WHat kind of plow trucks are you all using? Here were using International single axles with aluminum beds Swenson tailgate spreaders with Dickey John Control point controls. Henke reversible plows and henke tuck in wings. Not a bad setup.
township i run with mostly International single axles w/wings (2 don't have wings) and (3) F550's w/wings this is the rig i was in last storm
Sweet Thats a sweet set up, How does that wing push on the F550? I plowed with an 05 F550 I loved it, It had the long mason body that was the only downfall but it was a nice truck, I'd love that wing in a Walmart Parking lot plowing
the wing does pretty good...heres a little video i made just gotta watch out for those mailboxes..... http://s288.photobucket.com/albums/...ng Vidoes/?action=view¤t=1-28-09003.flv and a few more pictures
Sweet man that truck is hummin along, I now plow with a 2000 Chevy 3500 Pick up, You dont see too many I have a Airflow stainless sander and a 8' HD Minute Mount 2 , a set of helper springs in the back and honestly I love the truck it plows awesome, I put 1.4 ton of sand n salt mix it takes it as well as any F350 dump i drove, Its very comfy to drive the steering is easier than any Ford I ever drove but Ford is a great truck too I can not knock them they both have Pro's and Cons.. Thats a sweet set up good luck with it be safe and God Bless... oh yeah remember.... You can get FED Time for bustin up a mail box lol.....
haha i think they look the other way if you are a state employee...i was rolling about 30MPH when i was filming there...i try and keep it around there, get up around 45 when we are just pushing slush..the main problem with plowing on roads is blowback...if we are doing clean-ups and pushing the brown slush off the roads the windshield and cab just get covered...i have to get out every half hour or so and clean off the buildup
I've got an F-550 with 10 1/2' Viking blade and Tarco combination body and an F-350 with Blizzard 810, plus an Erskine 6' blower on my skid steer. The town I sub to has IH 6 wheelers but they have a lot of trouble with them, there are usually 3 out of 18 down per storm. The town I grew up in used IH too, but the Super tried Macks and even though they cost more initially, he documented that over the life of the truck they cost much less due to fewer repairs and less down time.
dirt digger, thanks for the F550 wing truck pics, and vid. Cool!!
Our fleet is a mixed bag I guess. Fords and Internationals, mostly all tandems though. We have a few tag axles kicking around. Plow equipment is a mixed bag as well. Depends on who gets the tender. Mostly Craig though. Most have Dickey Johns, the odd compuspread.I'll try to get a few pictures up of our new Internationals. Great video by the way. How does your wing marker stick hold up? I call them whistle sticks and they don't seem to last very long.
it gets bent back from going under mailboxes and smacking them, thats the good thing with this little wing is it is the perfect development machine...the wing is low enough that it can just go right under mailboxes...the only one i hit last storm was when the wing caught a storm inlet grate and jump up right into a mailbox i am always more worried about the thing hitting a car that parks in the street...its not a good idea to park your car in the street during a snow storm...i just dont understand what goes through peoples heads
Here is mine A Frieghtliner FL70 with a 10'Boss. I schould have got a heavier plow but it was to late in the season.
thats a good looking plow...you put a box on there for weight over the back?
here's my unit a 97 f350 only 27,000 miles western 6-5 ultra pro 7.3 stroker just bought it fer 9500 bucks been out 3 times and LOVE it and I hope i go out again tuesday night. im subbin and getting $90 buck an hour . yeh I know but that is what he wants to pay me???? were talkin spreader now witch will be about $125 an hour :usa
yes I put a small box on the back with 3 concrete deadmen
Here is a couple of old shots ,I didn't have any pics on my computer of our new toys
The 550 with the wings whats the switch on the shifter? Two speed?
Check this out! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exBrz5aQ9Hg&feature=related :drinkup Here is my truck. 05 Ram with 5.9 CTD. 8' Boss plow.
