Spring Thaw

ovrszd · Mar 16, 2010

Man my roads are a disaster!!! Soft spots where they've never been. A lot of potholes. All the gravel is out at the edges. Haven't been able to do any maintenance grading since November. Now with the tax crunch and gravel price increases we will get ten ton less gravel per mile this spring. What a mess!!! Might be able to get out on the better roads by Thursday. Supposed to start raining with chance of snow Friday/Saturday.

ovrszd · Mar 17, 2010

I tried to work on a heavy traffic area full of potholes yesterday. Still too soft, left more ruts than I did good. We are supposed to have good weather tomorrow and then back to more moisture. Also found a large bridge that's losing it's wing wall. About 25 feet to the creek bottom. That'll be a project!!

biggrader · Mar 17, 2010

Dont u just love spring. We had a very wet fall and many of the corn fields were left. The farmers started back into the fields around March 1st. Many of them are leaving the trucks at the section lines and driving the tractors and grain carts to the truck. Tearing the snot out of the roads. Talked to one farmer and they are driving through 12-18" of water in the fields. they are running the headers in the water in order to get cobs to feed in. Their not having much fun either. With the way the roads look I'll have PLENTY of work in the next few months.

Truckin4life · Mar 18, 2010

Thats the way it looks around here as well...
All the dirt roads are pretty trashed at the moment.
Few weeks when they dry up there will be plenty of grader work.

ovrszd · Mar 18, 2010

Our farmers struggled too. Finally got back in the fields when it started snowing. Left a lot of corn because the snow was deeper than the ears. Didn't get any fall work done. It'll be a scramble for them this Spring.

I've got a large farmer in my township, farms 25K acres. he hauls everthing to the road with 4wd tractors and 800 bushel grain carts. Dumps into Semi-trailers and pulls to town. Is real hard on my roads. But I don't complain. He pays a lot of taxes. He's also stopped what he's doing and retrieved my grader a couple times when I've been stuck. :notworthy

biggrader · Mar 18, 2010

Ya we all have to remember who pays our way. All of the farmers our way dont complain to much. They realize that they are making the mess and are happy to see me out there TRYING to fix it. It's the people from the city that move out to the country that do the complaining. Their the ones that drive yugo's and expect that they can get out 24/7.:Banghead

ovrszd · Mar 19, 2010

biggrader said:
Ya we all have to remember who pays our way. All of the farmers our way dont complain to much. They realize that they are making the mess and are happy to see me out there TRYING to fix it. It's the people from the city that move out to the country that do the complaining. Their the ones that drive yugo's and expect that they can get out 24/7.:Banghead

Ain't that the truth!!!! I thought maybe that was just in our neck of the woods but guess it must be everywhere. Absentee landowners are generally not understanding.

goodearth13 · Mar 21, 2010

Muddy, Potholed, Soft Spring Roads

We've decided to use the rural mail carriers for eyes to the condition of our roads. We have a very sparcly populated county & only one road foreman to cover 800 miles of dirt road, so we rely on our mail carriers that cover the roads every day to call in bad condition reports. They are use to the roads & only call in to report really necessary problems. Might be a thought to contact your local rural carriers to do the same. They are public servants just like we are. Nobody uses that term "Public servants" any more, because it sounds a little to subserviant. I think used properly it really fits.
C Ya, Goodearth13, Patrolman (Dan) :usa

MKTEF · Mar 21, 2010

A important thing to do when melting sets in, is to do some snow removal.
Run along the road, and cut away the snowbanks so the snow melts into the ditch.

When the sun is starting melting, we use the frontblade to get the snow out into the ditch.
Just drive along the ditch, swinging in for each snowclearing stick.
When the snow melts and the water flows, it takes its turn down into the ditch and not out on the road.
This is the main trick over here, to reduse the mud season..

