Not wanting to steal anything from Trainwreck I figured I would post in my own thread with a few early season photos from plowing snow with the John Deere 772 grader. Trbo 1. Early morning, one of the first days out, not alot of blowing just some good snow so had the new oneway on the front. 2. Done with one stretch, heading down a plowed road to another. 3. Wind, Vee Plow is hooked up and I'm heading into one of our worst spots in the township. 4. Working into the drifted roadway. Had to keep going back and forth and "heaving" the snow up to bust a path through. Next day was able to spend some time and get the road fully open to the ditches again.
It looks incredibly cold and desolate in your pictures. Makes me shiver just looking at them.
Great pictures Trbo. That's a nice looking one way you got there. Is it a reversible plow?
Says the guy who used to live in Michigan and play in the gas patch :beatsme
Why do you suppose I now live in Arizona Turbo? Once I found out that I didn't have to put up with ice and snow, I decided that coping with bad roads, bone numbing cold, and morons that hadn't a clue how to drive in the winter just wasn't worth staying in the state anymore, though it did take me a while. Michigan is great in the summertime, all two weeks of it!........
Lol..well said...I'm heading south :drinkup
Those days the temps fell to right around zero F. Windchills were about -25 to -30. We have a good mixture of hills and valley's in the area, however the places that are wide open from farm fields really gets the wind blowing. Makes for some long days just looking at nothing but blowing snow, but also pays pretty good as well. G4M, the one way works very nice, have a slide on mount for it that hooks up the same as the Vee. It has the hyd's. for connecting to a truck if we so choose however we don't have the hyd's on the grader, so just chain it to one side. Works pretty well, and kinda nice that it doesn't rotate, I don't have to worry bout cleaning intersections with it. Thanks for the comments. Trbo
great pictures
Do you run a wing on the grader??
Morning nedly05, in the third picture it looks like the bank is benched with the wing. Looks to me like he is getting set to make another pass to shove it back. Could be wrong though..
Actually that was the road i just busted through the one day to make it open, was way tooo much snow to push with both the vee and the wing so I just veed it and got it open. Came back through and spent about 45 mins on kicking everything back the next day and shelfed it as well. Knock on wood only issue I have had this winter so far was I had the pin that holds the front of the wing sheer the bolt on the bottom and pin slid up and I bent it Honestly don't know how I was able to bend it but it did. Got it back to the shop and made a new one, back going in less than an hour. Trbo
pics Great pics EZ!!! Where are you located??? Looks like some of my roads when we get a wind. Worst conditions I have to ram the plow in until I start spinning, then back out and get a run at it again. Worst, worst conditions I'll push a plow full then turn out to pile it on the shoulder, back up and hit it again. Sometimes I have to stop because of snow dust coming over the plow so bad I can't see where I'm going. Pretty amazing what a grader will push. After pushing myself backwards out of a drift a couple times with the moldboard I learned to hit the biggest ones going uphill if possible.
Sometimes it doesn't take much to bend them. I've bent them, broke them, and lost them throughout the years You're right ovrszd, if possible that's the best way. Working drifts comes down to technique..There is an easy way and a hard way. I was lucky as in my youth I was fortunate enough to be a wing man on a plow with a operator that was a master at this (no kidding). He taught me a lot, not only of working drifts but with plowing in general. He taught me to be very fussy..never leave a snowball out of place..if you do back up and get it! lol
Trbo, Great photos. Looks like some of my roads. I'm pounding the snow with a 772CH. Falls V-blade with a Viking wing. I have a "couple" (ha ha more like lots of), roads out in the open like that too. When I can and have time,I like to take the snow to the "down wind" side to keep the drifts from getting too high.
Great Pic's Turbo, keep them coming! Isn't 6 wheel drive the best thing since sliced bread! Do you run with chains on? Or just keep them handy just in case? Some of the operators are using the Sno Plus radial tires and they claim that they work just about as good as chains. I know they do work well. Nothing like being out in a 6 wheel drive in a blizzard!!
Great pic's looks like iowa at times, our policy is to windrow the snow on the east and south shoulders of the road as long as it's possible for two reasons snow blowing back in and to keep what rock we can. large drifts we blow open then come back later to widen out, I'd like to here some other snow policy's just to here how its done in other parts of the world. THANKS, GREAT FORUM
I take the snow as far back as I can get it on both sides of the road on the first pass. Grass line to grass line,that helps with any run-off with melting. As for drifts (and I get some dandys),I use a 3-4 pass "rule" per side on the first round. That's so (hopefully) the road won't drift in quite so quick behind me if the wind is blowing and I don't spend too much time in one spot (I have 70 miles of road to take care of). After 25 years on the same roads,I know where my "normal" drifts are going to be,so (when safe enough) I'll cut accross on the "wrong" side and carry as much of the drift to the down wind side,then back up and shove it all the way off the "right" side of the road and into the ditch and continue on. That's running a 16' moldboard and a 12' wingblade on the ground at the same time (my Deere has PLENTY of power for doing that) and in 6th & 7th gear the snow will usually make or clear the fence line accross the ditch. I hate taking the V-blade unless I really need it. Last winter(07-08) I never took it off. Kept all my roads open to two way traffic,but one more snow would have made that another story. Short on V-blading. I tuck the belly blade up,drop the V,set the wingblade to take as much off the top of the drift as I can. Punch through the drift,back up and re-pete until I know about where the grass line should be. Then clean up with the belly blade and wing. In an average "cold" snow, with 6" up to 18",I can have all my roads open to two way traffic in one and a half days. Wet heavy snow a bit longer. Blowing and drifting ...I'll be there when you see me coming. But I'm on the way.
