Here are some pictures of working in AK, I am proud of my equipment but I guess it belongs in the "old iron" section
A few more
Random ones...
a few more
Last ones for now
It looks like you are about as deep as you can go in a couple pictures. What were you digging that hole for? Might not be new equipment but proabably all paid for and getting the job done. Thanks for sharing! I ran an old 30B cable hoe that one looks like it might be around a 22 size.
Yair . . . alaskaforby4. That's bloody marvelous . . . pure eye candy mate. Have you had any issues with electronics and error codes lately? Cheers.
awesome!
We build roads and pads by mining large holes of gravel and replacing with stumps and organics, works perfectly.
Those are some great old machines, there's no reason to not be proud in something that works hard and is long lived. I'd love to work up in Alaska sometime.
Aside from the BE shovel you look to be running newer stuff than me ! Love the pictures, keep 'em coming!
Still working with frost and its almost July!
great pics, your equipment is a credit to you
We could use some of that frosty stuff to cool us off in the lower states, it wouldn't last long though. Most of the older equipment will out last what they are building now, and can be worked on without having a computer to figure out what is wrong. Thanks for sharing the pictures, I sure enjoy them a lot.
Awesome, is the 490 hydraulic thumb control on the joystick?
No, it is foot control. It was funny when I first got it, I would see what I wanted to do and it almost seemed like there was a lag as the thought process had to go all the way down to my feet! But now its all second nature
Love the TD-18. :scool
All your gear looks tidy and well cared for mate, and is a credit to you. And i,ll bet its all paid for and still moves dirt and makes money for you. Plus theres not too much to go wrong with older gear and can usually be fixed without some expensive dealer technical expert having to come onsite at some exhorbitant price. Cheers from the bottom of the world. Merv
Not mine, but it was used to load my truck! Sure was cool watching this old beast operate
All finished up for the year...Starting to get real cold, now I wish I had spent that extra 100k and got me a sweet enclosed cab w/ a heater!
The ridgeback loved his ride on the dozer. That is a nice lake we built there, unfortunately that is our gravel pit. We had a big 100 year flood this fall, water table came up about 10'. It created quite a bit of work rebuilding the town, good for us not so good for the residents.
I just bought that loader this fall, its older like everything else. But seems to be a pretty solid! First thing my guy did was get her stuck! We had 3/4- in the bucket why we couldnt push it out on its own. Did some logging with the old western star, putting in a ATT tower with Steelhead inc out of WA. Couple of really good operators!
Merry Christmas everyone! We have now moved on to the snowplowing side of things.
Find any gold?
Yes of course! Doesn't everybody in Alaska get gold? haha this was actually a pretty amazing deal, our family has been mining this area on and off since the 60's and have never found anything this big, until we found this! Here is the video from when it happened, it was pretty exciting! http://youtu.be/GEahEldhoo8
Ah, you guys like the old Fords. They are my favorite trucks. We have 2 Broncos a 78 and a 79. 78 F-150, 78 F-250 and 79 F-350 crew cab. Looks like a fun trip except the broken foot. I was looking at the Youtube comments and some asked what do you do if you break a trans? Well, you should take me along. I own a transmission shop. But, sometimes you need parts to fix things. Mark
Yeah, that old truck has been through some hell. They are great old trucks for sure. Tranny problems always make me cringe, it would be nice to have someone along to fix them! I'll give you a call next time we go out
Awesome pics! I've always wanted to go up to Alaska. It looks like you have good gravel everywhere you dig a hole, thats always a plus. Your iron looks great, how do you like your little tractor trailer? I've always wanted to set one up like that. Looks like handy little bugger!
Thanks! Yeah the gravel is about 1'-18" nearly every time all over AK. There are some places that have a lot of loam, but for the majority its good digging as deep as you want to go. This reduces costs and hauling by exponential amounts as typically I will just dig some holes as deep as my little Excavator will go along the edge and bury all the stumps and cover with 5' of dirt to prevent settling. It works out to be a perfect trade, stumps for gravel. As for the trailer, every other customer seems to be a tree hugger of sorts and have these crazy narrow long backwoods driveways and cauldesacs. This tractor trailer set up is awesome for that as I can get through and turned around nearly anywhere. I do wish it was a little longer tho, as I am unable to haul more than one piece at a time due to rear tire clearances. It can get old making 4 round trips to one job. But I guess there is always something else to spend your money on!
cheers mate. Enjoys your pictures and story. very nice piece of that 'yellow' stuff you,ve got in your hand. Not so keen on that other funny white stuff you have tho !!! [never snows where i am ] Cheers from the other end of the globe, and have a safe and merry christmas :drinkup merv
See you over on ********
What do you have the tractor trailer licensed for? What are the specs on the tractor?
Thanks Merv and Merry Christmas to you as well! Not sure what that is, but maybe we will see you there! Its a 20ton trailer, I'm not sure about the truck its all been painted over. The previous owner wrote 80,000 on the door. I've only seen the DOT up here once in the last 3 yrs, and he stopped me! haha, I was in the dumptruck then though
Had to go into Anchorage to get the new undercarriage for the dozer. It was a cold one! The ol' cummins never quite got up to temp.
Did you guys build your own sluice box?
Which one? The little highbanker or the big one. The one we are shoveling into is made by Proline, it works good as a highbanker but not so good as a dredge. The 40 footer was bought by my Grandpa way back in the day I am unsure of the model, every few years new riffles and slick sheet are required because they just get so hammered by boulders. Should just leave this 1000 gal. tank attached, as the ol' 18A sure likes her fuel!
Yeah the little one, been thinking about making a small one to bring with me on vacation.
Yeah it is a handy little unit, it has a little 5hp honda pump that pumps the water into those pvc spray bars and you just shovel into the back there onto some grizzly bars and just rake the big stuff off and hope the little stuff falls through and you turn the bottom yellow!
I really like your set up!
Here is a 100x100 pad we put in this summer
Here is a driveway apron we completed. Almost got it paved when they decided to come in and widen the road ripping out all our work. Oh well
Another small driveway and the welldrillers punching in a new one.
Here is a shallow septic system due to a high watertable. Sewer lines in AK have to be buried at a minimum of 4' or 2' with 2" of insulation
Is that a 18A D9D you,ve got. And a 14A D8 in your pic ? comon don,t be shy, you havnt put up decent pics of those 2 girls yet :drinkup
I love your pics dude, I'm going to go check Alaska out someday, I've always wanted to go there. We haven't seen -30 here in a few years. Thats fine with me too, I don't like it at all when its that cold!
Okay, Ill stir up the albums and see what I can find. This pic here was on the ol' 18A my grandpa bought it nearly new around '56 then slapped some new paint on it in the 80's its my first known pic behind the controls Thanks Nedly, I just got though with your 35 page adventure yesterday. Great pics! I dont enjoy when its that cold either, just keep warmer times on the mind!
This equipment is at our family homesteaded mine, I'll do my best to answer questions.
This old grader is really neat, I have some pictures of my grandpa pulling it with the backhoe and my dad behind the controls, really great to see in action!
We dont have any old excavators besides this old bucyrus. I ran this one for a few days, it was alot of fun, always pushing or pulling or holding a break! Cant sit back and relax in that operators seat, haha. I'm hoping we can get it running again this summer and I'll get some good footage and photos of her in action.
Heres an old le tourneau scraper, never saw this one in action that I recall, kinda small for the stuff we usually do. The other scraper has been used quite a bit, that one links up behind the D9 quite nice.
Nice eye candy!! Thanks for posting pics of your work and machines.
Yeah cheers for the pics, quite a collection. D9D is the first of the series with a single air cleaner; later ones had dual aircleaners. Is that a late IH TD18 with the twin exhaust pipes, or a early TD20 ?? Seems tidy; still run ? And looks like a alliis HD20 hidden in there too. Little LeT model D scoop goes good behind a D4 or HD5 !