Grader4me · Mar 21, 2010

goodearth13 said:
We've decided to use the rural mail carriers for eyes to the condition of our roads. We have a very sparcly populated county & only one road foreman to cover 800 miles of dirt road, so we rely on our mail carriers that cover the roads every day to call in bad condition reports. They are use to the roads & only call in to report really necessary problems. Might be a thought to contact your local rural carriers to do the same. They are public servants just like we are. Nobody uses that term "Public servants" any more, because it sounds a little to subserviant. I think used properly it really fits.
C Ya, Goodearth13, Patrolman (Dan) :usa

..how many graders do you have to maintain all of these roads?

mg140h · Mar 21, 2010

the mail carriers or the bus drivers will let me know or if i have to ask them, its a big help. I have some roads that have been broke up for about a week now and some that are going to be just starting. I have one that i have to babysit for a couple/3 weeks that is just out of this world. It was suppose to get rebuilt about 2 years ago and i keep trying to get "band-aids" in places but nothing has happened, but yet the bosses want me to fix it.......but i lost my wand errrr

Randy Krieg · Mar 22, 2010

We had windchills at 50 below 0 last night and the forecast is about the same tonight. Lots of drifts to cleanup tomorrow....
Nice thing about an ice road you don't have to worry about cleaning any ditches in the Spring...

and the "Arctic Sun Dawgs" are awesome.
Regards, Randy

ovrszd · Mar 22, 2010

I agree with pushing the snow back. I use my wing for that. Definitely keeps the water running where it belongs.

My mail carriers are my barometers too.

Randy you can have that!!!! If you see water in a ditch you definitely have a problem!!! I couldn't live like that.....

And then on top of it all, we got 4" of snow Saturday with 30-40 mph winds. I waited until midnight to go out hoping the roads would be frozen a little. No such luck. Spent about six hours running around hitting the drifted areas. Can barely see what color the machine is now. Standing water under the drifts. 6" grader ruts. Trying to not scrape roadbed. In some places I'm not sure I improved anything. Got rid of the snow. But did a lot of roadbed damage in the process.

Truckin4life · Mar 22, 2010

People will complain either way, leave the snow they complain, leave ruts the complain....

Randy Krieg · Mar 23, 2010

Drifts drifts and more drift

Ovrszd, It's all about finding more oil so you can run your grader down there too....

ovrszd · Mar 24, 2010

Randy, I hear ya my friend. I appreciate what you do. Also appreciate the pictures. You are blessed with an open mind and view of your surroundings. You capture that uniqueness and beauty in your pics. I try to do the same wherever I am. My wife thinks I take too many pictures. I say that's not possible!!! Your dedication to good pictures is evident when considering you got out of a heated cab to take pictures in -50 degree weather of the sun dawgs. :notworthy

Turbo21835 · Mar 24, 2010

ovrszd said:
Now with the tax crunch and gravel price increases we will get ten ton less gravel per mile this spring. What a mess!!!

ovrszd, be glad you are getting some gravel. A lot of the local governments here are flat broke. Any road funding that they receive from the state is being put into savings. The thought is, by saving what little dollars they are getting, they have a fighting chance to repair any major culvert, or small bridge failures.

ovrszd · Mar 25, 2010

Turbo21835 said:
ovrszd, be glad you are getting some gravel. A lot of the local governments here are flat broke. Any road funding that they receive from the state is being put into savings. The thought is, by saving what little dollars they are getting, they have a fighting chance to repair any major culvert, or small bridge failures.

Yep, I'll take whatever we get. I think we will see this situation get worse before it gets better. Tax receiving entities are the last to feel an economic crisis. Our County has cutback dramatically on what road/bridge services they will contribute to. It's falling back on the townships. We'll survive it, but not without some loss of road quality.

A big issue that we face is the increase in truck traffic on our rural roads by the trash service. In the old days us country folks filled a ditch with our trash and burned what we could. Now most residents pay for trash service. So a ten wheeler, 20-30K pound truck is out on my gravel roads picking up a couple trash bags at each house once a week. Very hard on soft roads, especially when they meet oncoming traffic.

Deere John · Mar 25, 2010

I need gravel too, as I have 450 tractor trailer loads of wood to come out of this road yet in May. The spring breakup has not been kind to my roads - but I'm in logging and this is just par for the course. At night, we drag two large mining truck tires over the mud to level it off so it will either dry or freeze flat.

biggrader · Mar 25, 2010

Hey Deere John, I can bring you 3 yds in my single axle truck, will that be enough? lol

Spring Thaw

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