Interesting reading I enjoy reading about snow plowing, being from florida I guess thats all I can do is read about it. I was just reading the spec sheet on the new 772G and in 7th gear its 245 H.P. Bet you could really make some snow fly with that.
G Model, Actually my old CH model still does a great job for it's age (Deere kicked my HP up to 215-220 years ago. I'm pre series II). I have one road about a half mile long,if the snow isn't hard packed (blown in from the wind) I can root through 4'-5' feet of snow with the V (Falls) in 5th and 6th fairly easy. My AWD is only good to 5th,so I go in hard in 6th-7th. If/when it starts getting "bucky",I'll shut off the AWD (to keep my HP up) and drop to 5th. That still has enough umph to keep the snow up and rolling off the V. If that gets to bucky,I'll hit the AWD back on and drop to 4th (5th AWD is a power robber and sucks). If the snow isn't too hard packed,my little monster will walk right through it. Depending on time. If there's a lull in the storms,I'll take a loader out to my problem areas and push the snow up and out of the ditch over the fence and into the field. I also get along with 99% of the farmers here and they'll let me in their field once the ground is froze and I'll make a snow fence out of windrowed snow that can REALLY help too. What I'd like to see for snow plowing on the motorgraders. Is around 3-5 tons of add on ballast along with 5-600 HP. When we get "good" snows around here,it takes power and brute force to move it up and out. If we (motorgraders) can't pound it open,then they'll bring in a loader to help.
Mad Max, As well as adding horsepower they have added quite a bit of weight also, I dont know how your machine is equipped but i'm pretty sure a 772G equipped the same way would be a good bit heavier. I just finished up some demo's with a 670G and a couple of the guys were 770CII operators that loved the extra weight and power. The 670G in fourth gear has 30 more horsepower than the 770's they were running and even more power than the 140H's that some of the others were running. The 670G with the 9.0L engine is a lot bigger machine than it used to be. This one is equipped with 17.5 bias tires, front counterweight, rear counterweight, 14' blade, and mid mount scarifier. With that front frame change, 17.5 tires and all that counterweight it looked like a beast.
Thanks for the pictures. I grew up in Bucks County, Pa when it was farms and did lots of snow plowing for the State and private this just bring back lots of memories. What do they do with hours of service now days? We would be on the clock for days?
The 772 is not a bad machine for the snow, but I found the 872D is a little heavier. I run a 872 with snow radials in the winter and stinger tips. You rarely need chains but you had better be quick on the shifter.
Here is a bit of snow.
That snow gets any deeper and you will have to raise up the light bars just so you can see over the top of the pile in front of you.:drinkup
snow plowing Great series of pix on this thread. I'd hate to be out in it, but the photos really show what these fellows and machines go through every winter.
Winter 09 plowing started on a big note with 15 inches of snow, followed by lots of wind and cold temps. Started out at 3AM with the one way on but once the winds picked up I got back to the shop and got the Vee on, started busting plugged roads open. Yesterday temps were about -5F at 4AM with a good windchill....running a "cool cab" was not hard to do. Once the sun came up the cab was like an oven and didn' t have to worry about keeping the windows cleaned. Spent all day hitting bad spots, getting snow pushed back and had two spots to reopen. Trbo few pics
Wow! great pictures! thanks for sharing. Man, you have some snow there! Some guys have all the fun! Loved plowing with a vee... On edit..must keep you really busy keeping that section of road open. I remember one place that I had drifted full continually. We got permission from the land owner to plow breakers (that's what I call them anyway) in his field to catch the drifting snow. I would plow 4 or 5 big windrows of snow about 20 feet apart or so, and the blowing snow would fill in these spaces before coming out on the road. Worked good.
Go up in the County here in Maine and its like that in the potato fields that run beside the road. Seems to work ok, until those voids fill with snow. Then its in the road.
Welcome to HEF perley03! Yup..but it does buy you a little time...
Looks like fun,but that from this side of the pond where we get snow once in thirty years.
In the old days we used to put up "snow fence" in the fall and take it down again in the spring.It was always a few days work for the kid every year .Ron G
My intro to snow plowing was cleaning up the broken fences in South Park Colorado in 1971. Hired for the summer season our job to rebuild fence lines that the dozer had taken out pushing snow away from the right-away so the graders could continue their job. After the fences were rebuilt, I was put on the crew repairing the ensuing flood damage where they put me in a single axle dump truck moving fill. From there I found my way into a 922 loader keeping those trucks moving. I liked keeping those trucks moving. The following year I was hired back as a loader operator and given a new Case. Wasn't long before I got to go grading with the big boys in a Austin-Western. Liked the work so much I decided to lay out of school for awhile and got introduced to plowing snow at eight thousand feet. Beautiful. Of course being the kid I never had to worry about fixing my mess. Stuck, no problem. Worst offence was bouncing the grader pulling the ditch and busting the twenty or so rivets holding the circle gear in the differential. I'd have killed me if it was my grader. The skills I learned then continued to served me well. Dozers, backhoes, air compressors, road building, rock drills, blasting and mining. You would think I'd have made it my full time occupation. Instead I opted out to become a high school science teacher to kids with troubles so I could find time and resources to make this my advocation. So here's to more snow and the spring clean-up for our youngsters. They gotta learn to run a shovel first.
Thanks G4M, biggest issue we really have this storm was that the ground hadn't really froze up yet, really soft shoulders so best thing to do was leave the wing just up off, leaving "white shoulders". I have some places where we can do that, make plow breakers, but will wait til the ground freezes up. One thing thta also works is if the farmer will leave some corn rows up, the state will pay them for what the rate is per bushel and in the spring they can harvest it or just plow it back under. This year was a good year to try it in some places as we had a major hail storm that cut a good swath through the county and there were plenty of fields that were not much good, so nice way to test it out. Trbo