I'm gonna have to use my inexperience and agree to disagree about shoveling and 3rd gear... I've seen D5's get stuck fast from improperly shoveled tracks in the winter. And 3rd gear might be a good idea (in addition to out running fire) if you're a push cat working with 657's or if the boss wants to pay for it, but not always. I saw two of our d8's strippin topsoil on the same job a few years ago... one never went higher than 2nd the other one spent most of his time in 3rd... at the end of the day, the bigger pile was in front of the D8 that was in second gear.
Every situation is different I agree, but just cause the dozer moves faster, doesn't mean it pushes more. I'm just saying:beatsme
True but thirds only for traveling,not pushing.When I used to train skinners I would have to continually tell them to slow down,put it in first in an idle if your finishing,better to have everything behind your blade "done" then to have to go back and redo it.
The 375 and d10's and bigger are made for production pushing mainly anyways and your working on the steepest angle you can slot dozing to max out the machines capabilities.So useing the weight of the machine and gravity your in first gear anyways.
Stripping topsoil is allmost allways second gear,hard to load up the blade anyways so might as well give er and get it done.
In the arctic we ran in temps as cold as -70celsius for 13 hours a day,not once did we clean the tracks on the cat hoes or the d7 and i never saw a flat roller or any other problems associated with not shoveling tracks in 3 years.I would take you 6 hours with hermys,tiger torches and bars to clean them anyways,just a waste of time.