Hey guys, I have a question for the group. I operate a John Deere 620 GP motor greater and have recently been told that we are no longer allowed to ride our motor grader from job site to job site. I work for the City of Colorado Springs Parks and Recreation department and I primarily work within The city limits and the vast majority of work I do is within a 2 to 3 mile radius the year on the John Deere’s of 2024. It is not a 6 Wheel Dr. model just a tandem drive. I would love to hear your response on this thanks
SO, a machine, designed to push dirt for long distances, can't be roaded anymore!?? Makes perfect sense Sound like you guys elect some pretty intelligent government officials there.
No problem. Do your job as instructed. 6 months of lowboy charges and 200% reduction in productivity should light up some beancounter's screens.
Road a grader 2-3 miles.? Provided your tyre pressures are kept up to spec I would say there is no reason on earth why not. Do you have an operation manual for the machine.? What does it say.? Attached is from the O&M Manual for a Cat 160M tandem-drive grader which is a similar size & power to your 620GP.
Is this the new city policy or your supervisor’s idea?
So the miles of roads that are plowed every winter are just abusing the machine ?
In the winter plowing snow with a wing the graders here run hundreds of miles at nearly top speed to blast the snow off the road. A grader is one piece of equipment that is built for travelling at high speed . The grader is basically direct drive through a power shift trans. No converter causing heat. A wheel loader on the other hand seems to not like 4th gear travel for any great distance. Oil heats up pretty quick because the converter is constantly slipping.
Good grief someone has a warped way of thunkin
Are they worried about wear and tear on the machine or the liability of having it on public roads?
Good point. Could it have something to do with their insurance policy? Are there different laws on the books for liability while plowing snow compared to roading it down the HWY? No clue - just a thought.
My 2011 Volvo has around 5200 hours and almost 30,000 miles on it. If there is a float around, they will move it for me, but most times I drive it. I do think a grader that travels on the road should have fenders though. Mine has a winter tires on it year round, and really throws rocks
Based on his other posts, I'm maybe guessing the powers that be are concerned about an accident due to the touchy steering.....
My guess is the City got complaints of the machines holding up traffic during mobilization. Given its the City government, they could care less about productivity. So the easiest way for the Public Works manager to shut up the mayor's office is to transport them on a low boy. Everyone here knows how attaching and detaching can be a real pain in the City as well and snarl traffic, but whatever. I am sure during snow removal that mobilization is easily explained. As a grader driver, go with it. I am sure you get paid by the hour anyway. Complaining about it isn't going to change anything nor worth your job.
Here in Texas, some of the counties are really big. The graders often have a trailer hitch rigged and the operator pulls a county pickup with him. Leaves the grader whenever he finishes he day, and drives truck home. I see graders pulling pickups a lot. Your deal may be insurance, or publicity related.
we have an owner operator from the ararat area [victoria] circummnavigated australia in a 12 h just because he wanted to do it
I used to work for the regional government (kind of like a county I think for our US members). We had several machines( hoes, diggers, loaders, and cranes, no grader that I recall) and all had license plates and were part of the fleet insurance. Our machines could be on the roads depending upon what the job was. I would guess the main reason is that was the cheapest way to get insurance.
Only a guess, but a city the size of Colorado Springs is most likely self insured. Doesn't mean that liability isn't a consideration. I am sure the poster of the thread, would know if they have had accidents that would have contributed to the decision.
If the grader has brake lights and turn singles it should be fine to road it. That's why the lights are on it. Having to float it for every job makes no sense at all and just wastes tax payer dollars.
The issue would be the speed and size holding up traffic (if that is what the issue is). It certainly is a waste of taxpayer money having to mob it around.
Hey, so no accident with motor graders. I don’t understand the reason myself as many of the comments stated above is very normal for order graders to travel from place to place our fleet procurement coordinator, service manager at John Deere and mobilization for equipment coordinator all said that the City low boys their equipment. But when I reached out to our mobilization equipment coordinator, he said it would be a logistic nightmare for them as they have limited number of lowboys to help with this. Personally, I think people are getting involved with this that shouldn’t be, but from what our mobilization coordinator says he’s going to speak with Fleet and see if they can make an arrangement. The park and rec is the exception.
I agree with your comments as many has stated above a very common factor. I don’t know why the City up in arms about it as I said in a comment below some people need to stick their nose and things that shouldn’t, but we shall see.
Most of the areas that I work on within 3 miles and there is one open space that’s probably 10 miles away that I would say could justify using a lowboy but El Paso County Road their boat graders all over the place and it wasn’t even a second thought
Yeah, I think they’re overthinking it too much.. I like many comments that before streets here in Colorado Springs, they be charged with every time that we have to lowboy and it interferes with what they do. I’m assuming they will relent eventually, but we shall see.
