New to ownership - need advice

[steve whiteside]

Gents,
Hey I just signed up for this forum. I bought 160 acres of undeveloped mountain top near San Diego 2 years ago. It has about a mile long drive way with some steep sections and plenty of boulders. I have been renting tracked bobcat type loaders to carve some new roads and I have paid a guy with a motor grader to grade and roll the road. Mostly the dirt is DG.

steve

 

[steve whiteside]

I am looking to buy a piece of heavy equipment to help me around the place. I was thinking that a loader tractor with a box gannon would help me the most. I liked the tracked bobcat for clearing brush and cutting new pathways but it was a struggle to use grading the road. Grading is my #1 priority over time. I would like to spend $30K-35K and have something that will work for years. I want 4WD. I was looking online and saw some JD 210LE/LJ at about 2011 for around $35K asking. Getting the tractor maintained will be a pain since I live so far out in the country and the road is not set up for a 18wheeler. In fact the road is steep enough it is best in a 4WD. Is the JD a good tractor and is do you think it is the right tool for the job? Any other advice? FYI I rented the beast below for 8 hours of use over a 3 day weekend. Including delivery and insurance it was about $1400.

 

[steve whiteside]

This item caught my eye although I have not driven there to look at it.

https://www.machinerytrader.com/listings/construction-equipment/for-sale/18519751/2011-deere-210lj

another pic of the road above.

 

[steve whiteside]

I guess my questions are: 1) is my concept for that type of machinery good? 2) is that a good type of tractor (reputation) I see a lot like it for sale and 3) if you see any other good deals send them my way.

thanks.

 

[fast_st]

Well, while its not 4wd, a D6 sized dozer will do a great job at cutting in roads. Dozers have been a staple of road building since they first turned a track. I'm not sure if california has any guides on road building but Maine does. Things like proper ditching and water bars, how to keep things stable over the years and reclaim any eroded material. If you need a tractor for utility, that's a nice looking unit if you can bring the price down some. Else, you might find a good old reliable road grader for sale.

 

[Metalman 55]

If the majority of the road cutting is already done & you will be mostly using it for road maintenance, re-grading the washout areas in your road already there, I think a large tracked bobcat style machine like is shown in your one picture, would be a good choice. Once you get on to the knack of grading with a skidsteer, they do a nice job & are productive.......more useful all around on rural property than a bucket/tractor in my opinion. As fast_st says, if you have heavy road cut ins to carve out, a medium sized dozer is the ticket, but harder to haul around than a skid steer if you need to move it for maintenance etc. If you have some heavy big ole boulders to root out, dozer is better for that though.

If you are spending that kind of money & road grading is making up the majority of your work, I suggest you hire an experienced tracked skidsteer operator on a Cat 299D sized machine for 3-4 hrs. & observe him do grading work & that will get you going on the right track. If you own a skid steer, you will find a 1001 used for it compared with a dozer on a large property like that.

Good luck & keep us posted!

 

[steve whiteside]

Yes, most of the road cutting and large scale grading is done. I want something for maintaining the roads, and utility of moving material or boulders or beating back the bushes. The few times I have rented the tracked bobcats and tried to grade the road I noticed a couple things. 1) you can't tilt the blade side to side so you can only use the blade at the same side to side level as the vehicle (So how to put a crown to a flat road for example) and 2) If I tried to skim the soil going forward I got into this hobby horse situation. It would barely scrape and material and then it would dig in and cut too much. I ended up with big gouges. On the other hand, the tracked vehicle was perfect for cutting new paths through the bushes. It was not tippy and it could fit between the rocks. It had plenty of power to mow down the scrub.

 

[steve whiteside]

For instance one of my next projects is to cut a pad uphill of the existing trailer of (where that solar panel rests) for another trailer. It seemed like with a box blade I could just back up, lower the box with rippers, Tilt it a little to make it level with the horizon and scrape/pull the material out. Not sure how I see how to do this with a bobcat. Thoughts?

 

[Metalman 55]

If there are no big boulders in what you intend to cut, a Cat 299D CTL (or similar machine) would handle that just fine. Again, if you were to have a professional come in & do just that one job for you, that would give you an idea just what a machine like that is capable of when working to its potential. Sometimes with pictures where slopes are present it is hard to see just how much variation in the terrain there actually is. Looks like in this case the deepest cut may be 30" for this proposed project that you mentioned?

 

[steve whiteside]

at the most. Maybe a 20" cut.

 

[fast_st]

to do that with a bobcat, lets see, first, a tooth bar on a bobcat is helpful if the ground is hard, I'd start on the high corner, dig in just a little and push it toward the low corner, back up and repeat, now you want to define your pad but having a taper leading down to it is a good thing, put some stakes set back as a visual reference, if you're going down 20, go back 40 -50 inches, start digging down and moving that material to the low side. Once you get a bit of a flat area started, you can work on smoothing that out and tracking over your filled areas.

Flat scraping it not too bad but your arms need to be down, bucket just barely tipped down.

 

[Birken Vogt]

My dad has a Bobcat that has a side tilt contraption that can be added between the main attachment and bucket to rotate the bucket sideways and he uses the heck out of that thing. He takes it off for heavy digging to not put extra wear on it but for fine grading it is the cats meow.

However he and my grandpa used to use bobcats way back into the 80s before the tilt contraption was invented and they still managed to make side tilts out of things, roads, ditches, with just sheer cleverness.

