It's interesting how the possibilities the OP asked for advice on didn't involve clearing the road at all, and people are saying he's got a "critical" need to keep the road clear and insist that nothing less than a bazillion dollars worth of tractor will do.
I wonder what the county uses to keep the road clear today? Maybe he should just buy their surplus equipment at auction.
If it's a new bi-directional articulating ag tractor with 8 ft blower, I'll eat my hat.
Hit the nail right on the head....When I plowed snow up North I had an International scout with a plow...4x4 and chains....lots cheaper than a tractor and for 3 miles of roads just the right thing...a good used 4x4 truck with chains and the plow...and then the smaller tractor...
The surplus equipment will have lived its usefull life and no longer be viable for use and the truck frames will automatically become suspect if plow frames are installed on them as they do crack and break.
A surplus Sicard Snow clearer will have the same issues simply because of the concentrated hours of use which affect bearing and chain life as well as the life of the manual or automatic transmission in use on the machine.
With snow falls approaching one foot per hour and having to deal with six and half lane miles of of road during a snow event the use of a basic plow truck with an 8 foot blade is limited as the banks created by a five foot accumulation would be impossible to deal with as it would turn into a narrow trench due to the total accumulation.
Snow that has freshly fallen has a weight of 10 pounds per cubic foot. Snow that has compacted has a weight of 30 pounds peer cubic foot. Cascade Range snows are much heavier.
SO examining it in this way tells us that if they have a snow event that has dumped 5 feet over night it has at least 50 pounds per square foot of roadway surface area being 6.5 lane miles and being 16 feet wide we have 55,000 square feet of road surface including both paved and unpaved area(rounded).
55,000 square feet times 50 pounds of fresh snowfall(minimum) gives us 1,400 tons(rounded) of snowfall to remove or overcome. if the snow fall continues over a 24 hour period the snow will also melt and compact and may triple in weight per square foot over a 24 hour period.
There is a lot more to the examination of this than many folks realise as Lt. Cheng has explained so well.
The county is examining its options simply because it is GOD and having only one taxpayer on this dirt road off a paved is simply an issue of economics for them and liability. By declaring the dirt road "Seasonal Use Only" road they limit thier liability to ZERO AND THEY CANNOT BE SUED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It would be nice to see a Google Earth picture of the area I suppose, but a trrain map is useless until the amount of money available is known.
They could lease a new snow cat with a maintenance contract and buy a small four wheel drive tractor for use around the property and also use it for road repairs in the off season.