What exactly is your problem here, **The Long Road **?
I was just curious if one of the vehicles you linked to could satisfy the OP’s question. You’re the one who shot back with the BS about reading the OP carefully. If you are going to have an attitude about giving incorrect information, before you start giving that advice you should follow it. The OP clearly states "vehicle’ which is singular. If the farmer could have multiple vehicles, the author would have made it plural.
And I answered your first curious question with a “no”.
Let’s look at the OP:
Two questions. The first absolute, the second contingent. :rolleyes:
How about a team of Belgian Draft horses?
Mount these on a big pickup and you’re all set. Check out the video clips of them running through mud.
The Jawas in the foreground are a hint. Here is a better view.
Not a train on tracks.
The best bet is a 4-wheel drive tractor equipped with floater tires. Floaters are specially designed to provide a huge footprint, thus spreading out the weight of the tractor as much as possible. Farmer may have to add front or rear ballast to even the weight across both axles.
Towing a load is more difficult, not because the tractor wouldn’t be powerful enough to do it, but because the trailer wheels could easily sink in the mud. There may be some oversize trailer tires available (I don’t know) or the farmer may have to resort to a sled.
I suggest he gets himself two big planks and walks across for the first problem, and add a sled for the second - he’ll need to make a number of trips, of course.
Failing that, one of those swamp boats like they use in the Everglades would be ideal. Of course the OP specified land vehicle, so they’re out, so how about a set of skis and a paraglide fan strapped to his back?
Am I the only one wondering why the farmer is in such a hurry? Is there an angry bull in this field too? Is there a real application here, or are we settling some silly conflict of boyhood fantasies (i.e., a bar bet?)
Unimog trucks have quite a few fans. And it seems there are equally-rugged trailers, though in this case, with triple your capacity requirement.
Maybe my ignorance is showing, but 1000 pounds doesn’t sound like that much. Couldn’t a heavy-duty, fat-tired pickup truck carry that right in the bed, and skip the trailer?
Personally, I think it would be more sporting (and more practical) to improvise something from common rural materials. The specified terms don’t weigh delivery time of “any vehicle in the world” or the complete destruction of the field by one of those strip miners.
He could make pretty good speed across a muddy field by walking on flattened steel trash can lids (his boots in the handles), or he could roll a section of 5-8 ft dia. galvanized corrugated culvert pipe across the field by walking in it. A sufficient length could also transport cargo packed in 55gal drums, which could co-roll inside the pipe, held only by their ribs and the corrugations of the pipe. Some neighbors -more readily available than M1A1 tanks- could help with propulsion.
These solutions require no real ‘construction’, but a ‘landraft’ of corrugated sheet metal, with pipe ‘axles’ and 55-gal can "wheels’ could be assembled and stored relatively easily for community usage
Those ideas are just off the top of my head. Surely better improvised designs are possible. I have to admit that I agree with Lagged that the “snap your fingers and it’s there” bit smacks of wish fulfillment. I’d feel differently if the question were posed without a scenario: “what manned land vehicle can cross a mile of 2-ft deep mud fastest, with or without 1000lb of cargo, hovercraft excluded?”
Desmostylus: there ARE two questions…are you republican?
Farmers in my neighborhood regularly pull shitwagons full of manure that are easily over 1000 pounds through rain drenched muddy fields with a large all wheel drive tractor. The real question is how fast is as fast as possible? Money would seem to be the object. 1000 pounds is about 33% of what my car weighs, a farm tractor could drag that around in soupy slimey mud no problem.
Well I’d use a heavy assault bridge instead of an A1 tank. Just looks cooler. But why not the obvious and a NMRA? mud-dragster. They race em all the time when there aren’t tractor pulls at teh county fairs.
I would make a lousy farmer though, my first instinct would be to grab a blonde and go mudwrestling.
Cat Challenger MT800. 500hp.
It’s a tracked farm tactor.
Top working speed 9mph. Top transport speed is 24 mph. Hauling a 1000 lb trailer for something like this would not be ‘working’. So It may be able to do 20-24 mph across that field.
Thanks for all of your answers. I thought for sure that someone would have developed a rocket powered mud sled by now. Sorry about the somewhat confusing question. I intended for the farmer to be able to make two different choices of vehicle (if he wanted to) at two different times during the day for two different challenges. I picked a trailer with 1000 lbs for this question because it sounded like a nice number.
Why did I ask this fantasy question? Because I got stuck in the mud this weekend while driving to my super secret fishing hole. Since I almost drove over my little brother while getting out, my older brother (who is a fireman/emt/engineer) joked how long it would take a crew to get out there to put all his pieces back together again. That is what got me thinking what would be the fastest way to get across a mile or two of muck.
I have seen tractors and construction equipment get stuck in the mud every once in a while (check out this tractor in the mud pic: http://www.nodakoutdoors.com/gettingstuck.php ), I began to wonder if there was a vehicle that was not only strong enough to go very quickly across a muddy field, but also be able to take a decent load without sinking.
The fastest way to get across a muddy field is almost always to drive around on the road. It’s undesirable to drive across muddy fields even if you can make it, because you leave giant ruts that you’ll spend extra time tilling flat sometime later.
But if you must drive across super-muddy conditions, the best bet is a rolligon. It can carry your cargo, too. The ones I’ve been around can actually float, and will cross lakes using the wheels as paddles. If you try hard, though, you can get them stuck in muskeg - so winches are standard equipment.
For getting unstuck, one of the funniest things I ever saw was while planting trees in the BC interior. Some idiots had driven a suburban out into some muck and sunk it so that the entire underbody was resting on the mud. By pure chance, there was a track-hoe working on the road a couple miles away, and he came by, hooked a cable between his bucket and the truck, and lifted it out like it was a toy. If he hadn’t been there, that truck would still be sitting there.