it looks fine for being mass production - wouldn't expect (pretty) premium welds on stuff like this.

@@Deutschehordenelite I work in a fab shop and the guys could lay better beads with their eyes closed. Definitely not skilled welders assembling these.

@@lorenkindschy7153 no definitely not, but your guys probably get payed a little more too ;)

@@Deutschehordenelite Your probably right. Im sure there is not a big profit margin in these.

Like most things nowadays, it's built as cheap as they possibly can make it. Probably hiring kids straight out of high school ag classes to weld them together, people they can get to work cheap for $9-10 bucks an hour. Not going to see high quality welding with those wages. As soon as they DO get good at welding, they probably quit and go get a better paying job. They can always hire another kid or unskilled worker to work cheap and take their place... Hence the crummy welding... Heck even the stealerships are doing that here... Go into the shop in any dealership, car or tractor/equipment, and you'll find that the place is full of "kids" (in their 20's usually) working for a pittance. The tractor dealers here keep 1-2 "gurus" or "graybeards" on the payroll that have been there 30-40 years and know all the ins and outs of the machinery, and they "supervise" the young "know-nothings" that are basically just wrench turners and have no idea what they're doing... the graybeard tells them to "take this off and check that, then come tell me what it looks like or what it reads" and then they tell them the next thing to do. Heck even the car dealerships are doing that now. My brother's car had a factory "anti-theft" thing where you had to pull the headlights to "flash high beams" to get it crank up, and he was having trouble with the ignition switch and changed it and it was still giving trouble, and our Haynes manual didn't have ANYTHING about that factory theft deterrent crap so he decided to take it to the stealership for them to have a go at it-- after all, they should have the factory books on it and trained technicians, right?? Well, it was there a couple days and he asked me to check on it while I was on a parts run for the farm. I stop in, no service writer outside to talk to, so I wandered through the shop... I was surprised to find the shop looked like a high school mechanic's class, other than them all being in matching blue shirts, it was all young "kids" in their early 20's.... I walked over to my brother's car, and there was an open manual on top of the intake manifold, left by the mechanic as he was gone to do whatever... I was shocked and amazed that basically it was the exact same text and illustrations as the goofy little Hayne's manual we had at the house.... This nervous kid walks up and asks if he can help me, and I said, "it's my brother's car he asked me to see how it's going" and he was like "we're still testing it, but it should be ready tomorrow". SO as I'm leaving I see a couple of older fat guys in their mid-late 40's or early 50's walking around from vehicle to vehicle, and usually followed by a "kid" or two, they'd walk up and ask the kid working on that particular vehicle "did you take the thing off?? What did it look like? Did you test such-n-such??? What did the tester read?? Okay... Well, take off the thingamabob next and have a look at it, or run an X-Y-Z test and come tell me what it reads once you finish it, then I'll tell you what to do next..." They just wandered from vehicle to vehicle telling these kids how to fix it, so the shop doesn't have to hire but two or three highly experienced technicians that they have to pay a good wage to keep on the payroll.... the rest can just be "trained monkeys" turning wrenches that really have no idea what they're doing... and once they DO learn something and start getting good at what they do and want a RAISE, they don't get it, so they find a better job and quit and are duly replaced by another wrench turner that doesn't have a clue, but works cheap.... I had one such "know-nothing" one time get sideways of me in a stealership shop at the tractor dealer... We didn't have a shop press at the time and I brought in a hipper bearing housing and bought a new pair of hipper bearings at the parts counter for them to press in. Well, I'd had them failing with alarming speed; Dad and Grandpa had always just dropped off the housing and told them to put new bearings in it and they'd come back later and pick it up to go back to the shop and put the hipper back together and get back to the field. Well, I went in to the shop and WATCHED them press them in one time previously, and found out that the know-nothings were pressing the bearing INTO A BORE by the INNER RACE, which dents the ball bearings and cracks the races and causes the bearing to fail... (You NEVER push a bearing into a BORE by the inner race-- you press on the OUTER race when pressing into a bore hole with a press tool that's hollow over the inner race-- similarly, you never press a bearing onto a SHAFT by the OUTER race-- you use a press sleeve which pushes the iNNER race down onto the shaft and leaves the outer race free and clear). They didn't have a press tool, so I actually went to an oilfield supply and bought a high carbon pipe collar of the correct size and made the proper press tool to press the bearings into the hipper bearing housing bores... Well, I got this particularly idiotic know-nothing fresh-outta-high-school big mouth kid that thought he was God's gift but didn't listen to anybody--- he refuses to use the tool, puts the bearing in, and starts pressing on it in this ancient manually operated arbor press with about a 3 inch forcing screw and a huge hand-wheel at the top to turn the screw... once it got too tight to turn the hand wheel by hand, it had a ratcheting hand lever about 3-4 feet long working a little ratchet pawl on the wheel to FORCE it forward tooth by tooth, giving it ENORMOUS mechanical advantage... SO this idiot starts cranking on it, and the bearing goes cock-eyed in the bore, not straight and true, and he keeps leveraging on it, despite me telling him, "it's gone crooked, you might want to back off and straighten it up with a hammer and then press some more... He waves me off and is basically HANGING with all his weight on the lever, forcing it... it's getting worse and worse so I get WAY back, because I know what's coming next... Sure enough, BOOM!!! The bearing exploded and bits of razor sharp shrapnel and balls go flying everywhere, even dented the tin shop wall behind the press-- stupid kid was lucky he didn't perforate himself. We pull the housing out of the press, the bearing had dug a perfect "crescent moon" into the softer steel of the housing bore where it went cock-eyed before it shattered, so I took the remains into the dealership to the counter and called for the owner, and made him give me a new housing and two new bearings after I told him what happened. He had the shop foreman press them in for me, and then I left. A couple months later I bought us a press for the farm shop so I wouldn't have to deal with IDIOTS like that anymore.... Later! OL J R :)

Epoxy paint. Have had great luck with it on many steel surfaces. It is like putting on glue initially but gets very hard. It's my 2nd choice after powder coat paint.

koolman2021 .