It is a TD-18, an old Army dozer, it runs good. The D9 and IH run the best somtimes the old D8-14a cable makes an appearance. I have some video of them in working somewhere around here. I'll have to get them up. The cable blades are a lot of fun to operate. Totally different game then hydraulic.. That little scrape would come in handy, had this job this summer where this guy wanted his hill/mountain taller so he could have a building pad on the top of this pinnacle. We ran the loader up and down the hill for a day or so. it eventually got to muddy. A dozer and scraper would have been nice. If I only had a winch on the 450..... So we made a bigger pad up there by the Stonehenge.... So he could have a better view of this...
It would be neat to see that Bucyrus cable blade in action. I saw a Northwest running once years ago definitely no relaxing for the operator. lol
Well guys and gals ,I can see why you all enjoy Alaska.Gold is nice but good friends will last a life time .I think I would rather play with the heavey equipment and just by strange luck find gold. Post more pictures and video even if its of the wild life.Thanks again here is my videos here in Florida enjoy. http://www.youtube.com/user/Truklodyte
Here is the site for intended shop Clearing off the overburden down to good gravel Dig a big hole, I almost got the boom maxed out when I hit bedrock Calculating how big the hole needs to be in order to have enough gravel and be able to bury everything Everything worked out perfectly!
Intended driveway Starting the dig, first hole I hit about 9' of sand... Not exactly what you want at the base of a big hill you have to drive up. Making progress one hole at a time It is always tricky working on a slope, cleaning your road base down to gravel, piling the debris, digging the hole out of the road prism and not getting yourself trapped. Slow but sure
Finally made it up to the switch back. Clearing the top of hill for house pad.
Digging out basement Finally got the driveway all finished up.
Road looks nice,Maybe someday the wife and I can travel to your area of the states.
Looks like a TD18-182 series, the original horizontal muffler may have rotted away and they went back to twin stacks........there was a fella out of Wetaskiwin AB that started off his business picking up abandoned equipment after the miltary's Alaska highway project......saw a TD18 182 in near perfect condition on this widows yard that had his stickers all over it...... Thats some nice work your doing up there......hope you have a good winter.......
Awesome pictures you got there, my friend..... Many thanks for posting them!! You seem to work in a lovely area.I had a cousine that spent 5 years in Fairbanks.'Went to visit her twice.What a blast i had, hunting for old equipment and finding amazing machines almost everywhere!!!!! Regards. Max.
Alright Merv, I put together a video for ya. We are doing a little mining, pushing some rocks around. My Brother is on the TD-18 and my Dad on the D9, I'm running my little 450. http://youtu.be/pX_SjQxUyys That last set of pictures with the long driveway, I traded this contractor that for the cabin that was built in the video. Turned out nice, always nice to have a warm place to stay many miles from home. Well hope you enjoy. Thanks, it was 45* yesterday and melting what little snow we have Might have to go back to work if this keeps up Thanks! I am right in between Fairbanks and Anchorage. There is plenty of old equipment around here thats for sure!
Nice video & pic's Thanks for posting.
Its not everyday you see a D9 doing snow removal with a scraper!! :idea
Nice pics! Keep them coming!
When I first started my company in 2010 I didnt own equipment except this truck/trailer set up, so it made do as a dump truck for this job hauling stumps and debris. The Doosan was rented. Doing it this way first really makes you appreciate having the right equipment later.
Well, You certainly know how to get it done with what you have to work with. Thanks for the pictures.
We had a flood last fall during hunting season, some of these jacks will try anything once. Out at our mine there are quite a few creeks to cross and there is always one set of hunters that come out every year trying to cross in too high of water to find the "good areas". These guys are lucky to be alive, our neighbor had to take his 330 out to rescue them.
After seeing that creek or river I think I would have chose a different route
Sorry; but that to me is stupidity beyond belief. Trying to go accross a river like that, you deserve to drown.
Cheers for the video mate; some good viewing. Was there sound ? Or was the problem at my end; couldnt hear any sound. Those 2 geardrive dozers bellowing when pushing would have sounded awesome; could see occasional puff of that good black stuff when they 'barked' Working in a creek too. Love it just to upset the 'greenies'. Hope you boys found some gold for your efforts. Thanks and cheers merv :drinkup
Discovered the sound; a kid saved me; oh the embarresment :beatsme Good commentery and sounds guys. TD18 sounded neat. First IH twin stacker ive heard. Pic of a mates 18A D9D with my 15 yr old son drvn it.
another
Thanks for the pics Merv! the 9 looks quite a bit smaller with out the ROPS on it. Still moves its fair share though!
Wonderful Pictures.
Welcome to the forum mp, and thanks!
Towing stuff with the pickups
I love those '79 Fords. I had a '79 Bronco with a 460 and 40" tires. What are the lift laws in AK?
They are great old trucks, The Bronco is a '79 and the F250 is a '76 with a modified grill, Dana 60 front and updated to 79' steering box. would have saved me alot of trouble just finding a late 70's model! But its been a fun build. I'm not sure on the lift laws, I dont pay too much attention to them, don't drive it on blacktop much. Check out this video putting her to the test http://youtu.be/6ZSTcuvHx4E
How's that short gooseneck trailer work? Does it rollback and tilt, tilt with ramps, or you just hang loooong ramps on it?
It has 8' ramps that hang off the back. Sometimes I wish it had a dovetail to make loading easier, but on the up side I can tow it off road without it dragging and hanging up on stuff.
Got a reflection picture with the giant puddle in our yard in January Last year was cold with TONS of snow, this year is warm with rain.. You just never know what your gonna get.
I have a couple. Keep you hands inside the ride at all times
In the winter when things are slow I usually go up to the Oil Fields, either Prudhoe Bay owned by BP or Kuparuk owned by Conoco. I have kept my eyes peeled for Randy Krieg, but have yet to spot him. Anyway when the wind blows it will blow for days and stops all work, most everyone stays in the camps and waits for it to let up. Then the snow removal begins, it usually takes a few days to get everything cleaned up. This was our most recent one
Oh yeah, the guy that owned the pickup in the last pic left his passenger window down 2 inches
Yup, got to let that heat escape when parked in the blazing sun.
Very nice, you all are livin good up there. Looks like the good life. Except for the snow.
I bet the wind packed the snow in nice and tight. Might have to go up there in the winter if i ever want to see snow again. Or rain.
Not a whole lot going on here in the winter time, just alot of snowplowing with the loader..
Cool pics,how does your loader do without chains? Ours is all but worthless.
It is somewhat worthless! Still moves some snow, just takes a little more time.. Next year I plan on siping and possibly studding the tires myself, or if I find some chains Ill get those. I looked at some last summer and they wanted $1300 per tire chain... Thats alot of driveways to make that back.
Got her all polished up ready for the upcoming season. The iphone dosn't really capture the long distance scenery too well. Thats Mt. McKinley in the background
We had a 17" snowfall last week, most likely the last one for the season. We have this driveway that is half a mile long and most of it is all "cut bank" style driveway with no place to push snow. So when we got this last dump I chained up the ol' Powerstroke with the 9'2" Boss V blade and gave it her all. There was quite a bit of snow piling up in front of her! Luckily we should be out of the snowyear and I wont have to do it again. Anyway, here is the video http://youtu.be/a4MjkEvpvlQ
I dont think panorama works too well on here....current project anyway. Hurry up summer!
I made a time-lapse video of the entire job, turned out pretty cool. Check it out http://youtu.be/sHi-pu1yFY4
I think I have seen that Ford PU back around Little Dollar Creek. True or not????
Most definitely, my grandpa homesteaded a large chunk of Dollar Creek. I go out there every chance I get.
Beautiful country. I have a little bit of Litle Dollar Creek. It is so far from home I can only seem to make it there 1 time each summer. I would like get oput there on a sled some winter but the distance is the issue.
looks like and old 505. usually had to throw the clutch and you started the engine.
