334 lawn co
Well-Known Member
does anyone know of a good sized dozer for maintaining roads, knocking down trees, field prep... for a 1000+ acre tree farm.
does anyone know of a good sized dozer for maintaining roads, knocking down trees, field prep... for a 1000+ acre tree farm.
does anyone know of a good sized dozer for maintaining roads, knocking down trees, field prep... for a 1000+ acre tree farm.
On my land, I started out with a JD 450G that I thought was great. But after a few weeks of using it, I realized it was just too small to get very much done. If you are just maintaining roads, it might be enough dozer, but for taking out trees, it was very limited. Then when the trees were down, it was even worse for moving them to the burn pile. Just not enough power or weight to get anything done. If you buy a small dozer, be sure you have allot of time. It will get the job done, it's just going to take forever.
My next choice was something in the mid 100hp range. I was open to all brands, but wanted something that I could get parts for locally. Deere, Case, New Holland, and Cat all have shops here in Tyler. I went to about a dozen different dealers and maybe another two dozen ranches looking at dozers. The more I looked, the worse they all looked.
I bought a Case 1550. The hydrostatic drive really impressed me, but also the fact that it's 169hp, 40,000 pounds and has an 8 way blade with full ROPS and screens. Since buying it, I've become a backyard mechanic. When it's working, it's awesome. When it's broke, it's about as big a pain as anything can be. Recently, I had the fan break off and tear apart part of the shroud. Parts were $900. I've rebuilt the engine, one hydraulic pump and drive motor and had a track come off. I've replaced most of the hoses and rebuilt most of the hydraulic cylinders. When I use it, I wonder what will be next. I also paid $25,000 for it and have done enough work with it that it's more then paid for itself. When I sell it, I will be both happy and sad. I hate it and love it. But for what it does, I won't get rid of it just yet.
Buying a dozer means that you will have to be able to do the repairs yourself unless you get a warrentee. Mechanics don't have time for us guys who don't have allot of equipment and accounts with them. When I lost my track, I had four mechanics tell me they'd come by to fix it for me. A month later, none had shown up and I started my journey of figuring out how to do these things by myself.
As for how big, pines in wet clay come out easy. I've pushed over pines well over a foot thick with it. If it's dry out, I've had pines 6 inches thick snap off on me. Soil conditions will determine how big of a tree you can push over with a dozer and how much digging you will have to do to get them out. For most of my larger tree removal, I use a backhoe. If I had an excavator, that would be even better.
Getting the trees down is fairly easy. Getting them to the burn pile is where you will spend all your time. I've added a grapple to my backhoe with a quick attach. I can take off my bucket and put on the grapple. This is by far the best, fastest and easiest way to get trees to the burn pile. Using the rake on the dozer will get it done too, but you spend allot of time doing this and end up with dirt in your burn pile. The more trees you push, the more dirt you get. Even with a rake, the tree itself will plow dirt all the way to the pile. It doesn't take very long to get yards of dirt in front of your burn pile!!!!
When pushing trees with the small 450G dozer, it would go ok pushing straight, but would just spin the tracks when trying to turn. The bigger dozer will push a full load, and just keep going during a turn.
My advice to you is to buy the biggest dozer that you can afford with a 6 way blade. A cab would sure be nice, but if it means buying an older or smaller machine, pass on the cab. Some of the newer machines will have allot of electronics that can be very expensive to replace. I didn't have the money to mess with those, but saw one that needed a new panel for $1,200.
Good luck,
Eddie
This is almost blasphemy... coming from me... LOLi only work 8 hours a day and it would only be used once or twice a week for grading and lveling old logging roads amd maintaining fire lanes.