Next Piece of Equipment for Dirt road Mainenance?

[cgarai]

Hi,

I live on a 2 mile dirt road that is steep, average grade is about 14%. My neighbor and I are looking for the best piece of equipment for maintaining and improving the road. Between us we have a small excavator and a backhoe. They are useful for fixing small sections, installing culverts and cleaning ditches. The backhoe can smooth by backdragging, but I don't have the skill to grade with it.

We were thinking the next piece of gear would either be a bulldozer or something with a large box scrapper. Any suggestions would be greatly apprecieated!

Thanks,
Chris

 

[skyking1]

Love Healdsburg!
If the road is established properly and does not need construction, I would not get a dozer. If it needs construction, get a dozer.
The box scraper with 4wd tractor is a good idea.

 

[terex herder]

Hard to disagree with a box blade. It can be difficult to build a crown with a standard box blade. There are some box blades that allow you to tilt the blade, and that would make it much easier to build and maintain a crown.

 

[CM1995]

What's your budget?

A CTL is pretty handy in maintaining roads and can run multiple attachments.

 

[MG84]

I’d second the 4wd tractor. You can then run a box scraper, rear blade, york rake or grading scraper(land plane.) Any or all of the above are good for road maintenance. If you want something that will really do a superb job look for a pull type box blade (will have wheels and a hitch, raised by hyd cylinder.) I have one and you can get things amazingly flat and smooth with it. Also works great for taking out washboards and potholes. The blade is spanning between two axles like a road grader so if the tractor dips in a hole only half the movement or less is transferred to the blade. Each pass makes it progressively flatter.

If you go with a standard rear box blade or angle blade be sure to get a tractor with draft control. The secret is to use the draft control to maintain the height of the blade which will make a much smoother finish than you controlling it manually. Grading scrapers or land planes are the new rage for gravel road maintenance, I’ve never tried one but they look like they are easy to get good results with.

As for the 6-way dozer, I do use mine for road maintenance but only if major work is needed. Things such as bad washouts and gullies, re-crowning, cleaning ditches etc is quicker with the dozer but can be handled with the tractor and a couple of attachments.

 

[cfherrman]

Road drag lol

 

[Keith Merrell]

Deere 210LE or a tracked skid steer such as Takeuchi TL10

 

[catman13]

Driveway Scraper-Box Grader, the grader blades are angled and you can lower1 side to crown with

 

[JaredV]

For two miles, I'd definitely want a small grader like an Allis Chalmers model D/DD, Galion 503, or whatever else. I paid 5k for mine and wouldn't want to be without it. Makes crowning and ditch cleaning easy. Just make sure it has more than the brake on the front of the tranny for working on that steep ground! Mine has 4 wheel hydraulic brakes but they leak and I'm on flat ground so I've never fixed them and just use the parking brake.

 

[HarleyHappy]

I’m thinking just spend enough time with the backhoe and get better unless a small grader is plausible.

 

[BSAA65LB]

4WD tractor with a box blade. A hydraulic top link will make it faster to use.

Plus you can use a scraper blade, rake, etc. as already mentioned.

A box blade is not an attachment you can do quickly. IME, they work best with slow travel speed. And make sure you practice and learn what changing the pitch of the blade does for the work the blade does.

You can adjust the links on the 3PH to crown the road.

 

[JBrady]

I also have 2 miles of gravel road to maintain and have been at it for about 5 years now. At this point, I think the most effective tools are a box blade and an angle blade behind a tractor. Any heavy tractor with a 3 point will work, but 4wd is necessary for steep grade. Hydraulic cylinders for top link and tilt are a huge convenience. My old Massey industrial 30B has those and is way faster than a pretty modern S250 bobcat. I also have a 6 way dozer and tracking it 2 miles to clean up a small section of road just doesn't get done. That Massey has a top speed of like 27 mph, so fast it it's terrifying. I've found that addressing small road problems as soon as they are noticed, is more effective than doing long days. This advice only applies after your road is constructed and are just maintaining.

 

[skyking1]

Thanks! That's a very helpful post and that's what I was thinking too.

 

[Simon C]

I own a Virnig Land Leveller on a John Deere 332G Skid steer to maintain 2 KM's of roads for a oil patch contractor. It is not a grader for putting crown on a road. A farm tractor with an angle blade behind is better at putting a crown on the road if the dirt is not too hard packed. But the angle blade does not carry dirt to fill low spots as well. I have rippers to dig out a few feet before and after a deep pot hole, the tractor with angle blade can not do that as well. We had a bad hump at the end of the pavement, packed as hard as concrete.
The angle blade could do nothing but the land leveller was able to scrape the hump out. Each tool works a little differently. I already had the skidsteer so $7000 Canadian for a Land Leveller was not too bad. Farm tractors probably cost less if used these days and can do decent work with a box blade as previously stated.
Hope this helps.
Simon C

 

[cgarai]

Thanks for the input! The road is not really a gravel road. It has a lot of fractured rock like sandstone and serpentine. In some spots there are rather hard sections of rock that my backhoe won't chip. In other parts there is dirt/rock mix that can pack nice and tight, others that have more clay and can get sloppy when wet or get ruts due to poor road shape, ie no swales or crown. Also we have berms built up because there are trees along the road that keep a grader from properly shaping the edge.

