Vehicle mounted cable reel handling apparatus adapted to be carried on a trailer vehicle are shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,091,413 and 3,063,584. Reel handling apparatus has also been provided for pickup trucks as disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,165,214; 3,184,082; 3,036,790 and 3,325,118. In the above patents, the apparatus generally includes vertically movable lift arms pivotally connected to the vehicle for engaging and transferring a single ground supported reel onto the vehicle for transport. The lift arms are engageable with the reel at all times even when the reel is in the transport position.
In some of the reel handling structures for trucks to handle a pair of reels for transport, the operating cylinders for the reel lift arms are arranged on the truck bed so as to appreciably limit the space for reel storage as appears in U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,876,916 and 3,902,612. The Anderson U.S. Pat. No. 3,625,380 and McVaugh U.S. Pat. No. 3,820,673 use front and rear pairs of lift arms, with a first reel lifted from the ground by rear arms being transferred to the front lift arms and carried thereon to a farward transport position. The second reel when lifted from the ground remains on the rear lift arms for transport in a position adjacent to and rearwardly of the first reel.
Although transfer of a reel from the rear lift arms to the front lift arms was generally satisfactory, the double lift arm arrangement was relatively expensive and difficult to accommodate within the limited space requirements on the truck bed, especially as restricted with the growing demand for larger side mounted tool carrying compartment units. With the compartment units extended from the truck cab to positions over and behind the truck rear wheel and axle assembly space requirements for transporting the reels become more critical.
The Hall U.S. Pat. No. 3,902,612 partially solves this problem by using transversely spaced tiltable beams extended longitudinally of the truck for receiving a reel from a pair of rear lift arms. On a controlled downward and forward tilting movement of the beams the transferred reel is rolled by gravity action to a forward transport position. However, by virtue of the lift arms being actuated by cylinders mounted on the truck bed, the transverse distance between the beams is appreciably reduced. As a result the reel has a spindle of reduced length, when lifted from the ground, which is then replaced by a longer spindle before the reel can be supported on the beams. Hall, therefore, has no provision for side compartment units and requires a manual changing of reel spindles, and a manual actuation of the tiltable beams to roll a reel to a front transport position. These disadvantages of the Hall apparatus are eliminated by the apparatus of this invention.