speed grading
First let me say, I never take anything said here personally. I never make comments about not believing someone, discounting their ability to operate a machine or acuse them of abuse or misuse of their eguipment. I'm not a judge. I'm just a lowly grader operator with twenty years of experience at gravel road maintenance.
I always enter into discussions on here to share my experiences or to ask questions to broaden my knowledge. I have a full and indepth understanding of variable conditions. What works for me might not work at all for someone else. Just as my roads are rarely all ready to be graded at the same time, too many variables in roadbed type, traffic volume, etc.
I didn't offer my input in this thread to convince anyone to do anything. You can grade in 1st gear, 5th gear or reverse if that's your preference and I'll never criticize you for doing it.
In my neck of the woods it's township form of government. Of the twenty townships in my county there is only one that has a fulltime operator. By that I mean he gets paid so many dollars an hour for so many hours a week whether he cranks the grader or not. One other township pays their operator a fixed salary, so much a month, again regardless of whether he grades or not. The other eighteen townships pay their operators an hourly rate, no benefits, and only pay them when they are being productive.
So, if I trim hours of operation off the time to grade my roads I save my taxpayers money. As I said above, I'm saving them money at the tune of somewhere around $80 for each hour I trim. I don't get in the grader and cruise around looking for something to do. I drive my roads in my personal vehicle on my nickel when I am doing that. Then I go get the grader and have a specific target area to work on.
I don't even like to sit along the road and eat my lunch because I don't want taxpayers thinking I'm on the clock and not being productive. That mentality has served me well. I don't get complaints. My taxpayers wave at me, stop me and talk to me, offer me coffee or a snack in the middle of the night when I'm pushing snow. I'm proud of the service I provide them.
I've never broke a cutting edge, shattered a window, caused cylinders to leak or anything even close to that. I'm not abusive to the machine. I treat it like I bought it. I wash it regularly on my nickel. The inside of the cab is as clean as the inside of my truck or car. When we trade machines our trade-in is ready to go to the next owner without any shop repairs required. No busted lights, mirrors, missing panels, etc. I take pride in that also.
Sorry to go on a rant. Just thought some clarity was in order. I respect everyone on here, especially Northart and Grader4me.
One last comment. I've had people ask me if I grade in high gear?? I say oh God no, can't go anywhere near that fast!!! They'll say well I saw you the other day and you were going 20-30 mph grading?? I always politely enlighten them that it only appears I'm going that fast. We are so used to seeing a grader crawling along at a walk pace and it just looks like it's going 20-30 mph when it's actually going 14 mph.
Now see,,,,,,, I could have simply made that statement as my first post on this thread. But I would have been indicating that the original poster didn't know what he was talking about. But I chose to discuss my grading pattern as an example that maybe the operator actually knew what he was doing. :cool2