Brandon House patented a PTO hitch that can be used on most trucks
PHILLIPSBURG, MO. – Farmers have been known to have more than a few “fixes” regarding trucks, tractors, fences and equipment. Many times that includes using baling wire or strap. Sometimes, those items do the trick; other times, they don’t.
Brandon House has worked at the John Deere dealership in Lebanon, Mo., since high school, 21 years in all, and was hooking a baler to a truck one day, and he thought there had to be a better way to secure the PTO shaft than a strap or a piece of wire.
Later, Brandon couldn’t shake his idea when his father, Charles House, was at the family farm Brandon shares with his wife Jessica and daughters Gracie and Jaci near Phillipsburg, Mo.
“It was like turning a light bulb on,” Brandon said. “I pulled my mo-co (mower-conditioner) out of the barn and backed my truck up to it. I was like, ‘Dad, what do you think we can do here? I have an idea.’ He said, ‘I think that might work.’”
That was the beginning of the Burd House Ranch PTO Hitch. Burd House Ranch is a combination of his last name and that of his maternal grandfather, Sylvester Burd.
“It took me five or six tries to make it what it is,” Brandon recalled.
The Burd House Ranch PTO Hitch is an all-steel, square shaft hitch mount that fits a standard receiver hitch. Brandon said the shaft is “a little longer,” so the drawbar pin is away from the end of the shaft, which allows for easier maneuvering. The hitch is made from 3/8-inch steel that comes from the receiver and includes a PTO mount, like one found on a tractor. The mount allows the shaft to be attached to the device for easy transport.
“Your shaft length changes. When you go over a hump, it gets shorter or longer, and when you turn, it will get shorter,” Brandon said. “It just makes life easy… In the Ozarks, most everyone has a tractor, a pickup, a baler and a mo-co. If everyone saw (the PTO Hitch) being used, they would enjoy it.”
There are two styles of the Burd House Ranch PTO Hitch: the 540 and the 1000, with the 540 being the most common.
“People are always having to pull the shaft from their baler or their mo-co when they have to haul it to another farm or to take it to the dealership and have it worked on. Then it’s always a hassle to get (the PTOs) back in because it’s timed, and there are little teeth that have to be just right to go back in. You get greasy, and they are 70 to 100 pounds. If you transport them down the road and tie them up with bailing twine, sometimes it doesn’t make it; they are $1,000, $2,000, $3,000. I just figured there has to be a better way.”
The PTO Hitch can be used with any vehicle with a receiver hitch.
“Dodge, Ford and Chevy don’t agree about much,” Brandon said, adding some differences between makers regarding the distance between the license plate and the end of the receiver. To compensate for variations, each PTO Hitch includes a sleeve that “takes up the slack.”
“A lot of people have haybeds, and it fits most of them. It took a while to get it to fit all of that. I was sneaking around people’s trucks at work or at the dealerships at night, seeing if it would fit,” Brandon said with a laugh. “What we have now will pretty much fit everything. It was a little tough to get all angles bent to the right degree so it doesn’t hit anything or wiggle.”
Unless the truck makers make major design changes, there should be no need for a redesign, Brandon said.
The time from idea to prototype was less than a week.
“After that, it took a couple of months to get it to a machine shop,” Brandon said. “I had them bend all the pieces, and I assembled them. I sold all of those and wanted to change it a little, just to keep it from hitting the tailgate when you put it down or from hitting the bumper.”
The Burd House Ranch PTO Hitch is now manufactured at Carmeco Inc., in Lebanon, Mo. Brandon said it is important to him to keep manufacturing locally.
“I can run over on my lunch break and give an OK or do this a little differently,” he explained. “I can pick things up or drop them off.”
To keep the product local, Brandon’s cousins, Jeff and Lisa Grace, who own Stripes and Stuff in Springfield, make the stickers.
After some investigation, Brandon discovered no other devices like the Burd House PTO Hitch in the country, so he began the patent process.
“The U.S. Patent and Attorney Office is about 10 miles wide and 40 miles deep,” Brandon said. “I did things the old-fashioned way and mailed it in, and it only took about a month and a half, so that wasn’t bad.”
Burd House Ranch PTO Hitch has been on the market for a couple of years and is for sale at Heritage Tractor in Lebanon, where Brandon works. The dealership also uses them on their company trucks to transport equipment. The hitches can also be found at S&H Farm Supply in Lebanon and a few other John Deere dealerships in the Ozarks.
Brandon said when people started seeing the PTO Hitch, they asked a lot of questions.
“People are always asking how it works,” Brandon said. “Some people who have never seen it are like, ‘What is this?’ When you tell them, some of them think it’s a great idea, and others are like, ‘I know what that’s for, and I have to have one.’ Our delivery drivers have them at work, and when the people come out to help hook something up, they ask where to get one.
“At Farmfest, you can see people walking across the aisle just looking. I tell them to come over and talk about it.”
Since starting production, about 300 units have been sold.
Brandon has no advertising budget or social media presence. He, instead, prefers to let the product speak for itself and customers who spread the word.
“Guys in my age group are like, ‘I have got to have it,” Brandon said. “Then the older guys say they have used a ratchet strap for 40 years, but once people see it, they love it.”
Brandon said he doesn’t consider himself an “inventor.” He said he’s just a guy around tractors all the time. While he has a few other things he’s pondering, there aren’t any current plans for new products.
“I stay too busy taking care of the farm, my family and at John Deere,” he said. “I have other ideas, but I’m not ready to let them out of the box. This is kind of a hard thing to break into. Unless you turn on RFD-TV, you don’t see a lot of agricultural stuff.”
The old saying goes, “Necessity is the mother of invention,” but sometimes the best ideas are those no one has ever thought of, like a PTO Hitch for trucks. For those who have ideas like he did, Brandon said, “just do it.”
“You aren’t going to get any younger, and you never know,” he continued. “My wife says even if we never sold one, I still made something useful for me and my buddies. Don’t go out and spend your life savings on it, but spend a few bucks and make something; you never know until you try.”
