Moving the grapes to the winery at harvest time can be challenging particularly if the ground is muddy or the picking team has filled all the bins and are standing around waiting for empties.
There are generally two types of trailer; first the flatbed trailers which are normally used to transport picking trays and narrow enough at 1.7m to go between the vine rows for loading by hand or second the Dolav type bin transporting roller trailers which are wider and parked on the headland for easy loading by forklift. These roller trailers are stacked from behind with the bins being placed at the back and then pushed forward thanks to the rollers.
Then when arriving at the winery bins can be quickly rolled off without a forklift thanks to a hydraulic bed tipping mechanism. Trailers come in different lengths and are built to take the weight of several bins even when stacked two high.
When traversing uneven ground be careful not to damage the grapes or tip bins over due to violent jolting movements; driving too fast can have a similar effect.
Other methods of transport are also used such as at Squerryes Vineyard where David Sayell of Vitifruit Equipment designed a front lift pallet system with rear forklift to transfer three bins at a time from field to yard.
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