purchase or not

[gordon21]

Give the guy a break here. He asked about diesel costs and didn't know the answer. He could have been worried that it might cost $40-200 per week for diesel.

Mechanic: A tractor in the size range you would need (20-30HP) will use less than a gallon per hour running time. Small diesels are very stingy with fuel. Assuming you could do the whole driveway in an hour, you might spend $1-3 depending upon the tractor and cost of diesel. $2 is a cheap price for not shoveling. You would be running at low RPM if only doing snow. That saves even more.

Some pieces of equipment DO USE a lot of diesel. Big tractors, big excavators, big trucks, etc. Even pickups. If you run a diesel pickup for an hour at 60 MPH, you will probably use 4-5 gallons. That's $13-17 per hour. The key word here is big. The big diesel engines do suck down fuel. Over the road big rigs can tear through $30 per hour of diesel. If a driver is out for 10 hours, that can be $300 per day per driver for a company with a lot of trucks on the road.

Another good comparison is boats. At one point we had a 21' bowrider and a Sea-Doo at the same time. The sea-doo would burn up to 10 gallons PER HOUR. Yes, that's 10GPH. The boat would burn 10 gallons all afternoon. Of course the sea-doo could go from 0-44MPH in about 4 seconds and it was a 2-stroke, but performance costs money. The boat had a 4-stroke I/O that sipped fuel when towing waterskiers at 25MPH.

 

[4720 OWNER]

Not totally knowing the neighborhood you are in and such, sounds like an ATV would be the way to go. They have lots of little implements now to use in the garden and such. Personally have moved awesome amounts of snow with a blade on an ATV, do not underestimate them. About the only thing i can think of that an atv cannot do well is picking up stuff higher than a foot or so.

 

[LBrown59]

We bought a 5 acrea place with a new home and 300 feet of driveway. My plans were to maybe buy a small tractor after living here awhile. But I have watched diesel go up and up. It is now over $3.00 a gallon. I have now shoveled our 300 foot driveway twice because of snow fall. I wonder how expensive it will be to keep fuel for a tractor on top of buying gas for our cars. I have thought of putting the place up for sale and moving back into town,that is back to Colorado and buy a place with a small yard. I wonder if things will ever get better.

Sell yer cars buy a tractor it will use less fuel.

 

[drtydeed]

Factor inflation and fuel isn't that high in the historical sense.......we've just gotten use to very cheap transportation and the market is beginning to correct itself.

And ExxonMobil making 40.6 BILLION profit this year...ha, and I worked for them for 12 yrs...

 

[JoeinTX]

Yeah, take a gander:

Inflation adjusted Gasoline Price Chart

 

[davitk]

We bought a 5 acrea place with a new home and 300 feet of driveway. I have now shoveled our 300 foot driveway twice because of snow fall.

Shoveling sucks, I feel your pain. I was in the 8th grade during the winter of 1978 - 1979, when we moved to a farm on top of a hill with a long drive and no equipment but armstrong shovels. First snow, we shoveled (myself, 2 brothers and dad) enthusiastically, piling the snow on the north side of the drive. Wind came up, filled it level full to a depth of about 2 feet. New Year's eve we had a blizzard (you know, we actually had real snowstorms back in the 'old days'). As everybody was digging out the next week, the county came by with their road grader mounted V-plow and proceeded to get stuck in a 10' drift in the mouth of the drive. Sucked. Really sucked. Didn't help that the old man was pleased with the fact all the shoveling was making his kids "tough".

He didn't get a tractor until sometime after I had left for college, my grandpa's old Farmall H. A few years later along came a 4WD plow truck, then ultimately a skidloader. Dad passed away a few years ago, and Mom finally sold that awful place. Ah, yes, memories......

Oops, sorry Mechanic, I digress.... back to fuel prices - diesel and gas is cheap. Of course, it's not as much fun to use power equipment as to do everything by hand, but the price of fuel is cheap. It's everything else that's expensive, like the wife, and the kids, and the groceries, and the clothes....

 

[mjarrels]

Exxon was 40 billion last QUARTER.

mark

 

[john_bud]

If you run a diesel pickup for an hour at 60 MPH, you will probably use 4-5 gallons. That's $13-17 per hour.

.

Gordon, FYI

My 2003 3.4 ton diesel has records of 65.6 mph is 3.12 gph, 71.1 mph is 3.56 gph, 63.2 mph is 3.28 gph, 58.4 mph is 2.66 gph. All empty.

60 mph and 5 gph would be 12 mpg uggg, that would be bad for a diesel unless towing heavy.

 

[wesross]

Fuel isn't the concern here, its the tractor itself.

 

[RalphVa]

Clearing my approximately 300 ft driveway takes about a half hour. That's about a quart of diesel fuel. Having a diesel-powered "wheelbarrow" is very useful. It's all you need to clear snow. A $250 back blade with do it faster and use less fuel.

A 10 to 12 hp snowblower or smaller tractor with a plow, like a DR, would use the same amount of gasoline. Carb-engined vehicles use 50% more fuel than a diesel engine.

Ralph