Snow Pusher

[Fallon]

Park the tractor with the business end facing the snow. Previous owner here told me of a time he backed his tractor into the quonset only to have a huge drift in front of the door in the morning. His Massey 1105 couldn't drive through the drift, had to shovel his way out. In the right conditions here, the snow drifts in hard enough to walk on.

I have a horizontal sliding barn door. Every snow I need to dig out the 15-18' door & another 15-18' section to slide the door into. Really sucks as that attracts a 6' drift without much problem. Keep thinking about a new door type. Or I park the machine outside before a snow storm.

 

[metalbender]

On my new shed I have a roll up tarp door. When I first moved out here I used a quonset that was a distance from the house. Same problem with the sliding door. Got old fast.

 

[metalbender]

Pic of the door from my phone

 

[ADKMax26]

I purchased a HLA 1500 from goodworks tractors in September. I received it in November and just had a fresh 6”’s of snow to test it out. In purchasing the blade goodworks recommend a 72” 1500 series. I am pretty happy so far with the size so far for a 1533 mahindra. I have experience in a 65 hp with a 9 foot pusher blade for 2 full winters clearing a parking lot and a driveway and pickup drop off circles as well as walks in a courtyard. Turning and long pushes can be tricky. They can be done easier with practice. If your surface is flat enough to take the loader out of float and raise it just off the surface a bit. The removal of the loader and attachment weight from the ground let’s the wheels work a bit better is steering and maintaining traction. I Only raise the loader when I am turning or feel the rears start to slip. This allows you to keep your momentum and finish the push. I find a snow pusher to be easier on the lawn. Great for stacking snow higher and way quicker than a bucket (not waiting for the curl cycle to dump out of the bucket). As far as taking a half of blade width with a pusher. I would rather take half the height and come back for the bottom. Usually the tractor has enough traction on a flat surface and this keeps the weight distributed over both loader arms. Over people might not feel the same. Taking the loader out of float I would only recommend if you know the underlying surface pretty well. If you strike something out of float it probably won’t be as forgiven. This is based on regularly clearing 6-12” with a few 18” snow falls.

 

[Hilbilly]

I'm considering an HLA 2500 96" wide pusher for my L6060 and wonder how it would work on a gravel area that is not flat, ie. up and down. I currently use an HLA 2000 96" wide plow and struggle to keep it at the right height so I have to go very slowly. I even added a float system to my plow (similar to a truck mounted plow). That helps but the driveway area in front of the house is very undulating.

So do you thing a snow pusher with the loader in float would work? Also when the loader is in float, is the tilt also floating, so it can follow the contour of the gravel?

 

[amhicks21]

you might be able to get by with a pusher if your driveway is completely flat but if you didnt like the hla blade you probably wont like a pusher any better. If you get a rubber edged push box, you'll have problems sliding over top of heavy snow and ice and it'll be practically impossible to turn. I used to plow in an s650 bobcat and an s300 bobcat with a 10ft pusher and even being an 8000lb machine with dedicated snow tires i absolutely hated it unless the snow was light and soft. Now i plow in an l6060 with a frame mounted 8'-10' western wideout, turf tires, all 4 loaded tires and a 1000lb weight box and its the best thing ive ever plowed in. With that said, it still wont turn properly with a full blade of wet snow. between 2012 and 2016 i put about 1600 hours on an l3540 doing grade work and i played around in the yard a few times with our snow pushers and decided it wasnt worth it. I think no matter what you do, FEL mounted blades on compact tractors arent going to be ideal because they are just leveraged out too far, the machine is too light and the wheelbase too short. They may be useable but never optimal. Im actually going to be setting up an lx3310 once it gets back from the dealership and that will also have a frame mounted plow.

 

[pokey1416]

Agree w amhicks21, front pushing with float will only work for a short distance but I have found that I can feel when I’m about to lose steering and bump it out of float. Pushing uphill works better for me than downhill. Sometimes the loader arms won’t drop down far enough to keep the pusher edge in good contact with the ground.

 

[Hilbilly]

Thanks guys. I know what you mean about not being able to steer with big load of snow. I added small wings to my front plow and when I have a load of snow and I want to turn I have to use the hydraulic angle to steer the plow in the direction I want to go. Last year I change my snow removal method again. I now use the rear mounted inverted snow blower for our 1 mile long driveway and that works great. I use the front, plow with float (not FEL float), to do the area between all the buildings. My longest push is about 200' and I loose a lot of snow pushing that far and have to keep going back to pick it up. Seems like a lot of wasted time having to keep going over the same area. So I'm looking for a better method for that area. The area is not huge, about 60' x 200' but there is some finicky work involved and having to keep redoing it can take more time than blowing the long driveway. The wings I added to the plow aren't very long and they don't go right to the ground. So maybe I should lower the wings to the ground and add skids, just to try it out.

Here is a pic of the wings.

 

[Hilbilly]

Well I've got bad news and good news. First the bad news. The snow pusher I was considering has been sold and there aren't any more locally. Now the good news. My son in law bought it and it is at his yard, just down the street from me. So I can try it out to see if it is something that would work for me.

As amhicks21 pointed out, the rubber edge does not do well in hard pack or icing conditions. We recently had about 4 inches of heavy, wet, snow that fell on unfrozen ground. So plowing was out of the question, unless you wanted to plow your gravel with the snow. Then over the last 2 days everything froze solid and the slop that was left has turned into frozen snow / ice. After 5 minutes of plowing the rubber scraper was chewed up and bent. My SIL thought it was a steel edge and was concerned that he already damaged it, lol. I did notice that the skid shoes were very narrow and probably wouldn't work very well on soft ground. He also said there was no way he could turn with snow in the pusher plus it was hard to keep it in a straight line. I suspect it will take more than 5 minutes of use to get used to it and figure out how to best use it.

 

[PaxMan]

I’ve got an Express Steel 8ft XP24 snow pusher. My driveway is straight and about 900ft long. My tractor is a LS XR4145HC. Rear tires are loaded and I keep my Servis Super Rhino blade on the back.