will find an old SkiDoo Alpine (or Valmont) twin track snowmobile with decent tracks and a blown engine, and do an engine transplant with a new Honda and 4-stroke primary clutch, or I will use the snowmobile tracks I have collected and some other mechanical bits and bobs (golf cart axles, Peerless garden tractor transmission, vintage Johnson/Evinrude forward-neutral-reverse snowmobile transmission) to build my own version of some combo of SnowDog and Iron Horse.  The Alpine conversion would be slow (maybe 20 mph, top end) but it would be comparatively quiet in the woods, and would pull like an ox, especially with the right kind of hitch and the proper sled behind it (matched to load and conditions).  Alpines were notoriously difficult to turn, though there are things you can do to improve them, both by proper operator technique (stand on the outside footboard when turning) and using the factory track adjustments (lift the front of the track) and also by adding on some appurtenances to the front ski (weld on a carbide skeg and/or a channel, use a small air cylinder or electric linear actuator to "jack up" the ski when turning).  A more ambitious modification would provide for differential action between the two tracks.  I have some ideas, but don't have a chassis in hand, and packaging would dictate the horizon of possibilities.  A winch or cable puller is always a good plan, too.  As of a few years ago, they were still running Alpines in Antarctica.

I know that none of this is exactly what the OP was asking for.  But I have thought about the same thing, give or take the preference for electric power (I think I might want longer range than battery electric would provide, though hydrogen fuel cell is also a possibility).

Mike,

Just so I am picturing this, you are wanting a lawnmower sized hand-tractor w/tracks for the purpose of towing something else?  Not a device designed to do something by itself.  By this I mean that your description seems like it would be useless unless it had some type of trailer?  Is this correct?

And by saying “useless”, I don’t mean this as a criticism, just as a clarification so I can get a picture in my head.


An alternative that I am conjuring up is a tracked hand-vehicle/tractor with a hitch in the rear as you describe and a small, flat bed in front, possibly in between the tracks so that the little vehicle could do work even without a trailer (maybe move a small pile of firewood).

Eric

Mike and all -

A couple of more ideas, which rattled up to the front of my brain, after additional cups of coffee:

There was a trencher, developed by, or at least under the direction of, T. P. Flynn for the USFS (US Forest Service), at their development station in Washington State, as I recall.  Or was it in Oregon?  If I remember to poke, I'll clarify on edit.  On Edit: the Region Six Equipment Development Laboratory was in Portland, OR.

For those unacquainted, T. P. Flynn was a prolific designer of forestry gizmos in the 1930s and 40s.  Originally from Canada, he developed a small crawler tractor which was air dropped during WWII during the island hopping campaign in the Pacific, also developed a snow tractor, with tracks running over sponsons, etc.  On edit: here's a link to an article about the latter item, also somewhat relevant - https://silodrome.com/monarch-sno-motor/ - patent here - https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/aa/7f/2d/0d0dfc646aaf2d/US2272619.pdf)

Anyway, the little trencher was intended for cutting fire breaks.  It had some form of clutched or differential steering to the tracks.  I haven't been able to find much on it, and it is most certainly not commercially available now, if it ever was, but it was about the size of a big-ish garden tiller or walk-behind tractor.  Gas powered, as originally conceived.  Perhaps someone, if interested sufficiently, could root around in places to which I don't have remote access (USFS archives, maybe?), and find some helpful technical details, especially as regards the track drive.

On edit:  From the September 1949 edition of Popular Mechanics -
"...the Walk -Behind Trencher. Tested last summer, this machine seems to be the answer to the problem of stopping grass fires in prairies and open forest lands. Flynn and his two assistants built a powerful adaptation of the best garden cultivators but with an entirely new plow, a spiral digger that revolves at 300 revolutions per minute on the front of the machine. Made of hard steel with no projecting edges it will slide undamaged over any kind of rock and rapidly churns out a 24-inch- wide ditch, not only clearing the ditch but throwing the dirt evenly over the grass to each side to make the effective width of the fire trench almost four feet.

The efficiency of the spiral digger exceeded all expectations, but the men also knew that an ordinary garden cultivator has a clumsy method of steering that would quickly fatigue any man pushing it in and out among trees. So they invented a powered , fingertip steering. Shifting a control handle to either side changes the gear ratio of the tractor wheels the more you move the handle the greater the difference in ratio — one wheel slowing down while the other speeds up T all accomplished by an ingenious expanding- diameter pulley and V-belt drive. And it has a reverse gear. One man can easily operate the lab's Walk -Behind Trencher through a full day of forest-fire fighting."

Unfortunately, the PDF scans of this issue aren't working properly on the Wayback Machine, at the moment, so I'm not sure if there are any pictures to accompany this text.  Somewhere, I have a digital scan of a line drawing or sketch of this critter, I'm pretty sure.

It also might be possible to fairly easily outfit a rather garden-variety battery powered trailer mover dolly with track modules.
One example of powered trailer dolly: https://www.northerntool.com/products/superhandy-electric-trailer-dolly-2800-lbs-capacity-2800-lb-model-tri-guo041-5871921?
As mentioned up thread, BCS offers tracks which bolt on in place of their standard wheels:
https://www.texasbcs.com/bcs-attachments/accessories/tracks/
There are also track drive modules to replace the wheels on side-by-side UTVs and 4 wheelers, from several manufacturers.
Would a single deep cycle battery meet your needs?  Could you use a different battery chemistry to get more power density, thus longer range?

Anyway, off to remove snow from roofs, and other early winter fun.

Hope some of this was helpful, thought provoking or otherwise beneficial to someone.

Kevin

DTV shredder.

Another one which tumbled out of the dark recesses while I was working:

Bolens Hus-ski or Diablo Rouge.

These were very early "snowmobiles".  They have a cult following around here among the vintage snowmobile crowd.  A small tractor unit, powered by a small gas engine (a few horsepower) with a single or twin track, pulling a sit-on sled which is basically a pair of skis, with a bench that is straddled by the operator and a passenger.

Here's a Hus-ski: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrAKpP6kqPE

Again, not quite what you're looking for, but it's in the same neighborhood.

You can easily build just what you're wanting out of scrap and used tires. Depending on how much power you need the motor could be from a scooter to a golf cart all the way to a large electric forklift. Look around and think would this or that junk work. I bet you can dig up what you need fairly easy...

Thanks everyone!!!  Looks like I didn't invent this concept :)

I bet I saw the SnowDog once before cuz that's what I was imagining - only electric.  

The trailer dolleys look very close but I'm not sure they could handle off road, mud and snow that well.  Maybe with modifications and some added weight.

For the closest thing to what I'm after, the Electric Shredder that Dane Geld posted is it.  Thanks Dane!  It's much more fun and sporty than what I'd need but I guess that could be ok :)  Now I just need to convince them I invented it so they give me one to test....

While DIY is an option, I'm not too savvy on electrical controls so that's a bigger project than I want to take on.

I hope this thread helps others as they search for an alternate transportation system for the small homestead!