Long Summer: Endless Haul

[BrokenTrack]

A year ago we moved into this Tiny house, a 90 year old building that had been vacant for 11 years!

The biggest issue was the driveway, 90 years of plowing snow had taken most of the gravel off, and so the driveway was lower than the surrounding soil. This made the driveway pool with water, and this spring I got stuck in my own driveway...with a four wheel drive truck no less. That was bovine pasture droppings.

So with my 1999 Kubota L2500, and my Wallenstein Timber Talon, I dug some ditches, built two bridges, and started hauling gravel. Never in my wildest imagination did I realize I would be hauling gravel ALL summer. It just never stopped.

My little dump trailer can only hold 1 cubic yard, and I got it streamlined now so I can haul 20 cubic yards a day. So I built the driveway up by three feet, a D-shaped driveway 200 feet long. That was an improvement, but it was only one lane wide, so I doubled it to two lanes so we could pass one car or the other if one was parked for this two-car home. That was okay, but it left us teetering on a three foot bank getting out of the cars, so I widened it again. I also added gravel to the curve in it, and widened the ends where it meets the road. It is over 30 feet wide now!

I also built a rock retaining wall several feet high in front of the house, and hauled load after loam to make what was sloped, flat. That ditched a road on my farm at the same time, as I ditched, and then used the loam for in front of the house. Then I built two bridges over the ditches, hauled gravel for a walkway, and gravel to make a Tee-Shaped driveway on the other side of the bridge so that I can drive in, back into a turn-around spot, and drive back out.

Finally last week I started hauling gravel for an addition we want to put on this Tiny House. That required a culvert to cross the ditch, more gravel to drive over the culvert, just to get gravel back to where I wanted the addition. The land slopes away from the house so I ended up hauling over 60 loads just to make a flat spot, averaging over 4 feet deep for just a 20 x 20 spot. That was completed yesterday so after an entire summer I think I am done hauling gravel and loam.

In all it was just over 600 cubic yards of gravel I hauled one cubic yard at a time. The trip was 1/4 mile away from my gravel pit all done with my tractor and dump trailer! Had I bought the gravel instead of moving it myself, it would have cost me $4,800 dollars. I am not sure what I have in fuel, but it is nowhere near that.

It just goes to show how slow and steady really wins the race. 600 cubic yards of gravel, dug out of the bank, loaded, hauled, dumped and spread is pretty good for a tractor with 1/3 cubic yard capacity, and a dump trailer that holds 1 cubic yard.

 

[Thomas]

By the looks of leaves your finish on time.

 

[HawkinsHollow]

Well done sir! Your perseverance should be applauded!! :drink:

 

[dfkrug]

It just goes to show how slow and steady really wins the race. 600 cubic yards of gravel, dug out of the bank, loaded, hauled, dumped and spread is pretty good for a tractor with 1/3 cubic yard capacity, and a dump trailer that holds 1 cubic yard.

View attachment 622663

You did move a lot of dirt!

I like your dump trailer with the excavator attachment. Did you post about this before? Wallenstein, like your log loader trailer?

 

[BrokenTrack]

You did move a lot of dirt!

I like your dump trailer with the excavator attachment. Did you post about this before? Wallenstein, like you log loader trailer?

Yeah it is my log loader trailer. To make it into a backhoe, you just pull your grapple off, swap it out with the bucket and extra hydraulic cylinder, and hook up the hoses. It even gives you a spare set of hoses so you could make a hydraulic thumb for it if you wanted too. I have yet to make that thumb yet though.

I have dug with my backhoe and filled my dump trailer that way, but it is a lot slower. I can get about 3 yards to the hour direct-loading using my backhoe, but 4 cubic yards to the hour using my front loader on my tractor.

Between this year, and the road I did a few years ago that was 350 cubic yards, , I have moved over 1000 cubic yards with it.

 

[nyone]

To many people would have made a call and wrote a check. Not me either...i like your style!

This summer i built a driveway through 100ft of swamp so wet i couldnt walk on it. I used tree tops from logging to build up the area in a corderoy road fashion. Then dirt from digging my ditches, driveway fabric and prob 9 truck loads of stone. We can now drive a 26klb truck on it though. That driveway fabric is nice stuff and keeps mud from mixing with stone.

 

[BrokenTrack]

To many people would have made a call and wrote a check. Not me either...i like your style!

This summer i built a driveway through 100ft of swamp so wet i couldnt walk on it. I used tree tops from logging to build up the area in a corderoy road fashion. Then dirt from digging my ditches, driveway fabric and prob 9 truck loads of stone. We can now drive a 26klb truck on it though. That driveway fabric is nice stuff and keeps mud from mixing with stone.

That is quite the accomplishment!

A few years ago we got a grant to build a Heavy Haul Road across our farm. The grant was $9000 and some contractor wanted $7000 to haul gravel out of my gravel pit 1/2 mile away. I told Katie that we had gravel, and we had a way to haul it, but 350 cubic yards?

Then I did some math. If I moved (10) 1 cubic yard loads per day, in 35 days we would have moved 350 cubic yards of gravel. And that is just what we did. In the end we kept all $9000. That Log Trailer paid for itself in the first year that I owned it!

That road was not over swamp for me, but it was up a 9% grade! I try to extend my road network out across my farm by a few hundred feet every year, I am not sure I am going to get to it this year, but I would like to build a lot more road. Of course by the time I get done, we will all be driving Hovertractors! (LOL)

 

[sodamo]

Super job

 

[BrokenTrack]

Thanks...

Occasionally we get asked by contractors if they can haul gravel out of my pit, but it is not really worth it for me. They pay $2 a cubic yard ($28 a truckload) and while I admit it does add up, what we have, which is about 8 acres, is about all we have. The state surficial maps do not show much else for gravel unfortunately. So we keep it just for ourselves.

I am not sure when gravel was discovered, I would say in the early 1900's. The Federal Government bought it during the CCC Years, but then sold it back to us, which is nice because any gravel pit in Maine operating before 1970 is grandfathered. I got proof going back to 1938, so I can do what I want down there. Of course when you haul less than 1000 yards a year out of a pit, there is not really a lot of environmental damage to be done! LOL

 

[arrow]

Let's see. 1/4 mile one way so the total turn was 1/2 mile. You did this about 400 times as your capacity is 1and 1/3 yard at a time in order to move 600 yards. This means you traveled around 200 miles on your tractor. You must have had deja-vu all over again.