Yeah, we got way too many cheese in charge there nose is out of things have no idea what they’re talking about but sometimes you gotta play their game and to be an issue they give in, but it sucks because I’m gonna have to suffer and deal with it until they do just make for a Car job that it needs to be
Hey, so exactly let them make her all the charges that the street department is going to charge parks and rec and they’ll get wise.
I didn’t look at the manual as of yet I’m gonna do that but my supervisor was just going on what three other people in charge told him to do too many Chiefs, not sure if I stated but I’m a senior heavy equipment operator been operating motor graders for 20+ years and what do I know?
Yes, a combination a mobilization, equipment coordinator, service manager at John Deere and a fleet procurement coordinator combined directions we’re supposed to follow.
Yeah, exactly I worked for a El PasoCounty as a bladeguy and as stated above in any comments put on thousands of miles and all the road that we plowed in the winter and going from place to place no problem there
If the graders were going to clear the snow or fix a washboard road, people would complain if they didn't see them on the road. Graders go about 30 MPH so wouldn't be holding up traffic in a city that much. Backhoes are slower and if they had to be trucked to every job site, a lot of smaller utility businesses wouldn't exist. It all goes back to people being in too much of a hurry. As far graders needing to be hauled the bozos deciding it should pay for it. Then they might realize how assine their thinking is.
When we worked in the Toodoggone, 11 graders worked the 460 km’s of gravel road into camp…I waved to every one of them!!!!
I have a great respect for a good grader man! Not an easy task…
What the hell does the JD service manager have to do with how you mobilize your graders?
The bean counters are passing the buck, plain and simple.
that was my thought, they got a new insurance policy and the agent talked them into that BS.
I used to get wound up about stupidity like this but as I get older the less I care. If I were getting paid to kick my feet up and wait 2 or 3 hours a day for a lowbed I'd just laugh and let them **** away their money.
3 miles? I’d road it.
Never thought twice about taking a grader on the road, almost like they're made to do it lol. What are the odds the dealership is graciously offering their lowboy services to do it too?
I would think a dealer is too busy to be hauling customers machines around unless they're hurting financially.
Well, since he works at John Deere, he knows everything and he’s a service manager, so we’re supposed to go what he says.
Going back to my earlier comment, you can kill off this discussion very quickly by finding the factory instructions relevant to roading the machine in the Operator Manual. If they are anything similar to the cat ones (and I have no reason to believe why they shouldn't be) Then wave them under the JD Service Manager's nose and tell him to do one..........
Less miles on the trade in as their probably traded after a certain period of time
Maybe or the service manager doesn't like working on them so the less roaded the less chance of a problem.
Grader drama.
Well, I think a grader is going to win 98%+ of the time a game of chicken on the road. A few years ago a grader driver clearing snow clipped a car with the blade when going to another location. It was caught on somebodies security camera. Grader never stopped but backed up and then carried on. My guess is the driver was falling or half asleep. Never heard what happened. They were trying to figure out what grader and who the contractor was. Shouldn't be that hard. I would think the graders all have assigned routes to clear.
Being a cynic, I wonder if someone wants to make the city machine too expensive. The loss of productivity combined with the new transportation cost may be used to justify contracting out the work to someone’s brother-in-law. Honestly, i‘ve never seen that done before.
Oh, and I almost forgot. If the JD Service Manager jibs at what is in the manual tell him to provide a letter from JD at Corporate level that backs up his position........
Being just a tad bit of a cynic myself-----that would be quite a plan for some to hatch. But given the level of dishonesty in all forms of human behavior I suppose it is possible. * It takes a very petty individual to come up with such a plan, I would tend to believe it was dreamed by a safety/HR drone, because they got stuck behind a grader on their way to Starbucks for a iced mocha instant gratification moment.
I haven’t looked yet and I will. What did it say?
If you go back to Post #4 on Page 1 then I uploaded a file which is an extract from a Cat operators manual with the recommendations for roading a similar size & weight of grader to your JD machine. What I was suggesting is to look in your operator manual and find the equivalent recommendations from JD.
Every place is different, but here in New Brunswick I have to have a safety inspection every 2 years on my halfton. Heavy trucks are once a year. I plowed snow in an old Cat grader with no brakes, brake lights or signals. All equipment, even farm machinery has to be licensed, and insured if it is on the road, but nothing is ever checked as far a safety
My graders cover 20 Highway miles of road time each way to cover the secondary road contracts that I maintain. If I had to “lowboy” my machine I would never get my “24 hours” worth of work done in a week. I think it’s it’s pretty asinine for someone to say it’s hard on the machine. That’s what it was made to do. I have two machines in my fleet with close to 20k hours, the rest are about 10k and there’s not one adverse effect from the road time except they get salty.