Larry,
Great pics!!! I agree, the dozer compliments the tractors, but it is so specialized that in my opinion, the tractor is still king. On certain things, my dozer is just amazing, but I've also come to learn that when used for the wrong things, it creates more work for me. Clearing roads is a good example. I started out tearing through the woods, taking out trees and making a huge mess. Then I spent allot of time cleaning it up. With the tractor, I can take out the trees and move them to the burn pile in about a quarter of the time that it takes to do it with the dozer first.
I'm comparing a 168hp dozer to a 80hp backhoe tractor.
Eddie
I could not agree more with the first 23 words in this post.
Dozers are extremely specialized, they are excellent at pushing and pulling.
They are not excellent at digging.
Unless the machine is really large, they are not very effective at stumping, not like an excavator or large backhoe.
Unless you've got the right soil and you are an excellent opperator, they are not easy to grade with, forget about it with my rocky soil.
They can not be driven on sod and they can not be driven on your driveway (I look fondly at my spin around track marks each day driving to and from work).
When they brake, they brake. I have admiration for you guys who buy the field machines and rehab. The amount of time and money involved is staggering. You literally need a winch or jack to do just about anything on a tracked machine.
I know I had visions of driving straight over and through stuff and ending up with a table top yard. Nope.
I have yet to find a better all around machine than a 30 HP TLB.
But let me tell you, when you are backing up your driveway with 15K of block loaded onto a trailer and that trailer hitch on your truck rips off and that trailer and truck are paperweights accross the street out in front of your house. There is nothing quite like pulling out the dozer, hooking up a chain and dragging the entire mess right up the driveway like butter.
Joel