Its finally summer! got that mess of a clearing touched up. As well as a septic, well and waterline
This old loader was pretty cool. My grandpa actually rented one back in the day, not for long though. Once you run into the pile and get a scoop you back up real close to the dumptruck or area you're dumping and it lifts it up to the tipping point and speeds up on those cams and actually throws it behind you! It guess it wasn't very popular with the truckers as they didn't appreciate 6 ton being hurled to one side of their box. The operator of the cat got a helluva jolt as well. haha It didn't last too long
Now that is just crazy and wayyyyyy over the top (pun intended). I want one!!!! The clearing looks nice. :drinkup
I've seen similar machines work in mines where turn-arounds were few and far between. Some models the operator stood on the side so they could see both the muck pile and the buggy they were loading. Looked dangerous to me, but then that's mining.
We were all hoping that was the last of the snow. I was on a job on the slope and the ice road lasted until the middle of May. Some said that was the longest the road had ever bee useful before it was shut down.
Awesome pictures! It looks like you've done lots of work because of your machine.
A Driveway apron, and the Ridgeback chillin' on his favorite trailer with the excavators.
Awesome pictures your time lapse video is pretty neat to watch as well
Finally slowing down for the year. Have a little more time to post some pics. This was another little driveway apron we installed
Here is a driveway and apron we did this fall. I really wish we would have gotten a before picture. We hauled 600 yrds in and I had to back each load down that driveway. Of course it rained on us the entire time making it a very soupy mess. I did finally get the Detroit Silver working correctly and really tapped into the fuel! I was doing 8 mile round trips using 5 gallons per! Not even 2MPG!! She ran great though and hauled some pretty hefty loads!
Another little driveway. Lots of driveways
Picked up a different trailer so I can haul the Dozer & Roller in one trip. Really helped save some time!
We put in 13 septics this year, up a couple from last year. These are good money makers and not too time consuming once you have the process down. Here in Alaska the State allows us to do a 8hr. course and then we are "certified" to install residential systems without an engineer. Really saves alot of time and money not having to deal with an engineer. Any commercial or house over 5 br still requires one.
Another housepad
Yet another clearing, pad, septic and waterline. We had some really nice weather this summer. Really made for some nice finish work. Love grading dirt, rather than a slurry of mud!
Getting some work out of the ol' Dodge
Yair . . . alaskaforby4 . Doesn't hardly seem right mate, they are bad but not that bad . . . . Some other issues I reckon. Cheers.
Another Driveway apron. I really wanted to buy the little Komatsu PC40 but after running it for a week it had some electrical issues like the panel not working which affected everything from the rabbit mode to the fuel gauge. It had a couple thousand hrs on it and it was a grey market. They were asking 30k for it I offered 23 and they said no-way. Oh well, I need something a little bigger anyway. Sure was handy though. It also didnt have a progressive link thumb which was kind of aggravating, but would have been an easy fix.
I don't know....8 mile round trip is only 4 miles one way. One stop in the middle is only 2 miles each leg, hardly get in high range, 80% of the trip is acceleration, but, we know he didn't have his foot in it hard, enjoying the new performance, cause he just wouldn't want to liberate that volume of greenhouse gases.
There was alot of accelerating going on. Alaskans for global warming, haha. The power of that Detroit is bloody marvelous!
Every once and awhile you have to just take a weekend off and disengage. Here we are going out for a little weekend 4x4
Most of your work out in Talkeetna? In a few of your posts you talked about burying wood from land clearing. How does that not make a sink hole? I know of several properties that have had big sink holes form because of that. My yard included. After filling it in year after year (would sink a ft or so over fall and winter) I dug it all out this summer. Most of it was buried 10-15+ ft down. It sank again this fall, I'm guessing (and hoping) because I filled the hole in with my Bobcat and wasn't able to really compact it well. Otherwise I have no idea what's going on.
That is a big hole for a mini! Yes most all my work is here in Talkeetna, once in awhile I will venture over to Trapper Creek or Caswell but have plenty to keep me going right here. So for burying stumps and what-not, I will place them as tight as I can at the very bottom of the hole. Then Ill fill it up with dirt until I can drive in there with the Dozer. I usually go for about 10-12' of dirt, once you seal out the oxygen it cant decay, so your next issue is settling. I'll drive right down in that hole and fill it in lifts, packing it all the way up. I'll try to run the Excavator in there to pack it as well since it has twice the weight. Then on top I'll usually give it a little mounding unless the materiel was already saturated it will settle once it gets wet. This process seems to work great. Frozen ground is the worst. It doesn't seem to hold, no matter how much you compact is, once it thaws it will sink out of site. If it has to be done, I'll mound it really high and hope for the best. Homeowners tend to like mounds rather than holes! Hope all that work you did that fixes your yard
Tell me about it! It was the biggest APR (rental yard here in Palmer) had available that I could haul on my 12k trailer, also I didn't want to use a big machine and destroy the rest of my yard. I had to track across my front and side yard to there. I used those sheets of OSB near the junk pile under the tracks and it didn't rut the yard up much. The real fun was getting it OUT of the hole. I drove it down on the "ramp" behind it in the last pic. I expected no trouble to be able to push it out with the boom along with tracking. Well, I found out that the machine didn't have quite enough power to do that. I ended up having to dig out more of a ramp and winch it out. I sure hope it will stop the sinking... really am hoping that what it sank this year was just it settling in.
Well I haven't been in a while trying to get a hunt lease set up here in the sunshine state.Guess what may be happening down here ? After 20 odd years or so we will be getting Snowed upon.
Well its that time again, bringing everything through the shop for repairs. Boy, can it get expensive! This roller Ive had for a few years and it runs great but always looked rather unsightly. I thought I would bring it in and touch up a few panels. Then I needed to remove the hydraulic lines to paint underneath them and the seat had to come off then I couldn't get behind the tires very well..... So, I finally relented and realized it wasn't going to be as easy as just "touching up" some areas. After a few days of grinding and painting It came out great! We just rolled it on so it has a little more texture than you would with a gun, but im happy with it. I had the seat re-upholstered and am going to have some decals made.
Excavating comes to a halt for us during the winter months. So we swap over to snow plowing, but that is kind of hit or miss anymore. We didnt get a flake of snow in February! Anyway, I keep enough contracts to keep my guys busy. Mostly all residential and I head up north to the Slope for a few months. That is the Oil Field here in Alaska. I operate a hot oil truck which is basically just a high pressure pump that heats hydrocarbons well beyond their flash point Anyway there is alot of equipment up here that dwarfs the stuff I'm used to so I thought Id get some pictures to share.
It is definitely not the most friendly environments
I'm done complaining!!
Is that the 999 outside the camp at Pt Thomson?? It is a bright and sunny -40 at the moment here
These were all taken in Prudhoe.. BRR! at least the winds not blowing though
But it's a dry cold, right? :falldownlaugh
Well I can't help myself ,I wore shorts to work today. It was cool it was mid +70 degrees out.:notworthy
I especially enjoyed the Prudhoe pics. My grandfather was up there in the early 70s and I have a ton of photos he took of the area. Right down to the arctic foxes that hung around the dorms. If I ever get them scanned Id love to post a bunch for all you guys to see.
I really like the trailer you picked up. Can you list more details about it? Care to estimate what you had to give for it? Thanks for posting all the pics, it looks like you guys do some nice dirt work!
How much trouble do you have getting your equipment and pick up fired up in those crazy cold temps?
Thanks Kent, I paid around 6 grand for it. Had to make the ramps and re-deck it but its been a good trailer so far! Well everything has block/pan/battery and transmission/hydraulic heaters installed on the plug in. During heavy blows where we are unable to get them to a plug we just shut them off then bring out a large indirect fired heater that also has plug ins. Heat them up till they start and away we go. Typicaly though when it just gets really cold we just dont shut anything off.
This week I went out and worked on North Star Island and they have all sorts of expensive ways to get you on and off the island in case of emergency. The Arktos is a amphibious craft that goes about 2 mph in water and not much fast on land. It has a Jet for water and tracks for land. They would not let me crawl in it to check out the inside or the engines. They have 3 total
They had a couple amphibious excavators. They were using the Cat to dig out a Seawater suction line, but the Hitachi had rust all over the rams and looked like it had been a run in year or two, poor ol girl.
How'd the 160 work out? What are the specs on the machine?
