Very pleased with the wood transport rikshaw

Yesterday I talked briefly about our newest invention: a rikshaw to transport wood logs. Today we took it to our friend’s teak plantation and it exceeded our expectation. It is indeed a very useful device.

But first we had to get to the place where we want to use it. It’s a plantation subdivided into parcels with each parcel being the property of a different owner. Due to that there is not really a good network of access roads. There are a few dirt roads and a few attempts at building roads. Unfortunate for us our friend’s parcel is located at the end of a halfway built dirt road and it’s kind of deteriorating. This is how that piece of dirt road looks from the distance.

Not really a road - right? What looks like terraces is what the bulldozer built but did not finish. Still in some sections they are wide enough for the Jeep. As you might expect we had to try our new trailer in a real life situation. Why push and carry the wood rikshaw all the way? We built the offroad trailer for a purpose and after our first test today we really could use it.

This is how it looks from the front. It was quite easy to get in and out. The new 33” tires provide more than enough traction and ground clearance together with the 2.5” lift. It drizzled a bit while we were there but there was no mud - just wet grass which can be slippery but we were lucky.

One of Luis’ brother is demonstrating how the rikshaw is being used.

Initially they tried a few logs only. Then they put more load on it.

The weight doesn’t get too heavy with 6-10 logs (they are 2m in length) for a single man to push it forward.

Our job is to carry logs from all over the plantation to a storage facility we built earlier. Before, without the rikshaw, the guys had been carrying those logs on their shoulders over distances between 200m and 500m. With the new tool work is much faster and less difficult.

(Some of the pictures were taken with the built-in camera of a Blackberry)

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