Hi everyone, I am in the planing stages of purchasing some land and building a shop hopefully starting this fall. The first thing that needs to be tackled after the lot is cleared is building a road in. I have access to a skid steer or a Ctl, is it possible to grade a road with either a crown in the middle so the water runs off to both sides or slope or so the water all runs to one side. I am hoping this is something I could do my self as it will save me a little bit of money and could be good practice as in the future I will have to touch it up (until we pave it with recycled asphalt millings) Any suggestions?
A ctl would be my first choice
Either a skid steer or CTL would work as long as you don't have big roots or tree's to deal with. It will take some time if you don't have much experience but certainly doable. Tires are better if you have lots of rocks. You don't want to cut up tracks on sharp rocks.
Welcome to the Forums Dmurph! CTL's are far superior to wheeled machines concerning anything to do with grading. CTL's are more expensive to purchase, operate and maintain but you get what you pay for. Just my $.04 which is my old $.02 adjusted for inflation.
Yea what cm said. But I’d much rather have a little dozer w 6 way blade. Of course U may not be able to go that route. Understood fosho! A CTL will work it’ll take some patience and plenty practice
I haven't been in the construction end of things for a while now, but back when I was one excavation outfit I worked for used nothing but 953's and 963 for site development. Too quick not to use at that time.
I have access to either or, but from doing a bit of research on how to crown a road, a lot of the videos I see on YouTube people are using a tractor and a box blade I believe. Is there an attachment for the skid steers?
If possible I’d like to stick to what I have access to as it won’t cost me anything, but I’m not opposed to buying something if it’ll be needed to work on the property in the future.
My neighbor built this for maintaining his road... hooks it onto his skidster
You dont need any attachments. Just use the bucket. Floating the bucket in reverse for final smoothing. How long of a road?
A skid steer or CTL let's you see what the bucket is doing so it's fairly easy to get your angles for slopes and just continue them for the length you need. You want to scrap all the topsoil off for a good driveway.
X2 - you don't need an attachment. IMO dozer blades on skids or CTL's are worthless.
Have you thought of talking to the contractor that would do the RAP? They might end up redoing whatever you perform anyway. Maybe use your tools to clear and grub and let someone else get profile and elevation.
I don't know your soils or conditions, but from my own experience working on my private/oilfield lease roads on our ranch, I would hire someone with a dozer to cut in your road and then equip yourself to maintain it thereafter. I have a skid steer and I use it on my roads to spread gravel and other little things, but I find a good old ag tractor with a box blade and an angle blade is far faster.
Dozer to build the road then a tractor and box blade to maintain it. My SS is the handiest and most worthless tool I own.
If you have an Ag tractor with a box blade and/or an angle blade. Some pics. of the property and where you want the driveway may help in determining the best way to go.
A blade on a skidsteer is very hard to control depth. You are far better off with a box blade attachment.
If I had access to a dozer I would, but it seems like the skid steer or ctl would be used a lot more than a dozer would after building the road. I see they make the dozer blades for ctls but not sure how well they do
Probably true, it's hard to put round bales out with a dozer or drill fence posts! Around here, you can hire a dozer for as cheap as $75/hr. An experienced operator with a 450/D4 could probably knock it out in two days tops, depending on distance and conditions. I love my bobcat, but it is far from my first choice for road building. If you are dead set on using a skid steer, I would look at one of those rotating bobtachs that allow you to tilt your bucket independent of the machine. I've never used one, but always thought they would be great for cutting ditches and crowning the road.
Yes! You didn't say how long your drive/road is. The main drive from my gate to the house is 600 feet and I have a 66 hp Deere tractor, box blade and angle blade I used to redo our road with many loads of crushed granite. After I spent hours and hours trying to level out the grade I had a guy bring over a motor grader. He was finished in about 30 minutes. Keeping my roads groomed is easy with my equipment.