Well, I got it delivered the day before I had to come up here and work for two weeks. So I'm just itching to get home and try it out. I have it for a 30 day trial run. So, I'll post some better pics once I actually purchase it and get it cleaned up some. The counter wieght is all scratched off which is a huge pet peeve of mine. Ive had that 490 for 4 years now and it hangs out a mile and have yet to rub any paint off. Anyway, about the machine, its a 160C LC with 3200 hrs it has a standard stick and pads. two buckets, wedge coupler, thumb...... They are asking 82k for it. The Break out force is amazing, I only ran it for about a hour before I had to leave and was pretty impressed with its speed. I wanted two machines to up my productivity but now that I see what one newer machine can do on its own I'm tempted to just sell the 490 and move on.
Here are some scenery pictures of the great white expanse.....Not a whole lot going on up here, might as well drill for oil!
That's a a sweet 160! Are you an ice road trucker up there or an operator?
I cant wait to get home a test it out a little more. I operate a HP pump truck with a 5 million BTU heater to heat diesel up to 180* f and pump it down hole. Here is a picture of the truck and the control panel. One more month then I head back to excavating full time
What are you saying? Are you actually suppose to use those mirrors hanging off the sides and think before you swing? How about all the dents in the bottom of the belly pans on excavators? I mean I can understand them on a D7 Cat but on a 345 Excavator? Not to mention all the steps on the track frames that get torn off. You'd think that the 1 inch thick steel would be strong enough for a step but, NO! they still mangle them.
Had the busiest year yet. Just wrapping up another season this week. We started the year out with a couple water and sewer mainline taps... What a stressful nightmare those are. There is no real definitive plans that show what and where the mainlines run, they were installed in the 80's with no real rhyme or reason. We did another one mid-summer, dug across the street only to find they didn't run a sewer main up that rd! They ran the water the whole way but stopped the sewer about 150' short of the intersection, depriving two lots of sewer service. Had to open up another street in order to get them hooked up.. this wouldn't be so bad if there wasn't so much water! Typically early spring is a good time to tackle these as the watertable is usually pretty low. not this year. It was at about 5' and the mains are at 10-11' deep. The gravel here is so porous that it just never seems to stop flooding in. We had 4 pumps running wide open and we were able to keep up with it, but then one would sputter or loose prime and it was flooding back in, losing ground.. and like I say trying to find these things with the water pouring in is a joke we knew they were greater than 10' apart but thats about all we had to go on. The water main is pressurized with no available shut-offs due to previous floods filling the standpipes with silt, so finding it with out damaging it adds to the stressfullness as well, luckily it is 8" Ductile iron which is pretty tough. The Tap machine is the boroughs old manual jobber with worn out tap and die. its always a wonder if its gonna make it though another one. But so far so good. A moose decided to come check out our job site in the last pic there.
Did you decide to keep that 160 and sell the 490? Dealing with water can be a pain at times.
Yes, that 160 is the most amazing machine. We were able to triple our production is some areas. But it constantly doubled production over the 490. It just has so much power, whether it be pulling stumps or digging a hole at maximum reach it just flys! The 490 at maximum depth would take awhile to get the stick out of the hole, you could take a mini nap while waiting for it to boom-up. I liked the idea of having two excavators and having two jobs going at once, or just flying through one job with both machines. But the days when I had to run the 490 I was just frustrated. It was like those dreams where you are running in slow-motion? So I put it up for sale and started researching Mini's. I was seriously looking at the 80 sized machine as it can still move its far share and you could transport it with a pick-up if you had to. But on a stand alone job by itself it just wasn't going to be big enough. I ended up selling the 490 and picked up a 2006 120c with 3300 hrs and a blade. Its great! It has a long stick which i love and burns 1/3 the fuel of the 160 and is large enough to handle jobs by itself. With these two excavators we are able to just blow through the work list. It really amazes me how much ground 2 excavators and good operators can move in a day!
Nice looking 120 and 160 you have. Did you use the blade much?
Great Pics - Thank you -
Thanks guys! I am not a fan of blades due to the fact that they reduce the undercarriage life and guys tend to use the excavator as a dozer.. and it's in the way and also forces me to dig over the finals so I can see the bottom of the hole. BUT, it does come in handy for keeping me level on uneven ground, I do like that. Also when working on extremely steep slopes its nice to have that tail back there to anchor in.
I prefer to do heavier type excavation, but sometimes get suckered into landscaping. In our area it is mostly raw land development for house and cabin sites. Not very many people want to spend the money on a lawn or a paved driveway, or even siding their house for that matter This lawn took about 300 yds of screened dirt.
I've noticed that you have a lot of houses with no siding WHY whats the thought does it not rot sooner
Well in my area people are just happy to have purchased the land and get a road and pad in. It seems like most of the people here have quite the independent spirit and some degree of carpentry skills. It also seems like alot of them just get a vapor barrier put on the outside and thats it. There are no building codes or permits required here so there is not much incentive to finish. Additionally your property taxes nearly double once you apply siding.
Couple of visitors decided to cruise through my front yard...:guns
so it's a tax thing.it's probely cheaper to replace the weathered materials than to pay higher taxes
Like ak4X4 said, value of property increases when sided/finished. There are no building codes. Many folks build out of pocket so the priority is walls, roof, insulation & heat somewhat in that order. No banks are involved requiring you finish the project due to financing. Lack of skills & $$$ doesn't stop many Alaskans from starting their project but it does often interfere with getting finished
Here is a lot we stripped, there were no time constraints so we just kinda worked on it when we had the time. Burning is a good way to get rid of stumps but it sure is a pain in the arse keeping the piles going at sub zero temps or with it constantly snowing. But the upside is that no permits are required for a winter burn
Love the pics! Great to see you are able to keep two excavators going! How does the 160 compare to the 120 as far as size, obviously the 160 is bigger, but is it difficult to get into some spots? I'm thinking about upgrading my 110, thinking of 120, 135 size machines, or maybe even a 160. I just dont want to get something too big for what I do. I know a 120 size machine would work for me, but the extra production of the 160 would be great.
Awesome pix, you live and work in a beautiful and challenging place and do an excellent job. Even with the snow and permafrost etc I can see you're also working under power lines on that one too and have achieved a professional result. Big lot, what's the plan for this one?
The One Sixty has a massive amount of power, she burns alot of fuel compaired to the 120. In a full day, we work 10's so the machine probably is working at WOT or 7/8's throttle for 7 to 8 hrs of strait digging all the way to max depth and back. It can use up to 50 gallons, now the 120 in the same applications will only use around 30 gallons, but as far as yardage moved the 160 will smoke the 120 due to bucket sizes. So Ive come to the conclusion that if alot of material needs to be moved Ill bring in the 160 but if we are just putting in a waterline or electrical trench the 120 is awesome and smaller for the tight areas. The size differences are not extremely noticeable I was going to get a 135 but everything is so compact in the engine compartment, It looks terrible even to change a filter! and the 120 was cheaper We get into some tight situations here but 90% of our work is in the great open expanse of Alaska so a little extra tail swing isnt a game ender. Thanks Logan! It is quite the place to live thats for sure. Im sure otherplaces are still going strong right now but there is about 18" of frost in the ground right now and we have come to a screeching halt. Last week it took me 3 hrs to dig 60' at 2' deep with frost teeth and using every method of bucket leverage there is. Poor machine took a beating. The snow and frost arn't so bad when you are used to it and know what to expect. The gravel lot there was supposed to be hauled to a borough project but the engineers had a massive topography error. Originally they needed 15,000 yds of gravel, then they reduced the size to 7500yds. By the end of the project we hauled 200 yds of gravel and the site got a massive cut and we hauled 2000 yds of gravel OFF the site...it still worked out pretty good, I was able to charge them hourly dumptruck time and I hauled the gravel to paying customers. I love it when you can make a few hundred dollars an hour with one piece of equipment :thumbsup
Thanks for the info, based on that I can probably stay in the 15T class. ZTS is nice for me as we are often in very tight areas. It's true about servicing though, filters etc are a bear to get to. Do you still have the same dump truck?
