There are many options available when investigating orchard platforms.
With today's modern orchards adopting high density, smaller, closer tree spacings, multi-person platforms have seen a slight comeback.
Although these machines have a place in certain orchard types, they are generally not as productive as a single person, foot-controlled, independent wheel drive Hydralada elevating work platform. This is due to the fact multiple persons are working from one machine with the same output expectation. There are several counteracting factors to this expectation, one being the inconsistency of work available to each person on the machine (light areas within a row, less vigorous trees within a row, yield variance).
A video shows the manoeuvrability of a Hydralada machine.
These machines are extremely compact and nimble, and operating them soon becomes second nature. As a result, the operator can work with their hands-free, and safely drive simultaneously.
Unlike multi-person platforms the worker on a Hydralada is not restricted by the pace of the machine which is generally set by the slowest worker on a platform. This conclusion is reached from many years experience working with both types of platform.
Hydralada Company design and manufacture machines and offer both options, single-person platforms, and multi-person machines.
See this article and the video link in Tree Fruit Jan 2022