If its a 2-spd., I hope it goes to the front diff also.
no i wish it was a 2 speed...its the switch for the spreader...the auger and spinner controls you can barely see down by the seat
can anyone shed some light to how front engine pto's work for large truck snow plows...? where does the shaft run from, etc. Thanks in advance!
that F550 I have posted is a belt driven pump that works off the crankshaft...it is very nice to operate, all I have to do is press a switch instead of pressing in the clutch and pulling out on a lever as for an actual PTO on a truck I will let people that know more about it step in here, I have an overall idea but not exactly sure
Here are my trucks, both 2006 2500HD's with Duramax/Allie combo and 8' Fisher blades. The 6' sander can be put in either truck as i have installed control boxes in both.
The trucks i run have a shaft connected straight to the crank shaft that comes staright out the front to a pump mounted behind the front bumper. Pump runs all the time.
That's a "live PTO". I had an International 2574 with 671, wing and tailgate sander once in a past life. This year, I miss her....:crying
The pump is connected to the crankshaft by a short driveshaft that goes through the radiator. The more modern trucks are able to disengage the pumps either by cable or air operation.
Here are two new plow trucks, and one soon-to-be plow truck.
Too bad those first too trucks are no longer made.
gritter here is a picture of what i drive here in the UK its coming up to 9 years old now cheers graham
Use two of them here. Ford f350 with a 7.3 powerstroke and 6 speed. Have a hydroturn one way as well as a real live very rare high speed Vee plow for it when things get a bit rougher. I mean a real vee to, not one of those bend in the middle wana be ones. Use the vee to open and go back with one way to clean up. When things get really rough, widening and commerical parking lots out comes the Oshkosh with big Vee and wing.
A couple of mine. 99 Western Star with a 12' Jenning plow.
HI graham, are those rubber blades on your plow? Can't see your box very well, but can you give any details on that?
rubber hi Grader4me yes the plough has rubber squeegees on the bottom that are adjustable and reversible the gritter box is made by econ http://www.econ.uk.com/ and are fully automatic all adjustments are done from in the cab ,the spinner also starts and stops with the vehicle mine is one of the older vehicles on the fleet the newer one are now fully tracked real time showing spread width, belt speed ,and gate opening ,the new system when up and running with operate the gritter settings from the main control room with satnav showing the route :cool2 all the operators have done is driven their route by the book with correct spreads ,rate of salt etc and it is then logged as a perfect route if for some reason the regular driver is unable to attend and rookie driver to that route can take the vehicle out and follow the sat nav directions while the computer at the main control room ,controls the gritter :notworthy well thats the idea anyway ,but it has some issues at the moment:bash the real time tracking has proved invaluable to the local authority when a dispute has arisen over weather a road has been gritted or not following an accident here are some more pictures sorry for the quality cheers graham
Thanks for the information! I enjoy seeing and hearing about differing types of snow removal equipment from all over the world. Your controls seem to be quite similar to ours. We don't have any type of navigational system yet, but I can see that happening in the future. One of our contractors can track their trucks and I think that they know how much material they are putting on. I don't think they can control the application rate from the base. That last picture looks like a good place to lose a mirror or radio antenna.
Plow trucks: Here are a few more plowing pictures... nothing special. Kind of a blah morning. I-90, driving lane... just getting off shift. OCR...
Still new then. My toothbrush is older than that. Its a nice truck.
Plow trucks: I just happened to catch a couple Wyoming plow trucks at the state line, where we turn around. The turnarounds are staggered... Wyoming turns around in Montana, and vice versa... that way, the distance in between gets plowed. Any way, I took a few pictures of their GPS and sander controls. At night, so they're not first class... in fact, the screen shots are down right poor... I wish our setups were as nice as their's. OCR...
man thats nice...i wish i had a map in the truck with me like that
Plow trucks: A while back, there was some discussion about Autocars... this is one that MDT has, and I drove the other night. I had just gotten of shift, so I took a few pictures... It's not my favorite truck by any means, but it's probably got the biggest hood you'll ever look over... LOL Drivers seat... looking over hood... took 3 pics. to get the whole thing... LOL OCR...
Holy Moly OCR..that is a big hood! lol
The truck... yes, the one with the 15 speed under drive... She's getting to be an awkward old girl... age, I guess... OCR...