Yeah they are nice for tight areas, "if your tracks fit you can swing" The ol' Western Star, I ran that truck more this year than I ever have before and it never gave me a lick of trouble. I have had lots of problems with it previous years but she really performed this year. Usually that a sign to sell it My goals for next year are to upgrade the 1998 450g dozer to a newer J model going to have to make the switch to hydrostatic at some point so I may as well start now. I plan on upgrading the dump as well, lots of decent KW's around here i'd like to snag. But, I'm also eying steel buildings for a shop and at that point I think my eyeballs are bigger than my wallet But, where there's a will there's a way!
Its great that the old star is going good this year! I know your working season is probably shorter than ours, but its tough for us to keep everything new when it sits for 4-5 months a year. The payments are killer during the winter! We are going to have to bite the bullet at some point and start selling and upating, some of our iron is starting to get a little long in the tooth!!!
I hear you about trying to keep the equipment new, age happens so fast! With these newer machines we had almost zero problems this year. Which is awesome, not saying they don't break down but there breakdown frequency seems to be much better. I've been considering trying to sell them before they hit 5k hours and keep up grading until I can get a very low hour machine that I can keep for awhile. I know alot of guys that buy em and run them up into the 15,000 hour range and either they are too worn out to do anything with and they just rust out in the weeds or they try to sell them for market value of a low hr. machine I always wonder if they get what they're asking.
How many hours a year do you put on? We have 4 machines that we run, 3 ton,5 ton, 8 ton and 15 ton and each one gets 3-400 hrs a season. Im thinking about trying to streamline things and just run the 15 ton machine and the 5 ton machine. Im afraid I may miss the 8 ton size but I guess if thats the case I will just have to get another one.
You have 4 excavators! Goodness Must be nice to be rich haha This year we put 850 hrs on the 160, Im not sure about the totals for the 490 and 120 guessing around half that. Put about 300 hrs on the dozer. This year I really focused on finish grading with the excavator instead of just bringing in the dozer to flatten in out. Just for the little jobs of course. Just imagine the finished product and voila'.
I just could not stand the counterweight anymore. I was doing touchups and thought about just "touching it up" then I stripped a little off, then I stipped the whole bottom section off, then I ended up just stripping the whole thing. Took forever, that is some impressive paint. I was going to roll it back on but am looking for a smooth finish, I have a few other painting projects this winter so I'm thinking about buying a sprayer. I've never used one but I'm not getting any younger! Got a new cutting edge, just ordered it up. It was a little shocking when I got the bill $950 bucks but, that included bolts Kinda reminded me of a transformer hangin out in the garage waiting for summer. I wonder how a high polished, clear-coated steel excavator would look
I saw a Landrover that had all the aluminium bodywork polished to a high shine. For thought was "Wow", then second thought was what a sad life he must lead to have the time and inclination to do that! Graham
By the way, really like your thread. Very interesting to see a different world! Graham
Rich...lol...good one! We have 4, but 3 are getting old and needing replacement. Waiting to hear back on a 135sr kobelco. Not sure what I'll do though.
Thanks Graham, I often wonder why I post stuff on here but I really enjoy reading and seeing other peoples machines and way of doing stuff. So its nice to hear someone out in the there in the interwebs likes it!
Haha so humble, What are they asking for the 135? A guy around here runs one of those. Looks like a decent machine, does it have the 6 way blade?
No blade. I believe it's 62k, has 2500 hrs.
Just read through your thread last night. Very interesting work you do. Gravel onsite, a little gold here and there, and some good four wheeling. I saw your blown bogger video...man those stacks sound sweet!
Sounds fair, That 120 with 3000 hrs was 69k I offered them 60 and we settled at 65, delivered with 2 buckets. of course you are in a different region but sounds similar.:thumbsup Does it have a thumb? Thanks JNB, Yeah that old truck has been through a lot! But this last summer we had our first kid and going out to the mine with the fam and a dog in the cab got to be a little tight.Additionally, those stacks were sweet untill you wanted to put stuff in the back. Burned a few sleeping bags, boots and coolers over the years So I'd been on the hunt for awhile looking for a 4door, same era of truck. And I found one locally! The guy wanted 5k for it (which was high) but it had been well cared for and has an immaculate interior. It has dents all over the outside but what I will be doing will just add to them So I didnt mind. No rust! I got a 6" spring lift for it and swapped my tires over and man it is awesome, it rides great and has more power with the 460 over the tired 390. Still need to get the bumpers & winch swapped over, ....lockers...and lower gears. The list never ends I need to retire so I can work on all this stuff!
Has a thumb, and a pin grabber.
I kept having issues with the ol' international losing power. It was just a headache that kept reappearing. So on its last foul up I sporadically just bought the the only short wheel based truck I could find off craigslist. It is an old Food Services of America truck, not my favorite color but it ran great for me all summer, not alot of power or very heavily built. But it keeps the iron moving :thumbsup 98 International with Cummins M11
Ive always wanted to have a tractor trailer set up like that. What GCVW can you register that set up for out there? What brand trailer is that?
nedly05 Ive always wanted to have a tractor trailer set up like that. What GCVW can you register that set up for out there? What brand trailer is that? Its been a great trailer, the fact that I can load two pieces has cut my hauling in half. I'm not sure who makes it, it says MERC on the title. Its been modified, extended and widened, which I found out after I bought it of course But they did a good job. I just registered the truck for tags and there is a "over 16,000 lbs" heavy tax but wasn't a place to enter GVWR or combined. So I'm not sure, truth be told the nearest scale house is in Anchorage which is 100 miles away and I've never even been through there I'll usually see the DOT guys around our area 2-3 times a year, only been pulled over once and he just gave me a few minor warnings even said "I know you guys like to be left alone up here" The truck has 44k rear and 12k front, The trailer doesn't have any tags on it so they would do their test of 600lbs per inch of touching tire surface so at 8" tires 38400 for trailer. So 94,400 minus the weight of truck and trailer (which i don't know) I figure puts me around 25 ton of possible payload. I don't haul for anyone but myself and the heaviest thing I currently carry is the 160 with extra bucket. I would like to see how I have it loaded if its an even spread, but not curious enough to drive to the scales. We have a couple pretty good hills in you little 30 mile radius that we work and that little Cummins M11 is tapped out of power but It still gets it from A to B which is the main thing.
Definitely dont drive to the scale house!!!!! It sounds like a great place to make a living, do you have to pay the "heavy tax" monthly or just when you register? We have quarterly Highway Use Tax that we have to pay for anything over 18000 GVW. What HP and trans in the Tractor? Does it have a jake?
Haha yeah, if I ever feel like giving the Man some more revenue I'll take a trip down there The Heavy tax is a yearly deal, registration for 1 year is $585 how does that compare to your area? The motor has 330 hp and on the phone he said it didnt have a jake which I was pretty bummed about, but when I got there it didnt have a jake because the Microswitch was bad. Fixed that and everything works great!
Ive never registered a tractor trailer, I think when I registered my single axle it was around the same though. Pretty sweet she has a jake, looks like a nice truck, some day I hope to have something like that! The 330 must be working with the 160 on!
Finally got the counter weight painted...What a learning experience that was.:Banghead I really wanted to spray it on so I could get a mirror finish but the direct to metal paint that I had was just too thick, it kept spraying like you were texturing sheetrock. I thinned it out so it would spray nice and away I went....well after 3 coats I was barely getting coverage. I was able to get 3 coats in a day, somewhere around coat 5-7 I ended up getting a run, which I then had to attempt to fix that after 10 coats the run was still visible and I had to thin it so much it was just that, thin.... So I sanded the run area back to metal and rolled it on with a foam roller. It came out better than I expected. I found decal sets for the 160 online for $180 w shipping wasn't exactly thrilled about spending that much money on stickers! So I had my local decal guy make up just one for 80 bucks and I even got it on there strait!
Yeah shes pedal to the medal transporting that ol girl. The jake definitely saves some brakes, does yours have one? any word on the excavator?