The old guy that has maintained the road so far has an old Galion grader, not sure which model. I'm sure we could buy it from him, but it scares the **** out us! When we asked him about brakes he replied "That blade works great as a brake." He might get away with it since he has spent 80 years driving heavy equipment, but I'm no pro. Not to mention that his maintenance plan was put on hold a couple of decades ago when he figured he wouldn't live that much longer. He's 94 now and the old equipment is evidence of that strategy.

I need to fix ruts, move berms, create swales, remove rocky lumpy bits and then smooth it all out. The backhoe will do the first three, but its slow. I was thinking a dozer to rip the rocky bits and then smooth it out. I'm not 100% sure that a dozer w/ rippers would handle the rocks or not. And it sounds like trying to smooth a road that long with a dozer would be slow too.

 

[Simon C]

Your time is worth some money also. A D6 or 7 size dozer or larger could probably in a hurry brake up the rocky areas and rip the sides of the road . Small equipment if in bad conditions can just take forever. A backhoe is no comparison to a 300 size excavator, and a big bulldozer with ripper can make it workable in a hurry. If he can't do it your little machine will never do it. In 8 to 10 hours he can probably fix a lot, then a grader could do the final crown on the road for you. Of course after it packs it may need more touch up with a small piece of equipment. The large dozer can fix any hilly area, no problem. Remember an old grader will probably be broke down the first time you use it and start to cost money. It is nothing to put $10000.00 of repairs in one and still be unable to do a good job especially in the hilly area. Once you pay the contractor and he leaves, there is no more fixing to do for a while. Don't try to fix with $10 of tooling what it takes $1000 of tooling to do a good job. My brother had a guy clear 100 Acres of land for a fixed price. The guy showed up with a heavy D9G and huge high brush blade and he ripped out hundreds of 24 inch stumps like it was nothing. He was done in 1.5 days and my brother thought it would take a week.
He was very experienced and wasted no time. Get a professional to give you a quote and you will be probably way further ahead.
Simon C

 

[chidog]

Your time is worth some money also. A D6 or 7 size dozer or larger could probably in a hurry brake up the rocky areas and rip the sides of the road . Small equipment if in bad conditions can just take forever. A backhoe is no comparison to a 300 size excavator, and a big bulldozer with ripper can make it workable in a hurry. If he can't do it your little machine will never do it. In 8 to 10 hours he can probably fix a lot, then a grader could do the final crown on the road for you. Of course after it packs it may need more touch up with a small piece of equipment. The large dozer can fix any hilly area, no problem. Remember an old grader will probably be broke down the first time you use it and start to cost money. It is nothing to put $10000.00 of repairs in one and still be unable to do a good job especially in the hilly area. Once you pay the contractor and he leaves, there is no more fixing to do for a while. Don't try to fix with $10 of tooling what it takes $1000 of tooling to do a good job. My brother had a guy clear 100 Acres of land for a fixed price. The guy showed up with a heavy D9G and huge high brush blade and he ripped out hundreds of 24 inch stumps like it was nothing. He was done in 1.5 days and my brother thought it would take a week.
He was very experienced and wasted no time. Get a professional to give you a quote and you will be probably way further ahead.
Simon C

Clearing and cleaning the mess of 100 acres in a day and half, 24 inch stumps, sorry don't think so. Scrub 2 to 3 inch maybe though it would still be a mess, unless he is just piling the trash full of dirt.
We had to meticulously clean everything we cleared, no dirt allowed, and that takes a bunch of extra time. Maybe those stumps were all rotten?

 

[Steve Frazier]

Another vote for the box blade on a tractor.

BSAA65LB is right on with the tractor speed, too fast and the box will hop and make a mess of things.

 

[Simon C]

Yes it was all pushed in piles. It was all mainly frozen poplars, and half were all rotten. The poplar stumps were just popping out as he advanced with the D9. Of course my brother had to burn piles later. It was not a solid stand of trees but was a lot of big piles later. Yes there was dirt in the piles also but it did burn and the fields after being flipped were pretty decent. My point was that big equipment makes fast work done for way less than small stuff.
As Steve says above a Box Blade works great but farm tractors are very slow for snow removal and have a hard time to scrape as the front wheels loose all steering with bucket down pressure. Each machine works better in some way than another.
Hope whatever you decide works out.
Simon C

 

[Simon C]

I stand to be corrected. It was not a D9G, It was a D9H (Chidog), and frozen stumps at minus 20 come out pretty well along with small poplars.
I was able to shear 3 inch poplars with my skidsteer last year in early April at minus 15C in the morning with a Virnig V50 Skeleton grapple with no problem. It has a entire front edge of V's that just cut them off flush. There was at least 15 of them and I could only do 1 at a time but was taking 1 out every minute and pushing into pile. They were green but frozen solid.
It is a little colder here than where you are.
Simon C