 

[steve whiteside]

Thanks for the words above and the techniques described fast_st. I looked at a dozer blade and that looks intriguing.

I hear what you guys are saying and I agree I would rather have a bobcat for general use around the property. Also i agree it would be easier to transport. I guess what i am struggling with is the skills and time it would take to turn the Bobcat into a grading machine. Remember I have 1 mile of driveway that probably needs to be cleaned up 2x per year. I haven't used a tractor but my experience with the bobcat is that is would be a pain (with my skills) to grade that much road. It just seems like for 75% of my use a tractor with a dragged gannon is the right tool for the job. The downside to the tractor is the transport, stability in rough offload, and size.

 

[Delmer]

It just seems like for 75% of my use a tractor with a dragged gannon is the right tool for the job. The downside to the tractor is the transport, stability in rough offload, and size.

Size is an advantage in most cases, especially on 140 acres. I agree the skidsteer is not ideal for grading, neither is a tractor and gannon box blade. A small pull type grader is my choice for that size grading project. Maybe your road is steep and curvy enough that a pull type grader wouldn't be adjustable enough. That is, you'll be backing up to go back over the same spots more than typical road grading.

The huge advantage of a skidsteer is the attachment interchange. Check out skidsteer grader attachments to see if that would tip the scales.

 

[Birken Vogt]

I would guess that a pull grader would be too hard to work on a mountain road like this. It might not even make the corners.

A full motor grader would of course be too one-trick for anything else.

I still think the Bobcat would be right. Use the front of the bucket to move material in problem areas and pull ditches if necessary. Then back blade with the tilt and you are done. If the road is constructed correctly there won't be a need to regrade the entire thing. Just the sections with washouts or damage every couple years.

There is a grader attachment for Bobcat of course. It has a wheel that runs out front and then a blade in between. But I have never seen one in real life.

 

[steve whiteside]

I would guess that a pull grader would be too hard to work on a mountain road like this. It might not even make the corners.

A full motor grader would of course be too one-trick for anything else.

I still think the Bobcat would be right. Use the front of the bucket to move material in problem areas and pull ditches if necessary. Then back blade with the tilt and you are done. If the road is constructed correctly there won't be a need to regrade the entire thing. Just the sections with washouts or damage every couple years.

There is a grader attachment for Bobcat of course. It has a wheel that runs out front and then a blade in between. But I have never seen one in real life.

OK, I see what you mean. I had not thought of using the smoothing action of driving backward with a tilted blade. WRT those multi terrain skid steers - what is a good brand? Cat, bobcat, JD. Are they all good? I would certainly stick with a big name machine. Why would I want rubber over steel tracks? I don't have any pavement.

 

[Delmer]

I was thinking more of a plane attachment than a full on grader with wheels, I had forgotten those existed.

http://www.crownrent.com/equipment.asp?action=category&category=13&key=BOB763PLNKT

This is the first one I found, I'd get one longer, with a couple of bars angled to help maintain your crown, and rippers like a gannon box or one of those DR driveway maintainers that gets pulled behind a lawn mower.

 

[Plongson]

Unless we own a big construction company, we're not gonna have every machine in the tool box to fit every job...kind'a like having to use a claw hammer for tapping out a paper gasket...LOL

Here's my situation, I can only have one machine...I have a 2004 JD 210LE and it has turned out to be absolutely amazing for our duties which is primarily road maintenance but it's also pressed into service almost daily for anything you can imagine. I also have about a mile of dirt to maintain here in So. Utah (also off grid as it appears you are).

I bought from the Ritchie auction (for $12,000) a beautiful machine that needed an engine. Cutting no corners and $10k later I have a machine that at the turn of a key is ready to work. That approch is not for everyone, but Richie also has some amazing stuff (if you look closely!!) for great prices, just don't get caught up in the auction fever. Just log on and do a search, you can also bid by proxy for a set amount. That is what I did and had it delivered. Today for instance in Sacramento there are four 210LE's, some looking VERY interesting.

The box Gannon on mine has turned out to amazing. It's certainly not a motor grader but with the box down in the float position it doesn't follow the tractor and will cut out washboards. Use the rippers along with the float and the washboards don't come back as fast.

Mine has one tilt cylinder and has FULL tilt only one way, but some have the option of two tilt cylinders allowing for full tilt (think cutting a ditch down and then back up...just makes the job faster). Also get a 4-in-1 bucket in front!

Anyway...my suggestion is on a 210LE...but opinions are like...well, you know. LOL

 

[Plongson]

For instance...

https://www.rbauction.com/2006-JOHN...10010610&id=ci&auction=LOS-ANGELES-CA-2017180

https://www.rbauction.com/2010-JOHN-DEERE-210LJ-4x4?invId=9911158&id=ci&auction=CHEHALIS-WA-2017181

 

[hammertime]

Gotta say that's a beautiful property. God I love San Diego. The Deere 210 is the best skip loader on the planet. And I think you could use one. That property is huge for a skid steer. You will appreciate the extra weight of the machine when ripping/blading hard packed ground, and heaping full buckets of dirt. Takes some time to handle the beast in the mountain especially downhill in the mud. Skid steer wins hand down with the implements selection. My opinion, If you're leaning to the skid steer do get the biggest/heavy one you can afford. I think comparing the two is difficult. About 95% of time the size of a skip loader and lack of 4wd on mine is no big deal. The rest of the 5% time I am beating myself that I should have gotten something smaller and 4wd. Once you figure out what you want, try to get a mechanic to look at. Save yourself some surprises.