The counterweight looks great! My tandem has a jake, couldnt be without it around here. Salesguy was off for 10 days hunting, he was supposed to call yesterday but didnt. I called deere and the salesguy called back and said he would be in touch but havent heard from him either. They both know Im looking so the ball is in their court. Seems like you have to sell iron to yourself around here.
I know the feeling I deal with it every time I try to buy something any more. or you tell them what you want/need then they try to sell you something totally different. like a friend of mine said today when you walk into the ford dealer tell them you want a F350 4x4 crew cab long bed don't try to sell me a TARUS
Geeze that is ridiculous. Well hopefully somebody will call you back and take your money, cant wait to see this thing. Have you seen the new Taurus' though? They will blow that f350 out of the water
Septics We install quite a few septic systems, they are good money and fairly easy to knock out. Some replacment systems are dirtier then others. This particular system failed after 5 years of use, they had grease traps in line but apparently they weren't doing very much. We dug up the end of the line to install a cleanout to steam the line out. As you can see it was beyond repair, if you look close you can actually see the poo bugs in the cap The grease in this system coated the sidewalls of the trench making it unable to absorb any grey water, the bugs will eat the grease, repairing the system but it will take a few years. We ended up installing a "bull-run" valve that allows you to switch between leach fields.
We ended up adding another 2000 gallon tank in series with new 1680 sq ft. leachfield. The trench was 17' deep with Fiber marked in orange along the left, we had a representative onsite during the dig. We attempted to pothole it to find it, we then dug next to it but the location and the depth kept fluctuating. Its always sketchy when stuff like that happens, we gave it as much of berth as we could afford and continued on. We ended up putting monitor tubes and cleanouts on every end and beginning of trench to add options later down the road. It now looks like a place where PVC is grown and harvested...oh well, as long as it works
Nice work on the leach field. The client must have been eating too much bear and beaver. It must be plenty frozen up there, We have been in the 0f range and getting up in the 20's. It came so quik this year. 2 weeks ago it was 70f and now this. Keep up the good work! Regards, CD
Yeah I might call him tomorrow. I am finishing up the two jobs this coming week, and week after that I had hoped to use it on so at this point if it waits till spring I guess its no biggy. Its annoying, maybe im just impatient but I like things to move along when I want them to!
Is the 4" pipes at inlet and outlet for pump-outs/ cleaning of the tank?
Thanks CD, it is a store with a meat dept. and deli, recently they had been getting japanese tour busses through there and I think what was happening is they would just send a tidal wave into that tank and force everything out the grey water side. In the little area we had to dig up at the end of the field we found Jolly Rancher wrappers as well as a few tampons, stuff that shouldn't be passing through the tank internal baffle. Hopefully the second tank we installed inline will solve the Japanese Tsunami Our weather this year has been really weird, to got cold at first but for the last couple weeks now its been in the 40's and raining! I'm actually going to have to come out of my winter retirement and go put in a waterline tomorrow :Banghead This was last night That is annoying, its one thing if its a private seller but is is their job!!
The vertical pipes are for pump-outs, there are two enclosed chambers with a baffle in the middle with a hole about halfway down. When the "solids" enter the inlet of the tank you heavy stuff will fall to the bottom and your fats and lighter stuff will float to the top, the non chunkey fluid will flow through the hole in the baffle. This is called "grey water" this then flows out into your absorption field which is transferred into a series of perforated horizontal pipes bedded with a 3/4 - 1 1/2 "sewer rock" that adds area for the grey water to seep into the natural ground. There are lots a differnt types of fields and ways to do. Ill try to find a schematic on our systems
This is a bed style septic system
Here is one ready for backfill, that black geotextile is laid over the sewer rock to stop any mud from pressing its way down into the rock and clogging the voids
Yair . . . Interesting stuff alaskaforby4 . That looks to be by no means very high density living and looks to be an awful lot of expense in dirt to move and rock to bring in just to deal with a little bit of jit . . . are composting toilets not effective/approved in your area? Cheers.
Thanks for the reply Scrub! It is quite the process, they are designed to handle 150 gallons a day, per bedroom. Which the State figures 2 people per BR with a max of 75 gallons per person. The septics last a really long time especially in the good gravels we have here. The first thing to go is usually the steel tank, they rust out after 20-25 years. We install a fair amount of concrete tanks but steel is easily accessible, cheaper and they weigh about 800 lbs as the concrete 1000 gallon tanks weigh close to 10,000 lbs Its a workout for my 160 to sling them around if we don't have access with the crane truck. Composters just don't handle the fluids from showers/toilets/washers due to the fact of freezing, all our systems have to have a minimum of 4' of earth cover to prevent freezing. Our waterlines are 10' deep w/ 2" insulation and still freeze from time to time. Heres a junk tank we replaced Some concrete tanks
Yair . . . Gotcha alaskaforby4 . I figured your climate may be not conducive to a good composting environment. I am surprised to see steel tanks. I have never seen them here although concrete is still used. In remote areas fibreglass took over years ago as they were light and tank halves could be nested into very little space on the truck or barge and epoxied together on site . . . these days poly tanks have pretty much taken over everywhere. I never cease to be amazed at what some of you folks have to endure with the weather and the cost of insulated installations, it must make for expensive living. Cheers.
There are a few poly tanks that are approved for use but the haven't really caught on. I think the main thing that people worry about is if they leave for a winter the freeze/thaw cycle could potentially burst a plastic tank. Guess it could happen with steel too but steel has been tried and true for so many years.. It is an expensive place to live, but I love it. The freedom is unprecedented. Just being able to hike or hunt out my back door and not see another house or soul all day is pretty neat. For me anyway. Here is a little frozen trench I had to dig the other day and a fire we had lastnight
Thats quite a fire! How much frost do you have? How much longer will you be digging dirt?
Yair . . . alaskaforby4 You got me there mate, I completely understand. Cheers.
It was a nice little fire, just burning down some stumps I hauled to the pit earlier. Talk about a weird year, its been so warm here! Probably about 12-20" frost in driveways but only 2-3 inches out in the woods I finally have some time to put in a pad of my own. Hopefully be able to get a shop of my own put up here. Looking at a 40x40 with additional 10' covering on eachside. sure would be nice. Im still working on the design, I would at least like to get the slab poured next year. Time will tell
Those metal tanks just mean additional work down the road right? I am a septic and sewer guy, almost exclusively residential repairs and tank pumping. It a good business, people in 'merica demand working toilets. I will say I am jealous of your location up there, looks nice.
I have to ask, how many hours do you usually put in a day? Does mama get pissy when you work late?
I would guess mama is all smiles when she remembers,the hoe is sitting in the woods,waiting Nice pics
Thanks for the replies! I enjoy doing sewer work, new stuff more so then existing stuff. Like you say people demand there toilets and they are willing to pay $$$ for them. The guys I have are great, we can get in and out in usually about 12 hours time and are able to take home a few grand after expenses. :thumbsup Well I like to start early and kick off early as possible I get up around 530-6 do billing and payments and am out the door by 8, we shut down at 6 and make it back to the house around 630 or so. This year we have been immensely blessed and were able to afford the wifey to be a stay at home with our little kiddo so she understands someone has to do the working. I try to do stuff on the weekend but usually get stuck moving equipment around on Saturday, Sunday I take off, try to unplug and get ready for the next whirlwind week. Now that its winterish that schedule has gone out the window,I still have that summer "drive" so I get up early and am ready to go buuutt, theres nothing to invoice or receive. So I end up checking out HEF one more time I have been trying to plug away on this pad of mine, I don't know what it is about working on my own property, hard to get motivated. I think if I was a mechanic I would be one of those guys who works on cars all day and drives a poor running one :drinkup
that's the way we are it's more fun when it's somebody else's money going out the exhaust . been in my house about 12 years still haven't widened drive way or regraded yard. it's all I can get done to blow the leaves.got 3 shop buildings on trailers and roll offs at the farm for five years and a enough bar joist's for a 60'x100' building that i've had for 15 years. guess I will have to wait to retire to finish my projects.
Sounds like you have a good system working for you! How many guys do you have working? Im jealous of that gravel you have! Its not quite as common around here.
Pretty much my days too other than I don't start quite as early and I work later. Most weeks are about 100hrs.
