What do you experienced operators do when you plow snow past driveways located along rural gravel roads? The operators around here usually do one of two things. Either they keep the blade and wing down and block the driveways with snow or they lift the blade and leave fifty feet or so of soft snow on the road as they go past the driveways. OK, eventually the snow will melt and maybe it's not a big deal. But why not do it right? I'm sure that a number of the better operators on this forum know how to do this properly. And I'm hoping that someone will explain the correct way to handle this and that our grader operators will see the thread. Maybe no one ever taught them.
there's a photo on the forum of a blade with a gate on the blade,,,, that you shut as you go by the drive... here they plow them shut.... you call....you get a so what.. but if you push it back into the street , they will give you a ticket.... it think it may be a speed issue and the fact that some driveways may not be clearly marked... I haven't done many roads... just the ones in Plants where everything is plowed to the middle and picked up by loaders. the roads in the plants that have driveways I just circle the blade to carry the snow if we are plowing to the curbline
Our policy is to windrow snow to the south and east sides of the roads, I circle my blade striaght just before I get to the driveway and carry the snow past the drive then go back to normal, you'll have to slide the blade in the oposite direction or out into the other lane so watch for traffic, it will spill a little snow out but most time not enough to matter. If we leave alot of snow in the drive we will back in and clean it out if time allows for it, also if there is multiple drives for one property the house drive is the only one I do. Hope this helps
In Minnesota we are usually out before the guys with pickups plow the private drives, but in any case we leave the wing down at all times. The state, county, and township all have the same policy. The problem with lifting the wing and feathering the snow by driveways in soon you get a compacted base that maybe several inches deep at the driveway, and then the thaw comes and you really have a mess. Just an evil of snow. In early winter people are happy to see the plow operator and wave to you, by early spring when they see you usually get " the gesture".
In our twonship I'd be happy if the one driver(and I use the term loosely) only plowed the drive full, 3-4 times a season he''ll get your mailbox, twice in one day is his best effort Got my dads 4 times last season, my dad was supervisor for 54 yrs. Last time I was out there fixin it he drove by didn't even look at me. Off topic & rantin, sorry. :drinkup Bob aka ZZ
This best describes my methods. I have 50 miles of gravel roads, sparsely populated, with more pasture/field gateways than house drives. If it's a bad snow I punch the road open on the first day. Then go back and clean up driveways/gateways after that. I clean around mailboxes too. In 21 years I've only hit one. I open gates to cattle pastures, hay piles and/or anything else the farmer uses daily. My taxpayers are spoiled...... But when thanked I always say the same thing, "You pay taxes don't you?? Then you own a piece of this grader and I work for you". I get thank you cards in the mail and ocassionally a gift certificate to local eateries. Nothing wrong with being nice if you got the time. Nice CJ Swampdog, them Boggers rub much???
Naw, clearance is good. They sure do throw the mud though - it's best to keep one's head tucked in when they start diggin'.: If our municipality sent the grader back on a second day to clean things up, we'd be buying the operators boxes of chocolates or maybe even liquid refreshments!
Not a better mud tire made than the Bogger!!! Not even Claws. I threw in a snow picture so we could stay on topic!!
Good idea - to stay on topic that is. That CJ was a US military unit that somehow found its way onto a junk pile out in the Canadian bush, without wheels, and missing numerous other parts. After a new suspension system, lockers front and back, and countless other parts, it lives again. Someone should start a Jeep thread under one of the off-topic areas of the board! It looks as if you have snow in Missouri too. Maybe down there it will melt soon. Up here, it will be on the ground until April, so we have no choice but to plow it.
If you lift the blade/wing for every driveway then you're going to have a mess. People don't realize that the further the banks are pushed back (even their driveways) the safer it is for them. When exiting their driveways they can see up and down the road. We have on occassion when the main roads became narrow due to alot of heavy snow, had a loader follow along cleaning out the driveways as we pushed the banks back. I have also when pushing back banks steered into driveways (that were already cleaned out) dumping the snow off to the right opposed to filling the driveway. As a general rule though we don't lift for driveways, steer out, clean them out etc. we plug them full. We are responsible for clearing the road and they are responsible for clearing their driveways. Mailboxs? Oh yeah..I've hit a few..
Yep, I agree. My first priority is to open the public roadway. Then if I have time come back and clean driveways. As I mentioned earlier, I think my taxpayers are spoiled. And that's something I've created. Now they expect their drives and gateways cleared. And a select two or three will call if I don't come back by in a day or two. I won't crank the grader and drive to a specific driveway for that purpose alone. But if I'm running and in the area I'll clean them. My wife protects me. The calls come to the house phone. She won't give them my cell phone number. Even if I'm home she screens the calls rather than wake me if I'm sleeping. Gotta love a woman like that!!!
In North York, Toronto. They have the wingman (second grader) with a little 4 ft box ended blade that the operator drops at all the driveways. Since they commence operations before snow gets to deep it seems to work ok, but when it gets to deep they give it up and have to run a cleanup operation afterwards just for driveways.