Plow trucks: Yup Grader4me... you definitely feel like you're in a real truck... when you're sitting in that seat. It's got a steering wheel about the size of an old time wagon wheel too... ... LOL You can just catch a glimpse of it in the first picture. It does have power steering, though... :cool2 OCR...
Controls Here is a picture of the Plow/Wing/Sander controls in our new trucks.
Plow trucks: Don't touch a thing... I'll be right up!... Very nice... when you get a chance, explain what every thing does. Looks like a 10 speed?? International??... Looks like their logo over on the passenger side dash. Could be wrong on that though. I see your reflective vest is in it's proper place... We have, what looks to be, the same kind... only we wear ours... LOL I know, it's for the passenger... Again, nice truck Grader4me. OCR...
Yes, it's a International "Workstar" 8LL shift. Here is a picture. I will explain how all the contols work a little later.
OMG!!!! That's not.........could it be?????? I think it is.......a JOYSTICK!!!!!!! How will life go on????
Plow trucks: Good one... :lmao OCR...
Hey OCR here is a break down on how the controls work Joystick works in a t cross pattern and its for the wing and plow. Pull back for the front end of the wing to come up. Ahead for the front wing down. Pull to the left for the back end of wing up. To the right back end of wing down. You can bring the back and front up at the same time by cornering or down using the same method. Trigger on the front of the joystick is the rear wing float. Squeeze to activate the float, squeeze again to deactivate it. The four buttons on the joystick: top button is plow up, bottom button is down. Left and right buttons are for a reversible plow. The white push buttons on the console are for box up & down, inter box up & down. Rear wing slide up & down. The box connected to the console and the screen on the post are the dicky john control point sander controls.
Plow trucks: Very nice, Grader4me... :thumbsup I'm a wee bit envious... nothing I can do about it though... LOL You go'na be the first to run off the road and get stuck?... OCR...
Don't get to drive them much anymore. Just when training the new guys. When we first converted to the one person plows we had air over hydraulic controls, similar to your picture. Still have a few kicking around. Now most of our controls are the electric over hydraulic as my picture shows. Have I ever been stuck? Does a bear poop in the woods? lol
Grader4me, how do you like single joystick control? We are all still air over hydraulic where I am. We run Workstar's here now too, but in crappy automatic. We even still have an old western star with straight hydraulic spreader(knob an stick)... You sure can put out material in a hurry with it I'll get pics tomorrow, got a couple I'll post now
Workstar
770G in a flash snow squall
The joystick is more user friendly and they work great..have very little problem with them. We used to have the air over hydraulic but have them all converted now. I see in your picture a control point dickey john..same thing we have..still have quite a few of the older style (ICS 2000) Yes..we used to have the straight hydraulic spreaders as well. Who calibrates your dickey johns? Nice pictures by the way..
The mechanics we have on staff calibrate our spreaders. Thx on the pics.... Found another of my grader
You guys have all u bodys?..ever see the inter dump boxes? I calibrate all the spreaders in my area.
Ya all U bodies for the most part. Some old plows still around other yards with other styles.... Tail ups, side dumps, hoppers. Cool that you do the dicky john's, I would have the slightest clue how to. lol
I cant figure out how to post a thread, with my problem I have a 97 Freightliner, tandem dump truck. L10 Cummins, with a Eaton 9speed automatic tranny. It is not a autoshift (no clutch pedal) It is a ex State DOT truck, has 126,000 miles on it. I have owned the truck for 10 months and never had a problem, until 4 days ago. Driver called and said the tranny temp guage was 225 degrees (normal 190) and the tranny was acting like it was slipping, when you went to take off. It seems like this is a transmission, that my mechanics are not familiar with. It looks like a normal 9 speed Eaton, with a torque convertor, in front of it. It has air operated servos, that shift the Eaton, when the computer tells it too. It is full of fluid (automatic transmission fluid) If anyone has any ideas, please PM with any ideas and or phone numbers, for tech support. Im afraid my mechanic, is going to start changing parts and fix nothing I drove the truck and when you take off, there is a small delay and it goes in gear, then it shutters, when the torque convertor engages. NOTE: the air system is slow to build up, I think the compressor, is going out. The air system has 115 psi, when operating the tranny I plan to get rid of this truck, but I have to get it fixed first any ideas Thanks
Grader4me, I grew up in Memramcook NB, now live in Halifax. I was dissapointed to see yellow plow trucks in NB instead of the old green machines. Nice to see NB is well equipped. The joystick ressembles Suregrip levers that are really popular for logging machines (harvesters).
