Congratulations. I ran a small JD 450G for a guy when I first moved to Texas, and realized that it was too small to get anything done on my land. So when I was looking to buy, I wanted something a lot bigger. I found a good deal on a Case 1550 that's 170 hp and 40,000 pounds. Yours could easily weigh 50,000 pounds. You'll know for sure if you ever get it stuck!!!!
On my place, I found that the dozer wasn't the best tool for clearing the land. My backhoe does a much better job. And it's even worse for moving those trees to the burn pile. Again, the backhoe with a grapple does a much better job. My dozer was great for digging my pond!!! I moved a massive amount of dirt, then built up my dam. But the dozers isn't very good at compacting the soil, so I would spread out the dirt with the dozer, then fill up the front bucket of my backhoe with a yard of soil and drive over the dirt on the dam to compact it. I would spread the dirt as far as possible so I was getting more done each time I went from one machine to the other.
I haven't started my dozer in a couple of years now, and I still have a couple of projects that I want to use to for, but then I'm selling it. It's something that I thought would be a lot of fun, but after the first half hour, it becomes work, and by 6 hours, it's pure torture. In winter, I could not put enough foam pads on the ground to keep my feet from freezing. The metal floor holds the cold and transfers it through my boots. I pushed to get my pond done, but I'll never do that again. It's a new level of cold being on the dozer in winter!!!
I learned that nobody will come out to fix it for me, so when it breaks down, and it does that a lot, I had to learn how to fix it. Once I sell it, I don't ever want to see anything with tracks on it again!!!