That much covered storage sure would be nice! I have a operator and a laborer, both good guys. No one can drive a truck though, sucks when we get the large trucking jobs and im stuck in the dump truck all day everyday. You have alot of clay around there or is it just like dirt? It sure is nice having it pretty much everywhere. It does suck though on occasion when it can be 4-5' deep before you hit it or you run into massive boulders and hard pan, really hits you in the bid pocket. 14 hrs a day 7 days a week is impressive. My guys turn in timecards that are that much, but that is every 2 weeks. I try to keep a steady manageable pace that I am able to keep my quality of work high and stay sane. The challenge of keeping this whole show rolling smoothly, keeping the jobs in consecutive order, keeping the homeowners happy and looking at new jobs is substantial. Alot of guys hate doing residential due to having to deal with homeowners and the "smallness" of the jobs. We are able to make it work by charging a fair price but how we are able to make the money is by keeping the jobs moving. Sometimes in a day we can knock out 2-3 little jobs a day and people don't mind paying a 7-8 hundred bucks to have some stumps pulled and hauled or yard upgrades or whatever. I look at it like getting a penny from everyone you'll be a rich man. The trick is turning the stress into a challenge and just getting after it. Its hard to make the switch but if you're able to it makes it a whole lot easier.
I'd like to find a driver/laborer and an operator. Hard to find help, no one wants to work, and they want big money. We have all sorts of ground here. Some like yours, some sand, some crappy black muddy rock filled crap, hard pan you name it!
Geeze, sounds like you would have to have a pit of you own to make any decent money! It is hard finding guys, ive been pretty fortunate in that area. Here in AK if you have less that 4 employees you are not required to pay overtime. So I pay a high hourly strait time that seems to work out great, then Im not stressing about how much work they got done on saturday. Although I am approaching 4 employees in this upcoming year so we will see how that works out. I know there is that trade off where, sure you are doing more work but are you making anymore money?? Ive been forcing myself to put in a couple hours everyday on this never ending shop pad....I'm getting there!!
Working For Friends I know you have all been there, when you have that buddy who needs dirt work done. Before I started my company in 2010 I had this friend who wanted a driveway& Pad installed down into this hole, Around 2008 It had been a few years since I had been on a excavator and I had the "itch" I told him if he rented a excavator and dozer Id install it for him. I ended up spending a week on this project with this little 312 with a digging bucket. It turned out pretty good, he ended up selling it and history repeated itself:Banghead
So I've known this guy since were were kids, hes a great dude. Its just the position one is put in when you have earthmoving equipment and experience. So as I said, history repeated itself, he bought this lot right next to a lake, real nice piece of property and wants a driveway and pad installed. We went and looked at it, it is a heavely wooded area and he exclaimed he would have all the trees cut and taken care of. So about a day later he exclaims "Trees are down" I was kinda shocked as it was ALOT of trees. I said "you were able to cut, limb and top all those trees in a day"....silence...."no I just dropped them all" I went over there and sure enough they were all dropped in a big pixie stick mess, which is worse than leaving them standing! He said "dont worry about it just stack them up and I'll deal with them" Well that is easier said then done and your cord of wood would be a mile high with all the branches! He ended going back and limbing all the ones and we then came in and picked up each one, limbed and stacked. Total P.i.t.a, once we got down to his pad area he decided he wanted another driveway and pad installed up on this ridge area..haha this happens quite a bit as homeowners are like "while you're here with the equipment can you etc, etc, etc" I just smiled and said "sure, what are friends for " It all turned out really well in the end here are some pictures (oh, and I didnt do this one for free:thumbsup)
This was the pad and drive that was added half way through A guest operator showed up, showed me a few pointers. Apron attaching to highway
Finished product
Everyone was happy for about a month, then I went back and widened it out a bit more for him. haha, what are friends for right?
Great pics, Alaska seems like such a free place to live. No wonder they call it the last frontier!!! What do you get hourly for your equipment? Feel free to pm or tell me it's none of my business!
Great pics, beautiful scenery up there.
Sure did turn out good! Great looking work and and a pretty place to do it.
There is definitely plenty of it to go around!.... As far as finances goes I'm not secretive or private about it at all. I'm not sure why that is, maybe because I'm just doin' what I love to do and the $$$ is a bonus, hahah , that is a great mentality to have untill you underbid a job. then strangely it becomes about the $$$ again So, I try to bid all my work out, as much as I can anyway. I've found that people can focus and accept a solid range numbers rather than a high hourly rate. So if a home owner wants a few stumps pulled out and their drive graded (or whatever it may be) and I tell them it will be 1000 bucks and I bang in two hours he gets what he wanted done for agreed price and I get $500 dollars per hour :thumbsup Now going into the same situation with a set hourly rate for equipment wouldn't net me as much. This works great for me on these smaller jobs. Now of course we will get these eccentric guys who want stones placed and trees moved and basically whatever new ideas they've smoked up that day, So to answer your question I base my price around $150 an hour for 1, sometimes 2 guys. My dumptruck get $115 How does that stack up to prices over there? Thanks guys, "slowly taking the scenery out one job at a time " This must be equivalent to a lucky star! I've only seen this one time in my whole greasing life :thumbsup
We get $125/hr for the 110. $100/hr for the loader, backhoe, and 8 ton excavator. $90 for the 5 ton excavator. $80 for the cat mtl. $75/ hr for the single axle and $90 for the tandem. $40/hr for labor.. These prices are pretty standard in this area. I would like to do the bid work like you mentioned as I think it's more fair to us who own and maintain our equipment, but $500/ hr would get me no return work lol!
Here in Ca 2yrs ago as a co driver, SF area 4 axle super dumps rates run from $105 to a low of $70hr or so,tonnage was worst $7 a ton. Brokers/boss would try to sell me a truck no way. That rate on the 10wheeler is sweet sure helps on up keep
I did some drainage a month or so ago that I estimated at a grand. It went way faster that I figured but the access was very rough. Her bill ended up being around $400 but in my eyes it was worth a grand for what I put my machine through to get it done. I'm not sure she would have been very happy with me at $250/ hour but she was very happy with what I accomplished so she may well have been willing to pay it. Maybe I should just grow a set and try it some time!
Sounds cheap! I wonder what the percentage works out to be for cost of living here, compared to there. I mean some stuff is just outrageous! Shipping can be as much as the parts sometimes. Like those trackpads I installed last year, $800 in shipping Ouch, that sounds painful, another thing we do differently here is base our trucking by yardage, since no one has scales in their pits its all just calculated by full buckets on the loader. Then for the trucking instead of hourly its per yd delivered. This is also a great money maker, altho it can get a little ridiculous some times as regular Pit-Run goes for $130 per truck and if the site is close 25 loads a day isnt unheard of. The old Western Star makes me proud on days like that. Well, dont even let the "hourly" word enter her mind, just call it "the job" Its tricky I know, that same thing has happened to me as well and I've reduced my price some and the customers are overjoyed. The risk about doing it by "the job" are the unforeseens, which there is always something! This is where an hourly rate will save your bacon, as I am really good about lowering the price, I have not perfected the art of raising the price The most important thing is leaving there with them overjoyed by whatever you have to do 'cause boy-oh-boy do people talk!! Im Gettin There!!! Finally snowed a dusting, crazy its December in Alaska and I have not had a plowing event.....:beatsme
Boy you arent kidding about how people talk. Good word of mouth is the best advertisement! I do deliveries on a "per load" basis, and can make decent money at it. Ive been giving a lot of thought to "by the job" on the smaller projects and I'm thinking of trying it out come spring when the frost starts to go out and people want to get there roads dried up. We've had 2 plowable events here, both have melted the next day or so. The frost hasnt gotten very deep, maybe 2" or so, but every time the roads have tightened up good for plowing, it has warmed up and the frost has gone out. We have a storm warning for tonight, starting as snow, changing to sleet and freezing rain, then warming up and changing to all rain. It doesnt even look like we will do any plowing from it. Man the weather has gotten weird in the last several years!
