I would like to know what the consensus is on what is best to build roads. I know a dozer with a tilt blade is the preferred option but to me a crawler loader, especially one with a four in one bucket is far more versatile and inevitably quicker. The only proviso is to build a level start, but once you are away you can, dig, pick up and dump dirt where it is needed, pull out stumps, push over and shift trees and back blade. In steep forested country a crawler loader seems to be a better option (if you only have one) to me.
I built roads in the bush but was only on the finish grade crew running spread cat. I did this with D3, D5H , D6C,D7F's and a little with a JD 550. Never built sub grade, this was done with excavators, which to me are the best road building machines and the can even spread finish grade. I used the cats a lot and one day we were building a road along a powerline and no cat was available so I jumped on the 950 wheel loader and started to push. I could push and lift and dump in front and keep doing this with little material spilling out the sides.Very efficient, only had to back out of the way for the trucks, where a cat I would have the trucks dump behind me and then crawl over the pile and push. Another plus to the loader was I could grab a 1/2 bucket every once in a while a drive back and forth over what was spread and compact better then a dozer. Worked great and this got me thinking that a track loader would be the best of both worlds but they are not popular here at all.
Yair . . . I can see a track loader would be handy in some situations but for clearing and benching road in steep country I doubt much is going to out produce a dozer with a good ballzy operator and angle/tilt blade . . . on the flat it would be see yah later. Cheers.
I built a few roads around my property with a tractor and front end loader before I got my 973 crawler, it was pretty heavy on the clutch, but you are right about the compaction, a wheeled loader, because you are doing so many forward and reverse movement and trailing your front wheels on the edge going back it pushes it down better than anything. I just don't understand why tracked loaders are no popular road builders.
Scrub Puller, I agree that a dozer would push faster but there are many situations , like working around a gully were a loader can deliver fill at five tons at a time and can pick up and place objects far more acurately. Pushing over large trees is far easier in a loader and the four in one can pick up the tree by the but and take the whole thing out for milling rather than have it pushed to the side and buried by a dozer. I know its horses for courses, but if you can only afford one I think the loader has it.
Yair . . . Gotcha sillaw . As a said I can see where you are coming from and I agree a track-loader could be worth consideration as a multi purpose machine. For putting fence line and road around a typical station (mountain coastal or western) it wouldn't stack up against an angle blade dozer of the same weight and HP. Of course I mean a properly equipped dozer with a decent canopy, over the blade tree spear and rippers. Years ago you wouldn't get a job on the stations unless you had an angle blade . . . straight bull blades were considered to be an aberration, okay on pulling tractors but as a general contracting machine why would you want something hanging off the front that was only good for pushing dirt? Nope for pushing fence line, fire track and station roads I think the angle blade is probably the best option. Other folks obviously will have different ideas and of course, what works for you is the way to go. Cheers.
Worked a lot of construction sites around here as a mechanic, guys on the machines were the tool, the machine was just their way of becoming the tool. Took a real cat skinner to drive benches on rock cuts with a loader, first was explosives followed by excavators then dozer would work to set the bench, loader operator would finesse the bench then the final grade would be worked with smaller machines. All these machines have a purpose be it pusher, ditcher, angle or set blade, loader, just have to pick what you can get most use of then get as good with it as possible. Have seen a guy with D6C do as much grade work as a road grader and not leave so much as a dirt clod when done, almost as fast too. Know a gent with a 963, can outwork many on dozers and still load out or reposition spoil as needed, was his influence that I finally bought a loader instead of a dozer and not been unhappy as to the choice on style yet.