Snow Equipment Owning/Operating Tips for removal snow w/ front loader

[Looking4new]

I have teeth on my FEL bucket. When the banks get too big I pull the frozen snow down and scoop it up with the bucket and relocate it to my 'snow dump'
Winter time I have all the time in the world and I don't really care how long it takes me to clear my driveway and 4 others. Mine gets done last, other than the single swipe to get out.

 

[rekees4300]

A rear blower will be your best friend.

Bite the bullet and get a PTO blower and you'll never regret it.

Ditto that sage advice. I've used a front blade, rear blower and a FEL in various combos the past 17 years on 900' gravel lane. IMO a FEL is not an effective snow removal tool for large areas. Always use the proper tool for the job: snow removal = snow blower

 

[arrow]

If you get 90" of snow per year, you may want to consider a blower of some sort. I've made do with a fel and scraper blade for 39 years but I have places to put snow and built up a "snow pusher" on the front bucket. my drive is 150' and then I have several landings that the pusher really saves time clearing. I find that a rear blade is a bit useless over 12" of snow so for that 20-28" dump, I use the fel first and clean up with the scraper.
It is very helpful to have as much loader height as possible when piling snow. Here is a pic at the end of a 96" snow year. At this point, I was having trouble as to where to put it.

 

[Firebrand]

Working with a loader means you have to plan early and make your piles as deep as possibl and far back from your cleared surfaces. And once you get a warm up, you need to take advantage and push back wherever possible, whenever possible. It's a combination of maintaining your spaces and organizing your piles of snow.

 

[tcreeley]

I used to have a 7' snow plow blade on my bucket but I got tired of giving the bucket up for the winter. Now I just use the 5' bucket on my 30hp TC30. It does the job. I have a gravel drive that freezes early so after 2 snowfalls, scalping is not a problem. I have filled ag tires and chains on.

Generally I angle the bucket down and take some weight off the front tires and scrape the drive. In deep snow (last storm 14") I'll keep the bucket a few inches up for the first pass. On the second pass my rear tires are digging in and I'm down to the ground. Every pass after that I only bite off as much as won't overflow the bucket by the end of the pass. That way I never have to backtrack to clean up. Here are some pics from a couple of years ago.

 

[Looking4new]

I have teeth on my bucket and set the bucket level on the gravel drive and go. When the snow spills out of the bucket I push it off to the side and into one of my 'snow dumps' I designed for this purpose. (I have 4 places where I can put snow and just keep pushing until I get to one of them). Back into the cleared area and go again. It takes three passes to clean up my driveway, but I don't care, I've got all the time in the world in winter.

 

[zimcocomp]

I mounted an old lawn tractor blade to my grader box to push back the side banks. That's working great.

 

[RalphVa]

For the amount of snow you get, I 2nd 3rd or whatever the vote is, I'd vote for a rear snow blower to augment your FEL. If the snow blower you get is reasonably easy to get on and off, I'd also get a 5' rear blade. They're cheap and well worth it.

A friend of mine has had a very old Kubota tractor with rear blower and FEL in Winchester, Va. for many years on a much longer (and gravel) driveway than what I have.

I went with a FEL and rear blade here. Works well with the 3 JD tractors I've had here: 4010 (like a smaller 2025R), 1025R and 2025R. Using the FEL is SLOW on significant amounts of snow. The rear blower would be easier and probably a little faster. For up to around 8 inches, the rear blade is great. It's also good for knocking the tops back on banks by running up to them and raising the blade at the same time. Our driveway is about 150 straight and fairly level yards.

Before the JDs, I had a Gravely with a huge 48" snow blade. It worked great until once when we got 7 inches of sleet that the blade wouldn't even touch. For that, I mounted the very old (but mint shape) Gravely square chute snow blower. It blew that sleet into the next county. Needed chains on the Gravely, but turf tires worked the best on the 4010. The industrials on the 2025R aren't bad.

Ralph