That's what popped into my mind... Rhino Line it... and make sure there are plenty of drain holes in the trough if rain water can collect there. Great video Ryan!

Ya, that what I thought of as well. there are DIY kits ... shouldn't be, but not sure if it would be toxic.

this should be enough Epoxy paint

only problem is it's toxic and if the calves are licking it then they might ingest it.

First thing I thought of!!

ZRC cold galvanize is a great coating, can only be applied to bare steel, does not adhere to a pre-painted surface. May be brushed, rolled, and sprayed..

Best idea yet. We spray all our truck frames with a combo of diesel, kero and bar/chain lube. Being a food cart, your idea is best.

I love your suggestion. But for the picking up mix matched bed liner paint is impossible. Once they get the color match and add the activator, time is limited to spray. But it would truly be the best route just not a cheap one.

no it dont, dampness stays between and rusts and you dont see it until, total damaged, spray a cheap cooking oil,, or like me, build your own out of 1/8" stainless steel for a fraction of the price, but shop around for the stainless, most times it same cost as this cheap 14ga sheet metal

Rocket is the man ! ROCKETMAN !!

Thought so too, I think the Werk Weld was a bit better, at least it hadn’t started rusting yet

@@HowFarmsWork Yes the werk weld definetly looked the better piece of kit and is the one I would have chosen!👌 it's often a shame how little effort these company's put into stopping rust, I feel it's so you'll be back to buy a new one a few years sooner! But nice feeder none the less and I'm sure it will do the job for many years

the sad fact is, the welds on any factory trailer under a GVW oF 10,000 lBS is the same poor build and workmanship, that is why every trailer i own, i built my self, and i have many

a freakin joke

@@HowFarmsWork What was the price difference between the two?? Looked like the Apache had some sealant caulk or something on the seam that wasn't well bonded.... getting water behind caulked steel seams is worse than no caulk at all, hence all the rust. Probably a super-thin poor paint job as well. You could add your own agitator to your feeder-- just torch a hole on either end and slide a long piece of pipe through it, maybe add a wear block of wood or steel on either end (the one in the video looked like a big washer to me-- just something to bridge the hole and the pipe or rod and act as a "bearing" of sorts, and keep corn from dribbling out or water dribbling in...) Weld some bolts or bits of steel rod or angle iron or whatever bits of scrap you have to the rod for "agitator paddles" or whatever, and then weld a crank on the outside end... maybe weld a washer or something over each end to keep it centered fore-and-aft... nothing to it. Heat and bend a piece of steel pipe or a rod to make a handle crank to turn one end (by the tongue if I were doing it). Easy peasy... Later! OL J R :)

Yeah tractor salvage company my brother used to work for did fuel tanks with POR-15... great stuff. I had a gas tank done for an older tractor myself... stuff works great. I actually prepped the tank for them since it halved the cost... I bolted some angle-iron brackets to the rear wheel of a John Deere 620, and jacked the wheel up and blocked the other one. I attached the fuel talk to the brackets with a bunch of bungee cords, dumped in a big huge bottle of BB's I bought at the sporting goods store, and stuffed rags into the holes in the tank for the gas filler and fuel gauge... then I started the tractor, put it low gear, and left it idling for about an hour with the tank flipping end over end. Then I put it in reverse for about an hour, then took the tank loose, stood it up on end, roped it to the side of the tire (turned the tank 90 degrees upright) and then ran in low for an hour and reverse for an hour AGAIN... That way it cleaned ALL the internal surfaces of the tank with the BB's as the tank flipped end over end both ways, and side over side both ways... I took a magnet and fished out all the BB's, which were all coated in this rust colored "mud" of ground up rust and diesel fuel I'd rinsed the gas out of the tank with. I pressure washed the inside of the tank, and set it aside to dry in the sun. The BB's got cleaned up in diesel and put back in the bottle for reuse. Once dry the tank was spotlessly clean bare steel inside, no rust at all. My brother took it to work the next day, and they cleaned it per the instructions and then applied the POR-15 inside it. It came back like a brand new tank for a fraction of the cost. The old Johnny Popper barely burned any fuel flipping the tank for a few hours, and the BB's were cheap. I was well pleased... Later! OL J R :)

30 MPH limit is only when filled the salesmen for Werk Weld travel pulling these empty at posted speed limits. At public auction Werk Weld equipment sells for new price regardless of age. There are creep feeders in the country still in use that are at least 15 years old. This family owned business has been around more than 30 years. Also, creep feed takes some of the stress off the cows by supplementing the calves and adding more weight at weaning time. Congratulations on your investment.

No springs so if it hits a chuck hole it's gonna go airborne... not a good thing. LOL:) Later! OL J R :)

I sure hope so. a blind man could weld better than these guys.

Yea those wields look bad

@@beau3882, Do you have a website ? Thanks.

august yeah a Facebook and look is up on google Snipes equipment Fabrications

Noticed that too... rims on a creep feeder LOL:)... what's next, spinners on cattle trailers?? LOL:) Later! OL J R :)

It’s non-toxic when cured, and I used it since I had a lot of it sitting around

That stuff is *slightly* better than just using ice water LOL:) Later! OL J R :)