Grading is possible with a skid steer and bucket. Not always easy if you don't have the experience but it can be done. As a former owner of a CTL with a dozer blade attachment, I would pick a real dozer or excavator for setting grade before fighting with that 6 way piece of frustration again. Even with a laser on it, I learned to hate it. A farm tractor and a hydraulic box blade is faster for setting finish grade, for me. If you are in the Berkshires, you are dealing with lots of rock. If you are in the Connecticut River Valley, you are dealing primarily with sands. Central Mass and Eastern Mass are likely a mix of those. If you are just dealing with sand, loam and easy soils it won't be too hard on the CTL equipment. If you are dealing with lots of rocks, you will be creating maintenance issues if you are beating on the machine. How much will the abuse to the machine cost you? If you are going to do the job right, you will be stripping off all of the topsoils, vegetation and big rocks in the way of your drive and then rebuilding the base with the correct materials for your conditions. I would start by assessing the ground conditions and selecting equipment suitable for the job. Use the largest piece that makes sense and get in/get out as quick as possible. I will rent the correct piece of equipment before trashing what I own if what I own is not up to the task. You will save time, headaches and money with this philosophy. If you are paying to have the land cleared, why not have them clear and grub out the drive as well? A good contractor can save you money in the long run if they do the job right. Future maintenance with a drag or box blade should be easy with a tractor or ctl with proper attachments.
Depending on what length road we're talking about, CTL aint too bad. I routinely re-grade 800-1000ft driveways with our skidsteer and harley rake. That said, if I'm cutting in new road, we use a dozer, or excavator. I'm an excavator guy personally, less abusive on the operator in rocky conditions.
Well now you know about every piece of equipment that can do the job so use what you got or can get easily and make it work Just to make the point you could do the job with a wheel loader or backhoe as well fairly efficiently if you know how to do it so it doesnt matter what machine you get if you cant run it you will not have a good time
To @AzIron 's point of not having a good time... I recently regraveled my driveway, about 300 feet, and planned to grade and smooth it with my backhoe. It didn't go very well. The backhoe was fine for moving gravel and dumping it, but I was not good at smoothing it out, and it was frustrating. I've since borrowed a neighbor's tractor with a angled blade on the back and it was significantly better in about 3 passes, after about 20 with the backhoe.
You can grade anything how you like you just have to know how to do it, grade to your crown from the low side on each side. Keep the crown uniform and it will look good.
It all depends on your skill level. I know guys that can grade with a bucket, and guys that can't. We use skid steers to make side side walks ready for paving. A bucket with a long floor is easier to level with than a short one. I never use float on any machine, I like to be in control of the machine. The key to doing a crown is turning to the right or left of your center line, and starting to dig in a bit. once the machine is sitting at the slope you want, you can carry that grade. If it starts to flatten out, just dig from center again.. Not sure what asphalt millings are like where you are, but they are great at first, but once they pack, they can't be reshaped easily if it starts to get rough. We have thousands of tons of it. They want 40 bucks a ton for it, so no one buys it. We don't have the means to mix it back into our asphalt. I did a road last year out of fresh stuff of a high way job ( it was rejected on a paving job, too much dirty sand, they had to mill up 800 meters, on one side of the highway about 2 inches deep ) It made a beautiful road, you would think it was a paved road after it was compacted. It was all wash boarded this spring, and it can't be regraded without coming up in chunks.
Seems like with most contractor's a 953/963/973 is becoming a thing of the past. Compact track loaders are getting so big and move a lot faster with a better ride. I still enjoy running them when I get a chance though.
The newest, biggest CTL on the market can't move as much earth, tear as many buildings down, load as many trucks or grade a larger area in a day than our 17 year old 953C can. Just my $.04 adjusted for inflation.
Compact and big? not to make fun but that's a oxymoron.
A good operator on a well maintained track loader is as impressive as a good excavator or finish grader operator. The hystat loaders do circles around their powershift counterparts. Steel tracks last a lot longer than rubber tracks too and don't care too much what type of terrain they're on unless it's asphalt or finished concrete.
Not really an oxymoron. The class is called Compact Track Loader (a term the industry adopted), and compared to a full size track loader they are compact. However compared to a typical SSL (which the CTL is related to), they are big, some of them weigh up to 12K with 5K or more in ROC.
The smallest track loaders now are around 20,000lbs. Even if you look at older machine like JD 350 which is about 12,000lbs. Compare the bucket. If you put the heaviest duty CTL bucket on one it would be destroyed in no time. Kind of like comparing a wheel bucket of the same size to a track loader bucket but a much bigger difference.