Hi there Dom..we still have alot of the green beasts on the road..lol. We are converting to yellow..slow but sure..
Here's one of our new plows, not mine but exactly the same... The last 5 years this is what they've been buyin......this year International got under bid buy Mack, but those ones babies won't be here for awhile yet.
I never got a chance to take a picture of one of our new ones. Rear wing post...does it have a slide or are the arms just fixed to one position? Hard to tell by the picture as the exhaust stack is blocking the view. Who makes the plow equipment?
It's a Viking. And no the rear tower isn't a slider(sucks cause we get wicked drifting)but its the higher up's that spec the tenders. The white/yellow Paystar I posted has a rear slide tower. All the red trucks we are getting do have an hydraulic extendable wing, which is nice.....but a rear tower with a slide is WAY BETTER.
Thats the reason I asked about the plows..we have Viking plows (from Ontario..lol) on last years new trucks . They seem to be a good plow. Yeah the rear tower makes it alot better for benching. We only have hydraulic extendable wings on the graders.
Who makes your grader plow equipment? We have Craig, I'm not real impressed by them.... Mainly cause the front tower is a goofy mount(wing to front tower) and it sticks and binds when try'n to lower. It has a rear slide though lol
Craig as well here. Do you grease the front slide really well? I lift the front up as high as it will go and lay the grease to the inside corners of the wing post.
I've been spraying the heck out of it with dry graphite, and it works but only for maybe 2 times out plowing... We use it on our plow trucks and it works well... Do you not find that grease really gets awful thick in the cold?
Naa...walk the grease to it...might as well stick your finger up your butt than put graphite on it.
Well I'll try that........ Next winter front tower is off now
During this time off year we still have a few snow storms. Because its so soft underneath we are having damage to our plows due to the front of the wing catching and the wing coming into the door. We have wing stops installed (just a brace stop extending from the rear wing post to the bottom push arm of the wing). Its designed so that if the front catches the wing push arm will hit the stop instead of the whole thing hitting the door. Not working that great... Simple answer is tighten up on the controls so that the front of the wing is tight or up a couple of inches when plowing intersections or soft shoulders....but..don't need to get into that further..this time of year its best to leave a bit of snow rather than catch the wing. Okay..after that long winded story...anyone here that plows snow...are your wings rigged up with anything to prevent them from catching and slamming into the door? I suggested installing rubber blades on the wings...install the rubber between the 2 steel blades...would make the blade good and thick thus chances of catching would be minimized. Thoughts anyone?
We run a chain on the front of the wing. The chain is attached to the front of the wing, and a chain hook on front tower so you can adjust it that way. I plow only main roads(asphalt) so I run my chain loose most of the winter, so my wing is completely on road surface. All our gravel road plows tighten chain so wing is carried about half to one inch off road surface. We too have had guys smash wings into doors and crush many door mirrors. lol
Are all of your trucks rigged up that way..and did it solve the problem? I think the only problem with that is that they wouldn't take the time to tighten up the chain...
Yep they are all like that, i even welded a chain hook on the Craig tower of grader. For the most part it totally fixed the problem...... Well we still do have the odd part-time rookie that lifts the rear of the wing up 1st, when that happens, but they'll usually only do that once. Lol We set the desired height and then use a cable tie on the chain link to mark it, so then if you want to lower wing to road surface just drop 2 or 3 links. I'll snap a pic tomorrow of the chain setup and post it here so you can see it
Old Western-Star we run on gravels and the odd oil top. Front of wing is hanging off floor just a bit.
