I Think I Need A Bigger Tractor, Truck, Snowcat, Something.

[Sulla]

My wife and I just bought forty five acres of raw land surrounded by National Forest. Access is by two of three class six roads, meaning I've gotta go West on one of two different roads and then either North or South depending on which way I go in. For now only one road is maintained at all and only in the summer at that.

The road runs over a couple of bridges and up about a five percent grade for a little over a mile before intersecting with the North/South road. The North//South road rolls up and down with a lot of water breaks that freeze up in the Winter and turn to mud pits in the Spring The Forest Service takes care of the better of the two in the summer only. It is to be our responsibility to maintain all three in the winter and the second of the two of access roads along with the North/South road the rest of the year.

I went out there yesterday with my little CK20 with nothing but the FEL, talk about bring a pea shorter to a gun fight. In an hour I cleared about the length of a football field.

Now the question. How best to maintain this road? One big tractor that I can also use for logging, farming, sugaring. Or get some big ole' town plow truck for plowing and just use the tractor for grading and such. We don't have a lot of money to burn so I have to keep cost in mind.

Any ideas how to spend my money?

Oh, I should add this land is completely off the grid and we want to keep it that way.

Thanks

 

[JB4310]

I'd opt for the larger tractor, your gona use it for many other tasks on your new land.
As opposed to the single use plow truck.

But not having "alot of money to burn" makes it tricky to get into a 40-50 hp 4x4 tractor.

JB.

 

[sandman2234]

A front end loader is generally not a considered a road maintence attachment, although they do offer some degree of support with snow and moving materials to specific trouble spots. If the road is established, a boxblade, rearblade or" "duragrader" style of rear attachment will work wonders over a FEL.
I used a boxblade for years, built a grader, and am looking for a rear blade (that will angle and tilt) to do ditches. Each a little different, built to do different things, but all will probably out maintain a road over a FEL.
David from jax

Wish I had a FEL, lol

 

[Scooby074]

Used larger AG tractor with cab?

Compared to CUTS, Ags are a bargain / HP

 

[Sulla]

Used larger AG tractor with cab?

Compared to CUTS, Ags are a bargain / HP

Forgive my ignorance, what's a CUT...

 

[Ductape]

Forgive my ignorance, what's a CUT...

Compact Utility Tractor

 

[Sulla]

Compact Utility Tractor

Thank you. I noticed that as I've been looking at used tractors.

Thanks

 

[ccdck20hst]

What state are you in and how long in miles or feet of a road are you dealing with? Snow or grading gravel or both? To respond people might want to know this plus do you have any other uses line up?? I have a CK20HST TLB. I think of it as a compact utility tractor (CUT) and the sales literature from 2004 when I bought it calls it a compact tractor. I spent about 6 hours on it in the past three weeks moving snow (we got more than 3 feet over the past 3 weeks) with the loader here in Litchfield County, Connecticut. With the loader I can push it and lift it to dump snow (gravel rocks up to about 750-900 lbs I would say I moved a stone ruble wall with it few summers back) where I want on my 75 foot long gravel drive way (I clear an area over grass too making the l cleared area about 150 feet by ten feet wide). My guess is that you have a mile or so of public gravel road to deal with based upon your reference to only a football field being cleared. Perhaps for the distance of snow (?) you need to clear you need a good used 4X4 pickup with plow to use in addition to your CK20 - it will go a lot faster. Folks here say a dump truck can be very expensive to insure compared to a pickup. A bigger tractor with a plow attachment (bucket on a DK40 is suppose to lift up to 2,700 Lbs!!!) such as a DK40HST (best bang for the buck in the KIOTI line up some say) is another option with faster ground speed and far greater lifting and pushing capacity than the good old little CK20. Good luck - tractor on!!

 

[Sulla]

I'm up in Northern New Hampshire. Have a total of about two miles give or take of snow during the Winter and about a mile of gravel in the summer. We are building a farm from scratch with all that entails on raw land. The land is off the grid and we plan on keeping it that way. The town doesn't maintain the roads at all. The Forest Service handles part of it in the summer, though I'm going to see if they'll pay me to do it. Any vehicles I use on this property won't be insured or registered for that matter.

 

[Robert_in_NY]

Depending on the length of the road I would look at a 100hp used tractor and put a front blade on it and weight it properly. If you get the right set up you can put coveralls on and dress for the temp, drive down the road and back and shut down.

Me personally I use my TN 65 to clear snow. I can clear long driveways without too much trouble but I have to make multiple passes. What I do is keep the 6' loader bucket down and push the snow in front of the tractor while keeping the 7' box blade down scraping behind as the loader doesn't scrape the ground (intentionally). The loader bucket fills up and eventually creates a V when full of snow creating a V plow. This pushes the snow off both sides while the box blade fills up and eventually carrys a lot of snow in the box and under the tractor as the rear wheels help create a larger box. On each subsequent pass I offset a little to push more of the snow the direction I want it to go while the box picks up more of whats left. Its not the greatest but its not bad and I don't need to add anything to the tractor. When the snow melts the first thing I do is use the box blade to fix up some of the driveways.

My 1920 has a curtis blade that hooks to the loader frame. That works fine for light snow but if you have a heavy snow and are trying to angle the blade to push it off to the side you need to add a lot of weight as it pushes the front of the tractor around.

Ideally you would buy a 50-60 horse utility tractor with cab, FWA and 6-7' front mounted snow blower. Then in the spring you pull the blower off and have a good tractor for farm use.