Hey milling drum..come up my way and I'll show ya how to plug a driveway Grader4me style..no mercy...lol Some of the towns nearby have the boxed wing so they don't fill the driveways. When I first started plowing back in the 70"s we used to plow a few driveways after a storm after all the roads were cleaned up. Just senior citizens that had the long driveways though. We don't do that now. I remember the first time I drove a plow truck (with a wingman) I had to plow this driveway. It was a long horseshoe shaped driveway. Spring of the year and it was soft. Well sir..let me tell you..when I was finished it was ready for potato seed...The old folks really didn't see who it was driving so they blamed it on the regular driver..lol. I suppose they never dreamed a 18 year old would be driving a snow plow.. Good experience though..learned from my mistakes. I find it interesting that in some areas around the country you guys clean out the driveways after the storms.
hi grader4me It sure is different where I work. We can't leave even an inch of snow in the lane way or we get a call to go back and clean it up. I usually take the snow to the other side of the road, but this takes time.We have a bylaw about pushing snow from a laneway onto the road but people still do it then we end up cleaning up the mess.
im with G4me, when I worked in Manitoba for the dept of Highways, it was get the snow off the road. we didnt do drive ways, or lanes. there was only two sections of the 150 kms of road that I looked after that you would have to take a few extra minutes to move it all to the south, or the east side of the road, but there was no other place to push it, the road was cut through a hill and there was no shoulder to place it. When someone pushed the from there driveway, across the road, ( which is a no no) they would go and hand them a peice of paper that had the section from the highway and traffic act stating that they could be charged for doing that. I was told that we had only a couple of days to open the roads after a storm, so you didnt have time to clean it. all the plowing was done i the rural enviroment anyways, and every one has a snowblower, or a tractor loader, so I didnt really feal all that bad. I lived in the city and I never got my lane done.
Like Grandpa i am from NE Minnesota (near Duluth) as well. All the counties and townships here leave the wings down too. The one thing i have tried to tell our sign dept is to set the mailboxes on the far side of the driveways so you still have some speed when you go past the driveway to leave less of a windrow. Its the ones that have the mailboxes before the driveway that get the bigger windrow.
Welcome to HEF mg140h! You live near grandpa? My heart goes out to ya buddy... Staying somewhat near the topic at hand...how many of you guys that work for countys etc. clean out Church yards, Schools etc after a storm? We used to plow out the Schools, Churchs and Recreation Centres. We stopped with the recreation centres years ago. The odd time we will make a pass around a School if needed, but that is quite rare now. We used to plow the Church yards until a couple of years ago.
Two years ago we got frequent snowfall. I pushed 15 times that winter. A middle aged couple bought a farm in my township. They were from Minnesota. They have two drives, one to the house, one to the horse barn. The first big snow their drives both drifted full and they were snowed in. I went by their house the first time V-plowing at sunset. I came back by just before dawn and I cleaned out both their drives. Before I got the second one done I caught a glimpse of something off to the side with my lights. It was the woman running across the yard waving at me. I stopped and opened the door, I thought there was an emergency of some kind. Before I could get out of the cab she was on the steps. She said we really appreciate you cleaning our drives but we don't want you to get in trouble. I said what do you mean?? She said well in Minnesota they would fire an operator that cleaned personal drives and we don't want to cause you to get fired. I laughed outloud at the poor woman. She was dead serious but I couldn't help but laugh. I said don't worry, we clean out drives all the time here. I won't be in trouble. I laughed about that the rest of the day. I've cleaned their drives several times since, sometimes in the middle of the night. Every time she makes a point of coming outside and waving at me in thanks. I want to also add, in my case I don't have an overload of drives to worry about so it's not that much work to clean them out. In fifty miles of roads I have 47 house drives. Of those maybe fifteen drift. If I ran in a district that had dozens of drives I can understand not cleaning them.
When I plowed - I would push as far back as possible when the storm started winding down - then on last pass I would pull out slightly before driveway then swerve in - -cut down on the amount you put in driveway once you get the knack of it with a slight variance you can really fill in some jerks driveway In the past our town would clean the end of driveways if they pushed the bankings back after storm was over ( next day or longer )
Ill agree with OneWelder sometimes it depends on the owners atitude whether they get a little less or a little extra. I had one lady who always shovled her drive every time I went up by.She would be just finishing when I came back by and I would fill the drive again.
When I drove snowplow for the highways in the Squamish/whistler/Pemberton area we didn't stop or lift the plows unless somebody was going to get hurt or property damage... In Squamish there's a Ford dealer right beside and below the highway and they always park about 20 or so new cars right up on the bank below the highway. Well one day during a heavy snowstorm somebody (not me, this was before I started there) forgot to slow down and those 20 new cars looked not-so-new... That was a pricy one! Lots of times people would shovel the contents of their driveway right into the road only to have us plow it all back in. The looks and gestures we would get were very predictable. The grader operator that does our rural road will take the time to plow past our driveway, stop, back into our driveway and carry on. There's only about 5 driveways in 3 miles so it's no big deal for him to do. But when you have a driveway every 50 or so feet it's a whole different ball of wax.