My Workstar that only runs on main roads..... For the most part lol You can see chain is slack and wing is on floor, also in the pic you can see bungee cord going from chain to plow harness. Cause the odd time the chain can get caught on wing when try'n to lower it, causing it to not go do all the way.
That is excellent..do you mind if I use your pictures to show our staff? I'll post a couple of pictures I took today of what happens when a wing catches and comes into the door. Just have to get them off my camera..
First picture is the damage. Second picture is the wing stop (don't work). Third picture is a snipped blade..we require all the blades to be cut like this on the front of the wings.
By all means show them! It seems to work well for us. That poor truck in the 1st pic took a beating lol. The 2 wings I showed you have a rubber bumper very similar to the one in your 2nd pic.(ours has way more rubber, dont work either though) I'll get you a pic of that too, I maybe going in to grade tomorrow (just waiting for big boss too call) and if so I'll get pic then otherwise Monday.
Any of your plows have the rubber blades? I sent your pictures to management today and suggested this plus rubber blades on the wings...had a good response back as its costing the department a fortune for doors...lol
Glad too here it has a good response it works well for us, but you still get the odd nimrod that smashes the mirror just from left ing the rear of the wing too fast. Lol. As of now we all run 3 carbide blades, but I got a new set of rubber mount carbide blades (including nose) to try..... Bit late, snows all gone now. There called "polar flex" and it's a 3 piece blade set up when you bolt on 1-way. The actual carbide blades are about 8" to 10" long. I can't wait to try them
He is pic of the wing arm bumper/stop and a pic of the exhaust shield showing how well the bumper/stop works lmao
Lol...yup... works like a treat eh? How come you guys don't have your exhaust stack mounted on the drivers side out of harms way?
Well to be honest I don't know. Lol Even our really old rigs have the pipe on pass side.
Here is a picture of the rubber blades on the wing that I was talking about
Are those carbide blades or is there carbide blocks on the back?
Just 2 regular steel blades with the rubber in between.
Do you find they last? We run carbide wing blades here. Approx 3" X 1 1/4" carbide blocks evenly spaced along the whole length of the wing, and the come from Valley Blades with front corner cut on a 45... Not niped as much as you guys cut though
They last really well...normal winter they don't have to change blades. We have the carbide insert blades here but try to discourage our operators from putting them on the wings. Good for paved shoulders but not so good for the unpaved ones. They bite in really hard....
Ya they can grab that's for sure. When things get soft I tend to carry the rear of my wing a little. We don't have any asphalt shoulders here in my area.......... Well maybe in total .5km lol
Oh yeah....if all the operators would carry the wing when everything was soft (like they are suppose to), then there would be no need to try and come up with devices etc. to prevent the wing from catching...but...well... you know how it goes...lol
Lmao!!!!!! I sure do 10-4
This is my first post, I run either a Frink 10' or Fisher MC 10' depending on how deep it's getting. If it gets real deep then I put the Schmidt blower on. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-wLAAmgVGY
Now thats a good rig..welcome to HEF
Unimog's kick ass!!!! I'd love to have one of those babies for my own. Here's some pics of the polar flex blades I was telling you about "Grader4me". The small rubber mounted blades conform to the road......so I'm told lol we shall see next winter.
Holy smokes! Geeze you guys in Ontario spare no expense..lol. Us poor NB'ers couldn't afford fancy dancy blades like that...lol On edit...Man they should work really good!
http://www.kueperblades.com/products.html Has anyone tried the Kuper carbide or rubber ceramic edges? I'm trying to get a set of carbide Tuca to demo. Chris
Grader4me..... Lol it's a trial set for my plow only for now, we always run regular carbides from Vally Blades. Rlmogs..... I've never seen those before but they look mint, gotta post a result on if you like them or not...... They look pricey
The quote I got was the carbide TUCA edges are $199./foot and the GK5 Rubber / Carbide are $140. foot.
I'm sportin a new rig for the winter. Only think I don't like is the damn automatic tranny I still prefer a 13 speed http://i1250.photobucket.com/albums...A-B6CF-427DCA7B3177-3707-00000717D82AEE43.jpg