Have a bit of an odd question. I'm wondering what would be the best machine to pack snow on a gravel driveway with some larger rocks that stick up? I think my truck tires are too narrow and it would take too long. The driveway is about a 1/4 mile long. The options I'm considering are a grader, dump truck or track loader. I'm leaning toward the dump truck. Any insight would be helpful.
Start with the floater truck, let er’ freeze up good and solid. Then, after 24 hours, drag some tires with the track-type, to pack er’ in real good.
You could use a track loader or wheel loader and curl the bucket back just a bit. The downside is it wears on the heel of the bucket but for what you’re doing it would be negligible
Check out King of obsolete YouTube channel. He uses several types of drags and spends a lot of time packing snow on roads and trails through the wilderness for the purpose of running Cat trains. He uses everything from pallets for dog trails to a tire drag as shown to a heavy v drag.
Dragging tires usually works the best to smooth and pack.
It warmed up a lot so a bunch of snow melted and the rest was a little slushy. I used the dump truck and it worked pretty good leaving almost a soft ice layer. It cooled off during the day and is supposed to be colder tomorrow so it should freeze nice. Supposed to get more snow tomorrow too so I'll go out on the weekend and pack another layer. Still a few rocks sticking up. I'm hoping in the spring when the ground thaws I can push the rocks into the ground so they're level with the rest of the gravel. So glad the short filter solved the loss of prime issue on the dump truck. It started right up and kept running. Had a slight air leak but after packing the driveway and warming up the leak stopped.