Fired Road contractor. Build it myself?

[ovrszd]

Eddie, couple years ago I bought a 5 yd clamshell scraper for moving dirt. I paid $4700 for it. I added 6' height to a pond dam with it. Worked pretty slick but has it's limits. I think a Dump Truck will be my next investment. Now I use my RTV as a Dump Truck but it's too small to be effective for any project of size.

I agree concerning the expense of moving dirt. In the case of this thread, it's a "pay me now or pay me later" scenario.

 

[airbiscuit]

Am I missing something here? Once the road bed and ditches are roughed in, won't the dump trucks delivering the aggregate be spreading it as they dump it? Then the OP and his tractor can do the finishing work.

 

[ovrszd]

Am I missing something here? Once the road bed and ditches are roughed in, won't the dump trucks delivering the aggregate be spreading it as they dump it? Then the OP and his tractor can do the finishing work.

In my Neck of the Woods that's how it's done. Making sure of course the dirt work is done.

I've got a friend in the Omaha Nebraska area. He ordered a dump truck load of gravel for his driveway. The driver asked where he wanted it piled. Didn't even have chains on his tailgate to allow spreading. Said his company only dumps in piles.

 

[turnkey4099]

In my Neck of the Woods that's how it's done. Making sure of course the dirt work is done.

I've got a friend in the Omaha Nebraska area. He ordered a dump truck load of gravel for his driveway. The driver asked where he wanted it piled. Didn't even have chains on his tailgate to allow spreading. Said his company only dumps in piles.

Heh. Mt St Helens blew several inches of ash all over this area. People had drives top dressed with "toppings", Mother ordered a load for her short drive (about 60') driver knew what he was doing but the equipment failed and she wound up with a pile. Fortunately he lot bordered a bit implement dealer and he sent a bucket loader over to spread it out.

 

[ovrszd]

Heh. Mt St Helens blew several inches of ash all over this area. People had drives top dressed with "toppings", Mother ordered a load for her short drive (about 60') driver knew what he was doing but the equipment failed and she wound up with a pile. Fortunately he lot bordered a bit implement dealer and he sent a bucket loader over to spread it out.

My mind cannot grasp that volcano situation. I've thought about it a lot. Just can't wrap my mind around the mess.

 

[murphy1244]

My mind cannot grasp that volcano situation. I've thought about it a lot. Just can't wrap my mind around the mess.

We had stuff in our pool from that volcano.

Volcano Eruption - The Eruption of Mt St Helens (198) - Rare Footage - YouTube

 

[WoodChuckDad]

You don't necessarily have to have a "ditch" but you do need sweeping grading to move the water away. I always do it that way and my only "ditch" is a gradual swale. Done right, you don't even notice the ground was done that way to move water away. It looks better and the gradual swale won't wash in the rain. Ditches are hard to maintain while proper grading just involves mowing the grass.

I had to google swale.

 

[WoodChuckDad]

I have a couple of things to say.

First, no one has mentioned the cost other than the OP firing the guy that was going to do the work for 10K. All of this costs $$$, doesn't matter who does the work, it still costs money. There was a thread years ago here telling the guy what he needed to do and not to do. I added up the costs mentioned for the size of his drive and if he listened to the people giving him all the advice, it was going to cost over a million dollars to build his drive way. Sometimes you just have to go the economy route and then do maintenance as needed.

Second thing, and this is directly for the OP. DO NOT get a 10 rear blade. It will be waaaaaaaaaaaay to much blade for your tractor. 10' rear blades are intended to be used with cat 3 sized machines, not medium sized cat 2 tractors. Not that you couldn't use it, but you would not be able to do any serious cutting with it. Definitely the tail wagging the dog sort of thing. I have a 75hp, 12,000lb tractor that I run a 9' blade with. It's all the tractor wants and more at certain times.

If your tires are loaded or if you will load them, then the 9' blade will be a good match, whatever blade you decide to get, be sure to get skid shoes for it, they make life much easier. Also learn how to make use of the draft control. You can make a cut as even as your dining room table if you learn how to use and adjust it for the conditions you are working in. :thumbsup:

My tractor tips the scales at around 8,000 lbs with tires loaded, and before adding a rear implement. I'm still working on the draft control. I haven't come close to mastering it.

 

[sixdogs]

My tractor tips the scales at around 8,000 lbs with tires loaded, and before adding a rear implement. I'm still working on the draft control. I haven't come close to mastering it.

With draft control and my 8' heavy Woods landscape rake on a 45HP Kubota, I can leave a smooth surface on prepped ground that is better than raked by hand because it's flat over a wider surface. Smallish dozer does the heavy lifting but the heavy and wide landscape rake is where the magic is. With dry, prepped ground and some street smarts, you can master much of it in an afternoon. Loaded tires make it more difficult and is why I steer clear of them.

Prep, rake, pack, seed and Miller Time. With the right equipment, dry ground and skilled people paying attention this project is mostly a one day job.

 

[WoodChuckDad]

I spent the weekend Camping and hunting at my homesite. I had a new eye when I was walking that road. I am going to give this a go. If we get into January and it just doesn't feel like it is something I can handle, I will call someone in to finish it. I spent a couple hours on it yesterday afternoon after I had packed up camp, just to get a feel for it. In construction of my bridge, I had already dug into the hillside some more because I needed soil to build up and even out the bridge.

I had already widened it....perhaps more than I need to for the rest of the road so I just continued on with that same basic line. Before moving any earth, I used the teeth on the bucket to push any debris our of the way on the uphill side and pulled up and debris on the downhill side so that I would be shoveling clean dirt and rocks, not a bunch of sticks and brush....and so that I would moving it over to a clean hillside, and not putting it on debris that will rot and create unstable and uneven ground over the years. Time consuming, but neccessary. Then I pulled stumps, then I shoveled out the dirt.
I have found myself needing a lot of soil on the farm, especially in areas where I dig out stumps. and to even out the skid roads that logging have left across the fields. I don't think I want another machine with a big engine to maintain, so I might be looking at a dump trailer. I had already been thinking of getting one so that I only touched things once around the farm instead of twice. Eddie has given me some very good advice in the past and I have no doubt that I should consider what he has said here in the way that I approach it. The comment about "swales" that Sixdogs made had me googling for a bit and the images really brought together what a wider ditch needs to look like. On the 1/4 mile of road that was already on the property, there is a small trench ditch on each side of the road and a culvert at the bottom to guide water. It works very well, but doesn't have a large hillside looming over it. There is a lot of rock that I will be dealing with. Some of it rather large. The only way to know what I will get into is to get into it. Implements that I currently have are 84 inch box blade. 84 inch landscape rake (when I bought it, I didn't know that I should have gone wider than the tractor). Neither of those will do what I need in a timely manner. I have time to look around for a decent back blade for shaping once I get the digging done. I figure the digging will take me a month or so of weekend work, before I even need to think about shaping it with a blade. ...especially since I like to sit in the woods with my rifle in the morning during hunting season. I'm going to take my time and "dig in" to it. Yeah....bad joke.