Strange how different it is region to region... UNlike North York, Toronto, another area of Toronto which actually borders North York called Scarborough have NO such wingman. All the Scarborough graders work alone. Now the big difference in the two cities is the tax base, North York is a rich area where Scarborough is more...lowly. Pay rates weren't much different but the finish product sure as hell was. I eventually wound up working for the contractor that had the Metro Toronto east end contracts and plowed as the lead grader with two graders behind me on a mostly three lane road. We NEVER cleaned a driveway, (mostly plaza's but there were a few house's too) If there was really deep windrows at major intersections we would sometimes try to clear a lane or two for the crossing traffic. Other than that the rules were keep going and do NOT stop. On wingback would be about the only time we could open a driveway for a house.
Thank you Grader4me. I am not sure where Grandpa is but its sounds like we are somewhere round the same area. Our county is set up that we do some driveways if you are signed up for it. Some we do everytime and some when they call, but they are supposed to be signed up. We dont do any large lots that i now of atleast not in my end of the county, but we have a few little lots for the power company but they are signed up.
In Calgary (city) only the main routes are priority. We usually run a 3 grader spread. At intersections or driveways we try to straight blade past and the third grader will pull as much away from the driveway as possible. Residential aren't actually plowed you just roll the blade all the way forward and knock the ruts down, the snow stays in the middle of the road. Reason being? Everyone parks on the street so there is no where to push the snow! Then they complain about the roads not being cleared. The only other option is to windrow the snow on top of their cars and then they would complain about that. People will complain no matter what you do, so just do what it takes to do YOUR job right (that would be getting the snow OFF the roads).
Someone was telling me about that a while back about the streets out there. So, the snow just gets packed down by traffic? As you said I suppose there isn't much you can do about it. Must be quite a mess at times though...
Calgary has a spring thaw about a dozen times each winter. If the Chinook (warm wind off the Pacific) is strong enough, it will melt most of the snow and save lots on snow removal. Speaking as someone who used to live in Calgary and still spends a lot of time there, what I don't like about Calgary weather is that it is just as likely to snow in May as in January.
When I worked for the county(retired) I would plow the gravel road in 7th gear with the wing down. When I came to a driveway I would lift the wing about 2 ft at the driveway, the speed would feather the snow out. When I came to driveway with a mailbox I would just swing out around it, you get the timing pretty close with experience(20 years) so you don't take the box out. When there was a lot of snow and you did block a driveway I did back in, just to the fence line, as we where not allow to do private driveways and clean it out, but with 125 mile of road to plow you could not spend to much time on driveways
Pretty much. The worst is the piles of snow around where people try to park, you end up with an icy street (but at least it's somewhat level) that's about 1.5 lanes wide and then a war zone of lumpy ice half windrowed and carpet bombed that you have to pull over onto every time you meet someone. Parallel parking can be find too as you have to hump your car up over an ice windrow and land it in a hole without running into anything or ripping the bottom of your car off. Same for getting the thing back out.
Thanks for getting back to me...down here people complain all the time when the roads aren't completely bare or the back roads might be a bit icy so on..gee.. let them come out there and drive for awhile.. I suppose the poor old operator takes the grief from the public....and there's not a thing you can do except try to smooth it up..
I live in a ski town. The driveways here are very close together on the mountain so lifting wing is out of the question when plowing. If we were just winging we will lift the wing at driveway unless we have the loader following cleaning up. We only do this when we have a lot of snow so the road doesn't weave in and out at each driveway.
this year im plowing in montreal. when i pass a drive way i dont do anything just keep going there are so many there that if i tryed to pull all the snow i would never finnish. some times if i see a cute women ill pill my circle over bring my blad out and pile it up for them lol just kidding ill stop for anyone if i have time not only the cute ones. but if there is five or six poeple opening there drive way in the same area i wont stop. i did it wonce and everyone expected me to do it for them. anyways with 3 inchs or more we pull out the snowblowers and load the snow away. you wouldnt beleave how big the snow banks get there with 3 inchs. beacuse every plows there snow into the road
In Wsconsin quite a few townships offer drivway plowing. The grader will plow in and turn aorund and plow back out. Puncs aclock at the start and th eend. You get the bill at the end of the year. If you want to go tell the operator how to do his job, it is on your own time.
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I just joined this forum and thought I would add my 2 cents worth! What I do when approaching a driveway depends on the amount of snow that has fallen. If it is a small amount I lift my wing and just turn my blade and take the snow from the drive out on to the road, to be removed when I make the return pass. If the drive is on the other side of the road I will move over to that side before I reach the driveway and pull the snow away from the drive and across the road. I then back up and take whatever windrow is left on the road over the shoulder and carry on. If it is a big dump I will back in and take the snow out of the drive. The county I work for does not do driveways and we are only responsible for the approach up to the property line. This works for me because I hate doing driveways because they are narrow and who knows what is under the snow!!! Cheers Al