Major PIA. Please help.

Laminarman · Feb 17, 2008

I have a 700' driveway, pretty steep. Lots of ice this year. I almost just dumped my family into oncoming traffic as we slid out of control down the driveway, not having a good day. My TC40DA with back blade is great for snow but I need some type of spreader, hand spreading is not going to work. Please give advice. Do I buy a pickup with spreader? UTV with spreader and front blade? Front blade for tractor on hydraulics with rear spreader? Can't jeopardize my family's health, this is just horrible and at wits end. I'm in upstate NY with some heavy snow at times, this year TONS of ice.

bandit67 · Feb 17, 2008

Not a cheap option, but keeping your family safe is most always worth some extra $$ (I bought a $3000.00 anti-sway hitch for our bumper pull travel trailer).

You can go with an FEL mounted hydraulic snow blade (I assume you have a universal QA?) from Curtis, Horst Welding, Snow Wolf, etc., and a 3 pt spreader that should take care of all of your snow clearing needs. The nice thing about dropping the bucket and attaching the snow plow to the loader arms is you can push the piles up pretty high if you need to.

wny770 · Feb 17, 2008

How about a 3 point spreader to spread a sand / salt mix when it gets icy? My drive has a slight hill towards the end... that's where my wood burning stove ashes go.

MossRoad · Feb 17, 2008

Laminarman said:
I have a 700' driveway, pretty steep. Lots of ice this year. I almost just dumped my family into oncoming traffic as we slid out of control down the driveway, not having a good day. My TC40DA with back blade is great for snow but I need some type of spreader, hand spreading is not going to work. Please give advice. Do I buy a pickup with spreader? UTV with spreader and front blade? Front blade for tractor on hydraulics with rear spreader? Can't jeopardize my family's health, this is just horrible and at wits end. I'm in upstate NY with some heavy snow at times, this year TONS of ice.

Do you have a front end loader on your tractor? If so, I'd put a power angle snow blade on the FEL arms and a spreader on the rear. A power angle snow blade on the FEL arms is much better at moving snow than a rear blade for several reasons. You can see where you are going. You clear the snow before you drive on it. You can push it off to the side without turning the tractor. You can stack it higher than with a bucket. You can back-drag away from buildings with more precision. And a big plus is you can use the downpressure of the FEL arms to put tons of pressure on the lip to scrape ice.

Or, you could buy a 12V or hydraulic motor powered spreader and mount it to your back blade somehow. 700' is quite a long drive to do the entire thing with salt. I think a small spreader and concentrate on the area near the road would be the most frugal.

john_bud · Feb 17, 2008

You could use a 300 cc ATV, front blade and rear 12v spreader. Around here we get a bit of snow and a 300cc works well, but I wouldn't want to use a smaller one. I've done up to 12" snows with a 300 Honda with no problem. Used Honda or Kawasaki would be my first choice. Larger ones will make shorter work.

You could also get a skid steer spreader with a QA plate and put it on the FEL in place of the bucket. You would need a hydraulic set up for it, just like the one for a grapple. You can probably get this done for 3-4000 installed.

jb

Laminarman · Feb 18, 2008

You guys are great, thanks for the help. I will call my dealer today about front blade options and I can load my rear spreader.

WayneB · Feb 18, 2008

We have the same problem here. My driveway is down hill about 1,000 feet with a couple curves to boot. I sand it using a shovel with a load of sand on a trailer. Most years this has to be done about twice a year, but this year it has been every third or forth day.

Our town is good about letting us get sand and or sand and salt mix. The problem with the sand mix is it melts right through the cover quickly but unless I put a whole bunch down it is still really slippery. With the sand only it is clumped up and some chunks are as big as softballs, another pain.

With that said I would suggest if you are going to purchase a spreader you might have to get one that can handle the clumps. I would think there is a lot of ice in straight sand that might plug the spreader.

Now if you are looking to get a truck and this is one way to justify it, go for it. I not sure if I could pull that off getting a sand spreader to fit in the back of the truck? But, it is something that I might start working on??eck just as well get a new pickup too.

milkman · Feb 18, 2008

Laminarman said:
I have a 700' driveway, pretty steep. Lots of ice this year. I almost just dumped my family into oncoming traffic as we slid out of control down the driveway, not having a good day. My TC40DA with back blade is great for snow but I need some type of spreader, hand spreading is not going to work. Please give advice. Do I buy a pickup with spreader? UTV with spreader and front blade? Front blade for tractor on hydraulics with rear spreader? Can't jeopardize my family's health, this is just horrible and at wits end. I'm in upstate NY with some heavy snow at times, this year TONS of ice.

Here's what you need to do, take this video to your Kubota dealer and tell him you want one of these fitted to the RTV1100. Then you can plow and spread in your t-shirt.

YouTube - Kubota RTV - Aurauskalusto ja kippilava

montanaman · Feb 18, 2008

You have a ton of options and a lot of it depends on how hard you want to shop, what you want to spend, and how handy you are! You could do something as simple as buying an electric tailgate spreader for a truck and adapting it to the loader or rear blade. You could take your time during the off season and look for an old plow truck that is in good mechanical shape, but maybe a little too rough to be used on the road. Some of them get pretty rusty when using them to spread salt!! This would give you a heated cab with wipers and a farm truck to use on the property if you have enough room for one.

If you want to use the tractor that you already own and have a QD loader bucket, I would look into a power angle snow blade for the front and a PTO spreader for the rear. The front blades aren't very cheap but you get what you pay for and as far as the three point spreader, some of the "budget" ones have really cheap gear boxes that rot out so spending a little more will be the better choice in the long run.

Ken