The farther back you go, the more crazy the wage stories sound...

In the early '70s entire crews got 10 to 12 cents / bale here. Four decent-sized high school guys made a good crew, with everybody switching off driving and stacking on the truck--the driver got a bit of a rest that way. Though often only one guy would stack because many guys didn't know how to stack a load so that it would stay on the truck all the way to the barn.

But that was a "good" crew--people who could put 1,000 to 1,200 bales in a barn loft from around 5:30 in the evening 'til midnight or so. Lots of crews had maybe 2 good hands, one smaller (14 years old, etc.) kid, and a girl or older man driving the truck. They couldn't put up as many bales per hour but still made the same total charge per bale.

Most money I ever made per hour was around 1975, when I (age 19), an older friend of mine just back from a tour in Viet Nam (a big, stout guy & hard worker), and a 65-year old neighbor with bad knees (the driver) put up 986 bales in one evening from 6:00 pm. to about 11:00...with just a pickup truck.  First 300 bales went in a low shed right beside the field and stacked on the ground, and our driver threw them off. All the rest went in a barn loft and by then our driver couldn't help--knees hurt too much. By the end of that night my butt was draggin' for sure. This older friend put up a LOT of hay every summer...but when I see him, he often still mentions that evening and how much we got put up in a short time. 

The worst/cheapest-paid hay hauling I ever did was also in 1975. I helped a good friend/classmate pick up little AC Rotobaler bales for his uncle that summer, complete with all the spiders, snakes, and bugs under and around the bales, which had been setting long enough for the red clover to be 18" tall around them.  We got 2 cents/bale plus dinner. I felt a bit cheated, because while his uncle drove the tractor & wagon, my friend and I did everything else...for a total cost of 4 cents/ bale + 2 lunches. The only consolation is that I think my friend didn't feel great about the pay scale either...except he'd have done it for his uncle for free.