REPORT: Hertfordshire farmers A T Bone & Sons have converted a pair of ex-military MAN lorries into bespoke specialist farm vehicles. One acts as a high-capacity bowser, while the other is fitted with a crane for carting seed and fertiliser out to the field. We take a look at how these conversions were created and fit into the wider farming business.
Hertfordshire farmers A T Bone & Sons are no strangers to adapting equipment to suit their needs. The latest is a pair of ex-military MAN lorries which, now working as a bowser and crane lorry, and have proven to be indispensable to this highly professional diversified agri-business. The A T Bone & Sons story begun in the late 1950s with Alan Bone’s mixed farm near Ware in Hertfordshire, and two decades later the dairy cows were sold to fund a move to a larger arable farm closer to London. In the late 1980s Alan’s sons Russell and Daniel joined the business, and early expansion involved the acquisition of a contract spraying business. Although contract crop spraying finished in the early 2000s, a pair of Toyota Hilux pickups had also carried out amenity applications, initiating a diversification into sports turf and amenity work which has grown to become a sizeable and important division of the business today. Speaking of other divisions, a large civil engineering and landscaping operation serves customers throughout the home counties, and an extremely well-equipped workshop, with five full-time employees, undertakes fabrication work as well as servicing and maintenance. A substantial biomass boiler produces heat for the farm office, drying grain and for drying woodchip which is marketed as biomass, and most of the farm’s straw is baled and traded.
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