Not just another box blade

[TxBilly]

The area my property is in is a 4600 acre ranch sub-divided into 236 sections. We have over 14 miles of roads to maintain and are looking at ways to cut some of our costs. Attached is a blade we looked at yesterday. My B2400 is a great machine, but no match for this 8' blade being pulled from the drawbar by a 50 HP Kubota.

 

[TxBilly]

Another

 

[TxBilly]

One more

 

[beenthere]

From the pictures, it looks like all it is doing is dragging material down the road. This adds a big load and requires a lot of tractor to pull it along. Note in the picture taken from behind, that it is not leaving a good smooth top layer for a good road surface.
For road maintenance, you need to be able to angle the cutting edge to get under the high spots (bumps) and at least to the bottom of the low spots (holes). Similar to a road grader. If the blade is square to the road way, then it is difficult to do anything with the surface other than cut off some bumps, and let it drop into the holes. The road material has to be worked up and spread out and then packed down.
A rear blade that will angle and which has the trailing wheels such as this rig would be close to a grader. These straight blades are good for having a lot of tractor time, because the roadway will need to be re-repaired often.

 

[TxBilly]

I agree - this is not what we need for our maintenance. However, it works like any box blade. It will move a lot of material. The blade can be adjusted in height or tilt from hydraulics. The best solution is a road maintainer, but we can't afford to buy one and hiring it out 10 - 12 times a year is a big cost. We would like to find something else and then hire the maintainer 2 -3 times a year

 

[beenthere]

Seems to me if this outfit would have a heavy duty blade that would swivel, and tilt, and have height control, it would do much of the job that a grader does. The box doesn't cut it, but the different degrees of control look great, along with the large tires in the back.

 

[mikim]

Run over to Kleiber in LaGrange - they had a thing that looked like it would move material toward the center of the road. It was a good deal smaller like it was made for driveways - but in combo with the monster box it might meet your need. It was flat, had 2 or 3 short blades that were angled, and appeared to let the excess material roll over the top of the blades - but you could catch that with the box. just a thought
mike