Yeah, give it a shot! It has been crazy here the last week. I decided to accept a job returning back to the arctic circle (Prudhoe Bay) again for the winter. There just hasn't been any snow to keep me busy around here, gotta keep these excavator payments moving along! Well as it would happen we got a foot of snow my last week home, my other snowplowing guy was out of state with his family so I had to take on our whole route by myself, I got most of it plowed in about 20 hrs only to have to restart the list again in the beginning. Thankfully that is done with now and its back to raining??? weird weather.. I did get a little more done on the shop pad, they sure do look weird (and worthless) without a boom View attachment 128176 View attachment 128177
:bash:bash:bash
Must take a lot of turning to level off the pad that way, with no boom and bucket.
Yes, but you can always rotate and see your tracks! We had to get some parts at the Deere Dealer the other day, I told the wife this would have been a completely legitimate place to get married!
Excavators cuddling!
Back to work.... Didnt get many pictures this time up, trying to brush the rust off that ol bicycle and get back into the grove of how things are done again. The "safety culture" is amazing up here, amazing to the point that it actually brings work to a screeching halt, for days....BP recently implemented a scheduling process where Well Work of any kind needs to be scheduled 2 weeks in advance in order to mitigate any possible job hazards. Well each "down hole" job has its own unique set of problems and can sometimes go longer than expected overlapping another "work schedule" when that happens, it automatically gets reset at 2 weeks away resulting in finishing one job but having to wait dayyys to start another... This is just a tiny example, its hard coming from the private sector where its about production and moving back into this job where you have to slooooow wayyy down. But, they pay me a ridiculous amount of money to sit around on standby doing it how they want:thumbsup I was up there for winter solstice, The sun doesnt come up for months, but you do get a residual glow from it. This was taken at 1 pm, the lightest it gets! Pitch black again at 2:30
So how long are you gone from home? I hear you on having to get used to the slow pace, its tough to get used to.
I know its to late now........ but here's what I've found to work pretty well. PPG brand industrial enamel, its inexpensive, tough, and has a nice gloss. To lay it down I've been picking up those cheap sets of HVLP guns you can get for $100 at the parts stores, they include 2 guns, one w/ a 1.4 tip and one w/ a 1.8. The 1.8 seems to work decent with the thicker paint and gets good coverage. Very seldom do you need more than 2 coats. Use them for a few projects and throw them away. Looks like it turned out nice, the only thing missing is that first scratch
Alaskaforby4, Related septic install question for you, or anybody else...... My new septic was installed last summer (wasilla). How concerned should I be about the trees next to the absorption bed? Will the roots cause problems later on? The spruce are only 8 feet away from the the monitor pipes on the end of the field. Thanks, Coaldust. View attachment 13122
Bump!
Just read through this whole thread, wow, makes me want to move to Alaska!
Hey, just read this thread a few nights ago, decided to join the forum. Fellow alaskan here, Im in Big Lake. Seen your truck go down the road some, and seen your offroad trucks going down the road too. Nice seeing some pictures of old school mining going on in petersville, we used to rent excavators to a few miners up there until recently. Im currently working on my own little 42 inch trommel project, wanting to get into mining someday. I remember when I was a kid and visiting some of the petersville mines and seeing them have 150 oz cleanups, very impressive, but that was when gold was not much... We used to do septics and land clearing around big lake until the past few years, not much money in it here to do it legally. To many weekend operators. We got into the snow plow and outdoor equipment stuff now. Mind if I post a few pics of me working my old 450b out on the Yetna river here?
Alaskaforby4, Great thread, love Talkeetna btw, I was stationed at Ft. Wainwright '08-'10 flying Chinooks. We'd come down to Talkeetna early spring to put in the low camp (7000 ft) and high camp (14,000 ft) on the mountain. Flying over the top at just over 21,000 was also neat. Enjoy your story and experiences, keep it coming.
Just read the whole thread ,you come across as being very happy in your work . Great read and viewing .
Just read the whole thread ,you come across as being very happy in your work . Great read and viewing .
Sorry for the late reply, had an extremely late season for us this year. We are just now stopping work and going to the maintenance phase... Had some really fun projects this year, I'll post some pictures a bit later.
1996 Peterbilt 357 Dumptruck So throughout the summer I've been trying to upgrade either the loader or the dumptruck. I really pushed hard a couple months for a 544J loader but no doors opened and with winter approaching they became a hot commodity and everyone snatched them up. So during all this searching a "Online Bankruptcy Auction" popped up on craigslist with a Peterbilt dumptruck. So I was headed to that town it was in next week so I called the auction company to take a look at it, no answer. I tried the next day, all day while I was in town and still no answer. I was beginning to think it was a scam and was getting frustrated. I saw in the ad that they had a location for the truck "by appointment only" So I decided to at least go make a visual inspection. The Truck - it was listed as having a Cat 3176 w/ 365 HP. These motors weren't Cats best and it would seem a little under powered for a fully loaded dump, but my hauls are short and I can make it work. The transmission was listed as having a 9LL, This is not the greatest tranny, especially with a somewhat under powered motor. But the LL is what I like for getting in and out of peoples backyards. Upon inspection of the truck the tires were 100% bald, not just a little bit, but smooth! Even the steer tire was flat. The inside is disgusting, looks like someone spilled coffee all over and drove through a dust storm, everyday for 5 years! But most everything was intact and it has the super fancy dash with chrome dash instrumentation, leather seats. Also it has plumbed dump, pup and tarp controls with a high lift gate which I've always really wanted. The odd thing was on the visor there was a 18 speed shift pattern, this made me wonder as to how much work they had done on the truck. The motor looked decent, no oil all over the ground. Couldnt find an inspection plate but it looked good. Day of Auction- I called the company all morning to try to find out about this transmission but no one answered, I was somewhat leery at this point. Especially not being able to hear it run. I figured maybe if I can pick it up cheap enough.. The online auction started and I had the winning bid at 12k but I saw there was a reserve, so I bid it up to 15k and the reserve was met and there seemed to be no other interest, until the very last 10 seconds somebody decided to try and snipe bid me, this extended the auction by 5 minutes, it went back and forth a few times and at this point I was really asking myself how bad do I really want this thing. The one other bidder finally stopped at 18.5 and the truck was mine. I didn't feel overly excited as I wasn't really sure what I just did... Guess who called though, the auction company! At this point the transmission issue was a moot point as I now owned it, I doubted the secretary knew anything anyway. Paying for it - We drove back into town to pay for the truck and we drove to the auction house address but we couldn't find it?? I called the place and said we were at the address but dont see it? They told me to look for a place called "Ron's used furniture" and they had an office in the back. I was super sketched out at this point, I went into this furniture store that smelled like it all came out of an heavy smoking elderly's home. A nice native guy pointed me into the back room, where amonst old end tables and gold plated furniture was the "office". Directly overhead has another apartment building with what sounding like 5 kids playing trampoline on the floor. I this point I figured I would probably be robbed and stuffed in a freezer never to be seen again. But, the lady behind the desk took my money and gave me a title and I high tailed it out of there. Picking it up- We put a space heater on it, aired up the tires, added some oil and coolant. In the process I found the spec plat on the motor, as I rubbed the crud off I could barely believe my eyes as the words - 3406, 450 HP - appeared, I was beyond ecstatic. The motor fired right off and sounded great, after letting it warm up awhile we took off down the road, on the oped road I thought, lets see what this high range does... and just like that it went from a 9LL to an 18 speed!!! I am still excited about that! I went strait to the tire shop and put all new rubbers on, with super singles on the front. Yesterday I polished up the rear aluminum wheels and am going to work on the chrome today. It has been heavily neglected as someone going bankrupt would do I guess. But I really feel like its a diamond in the rough. The power of that 3406 is AMAZING, its like driving a car! Anyway I finally got it in the shop last night, once I get the maintence done and get her polished up a bit more I post some more pictures This is how it sat when looking at it. As of yesterday with a little bit of pressure washing
Sweet Pete,she has a good home now. Good luck
Did you stop on the way home and get a lottery ticket? Shame to waste a lucky streak like that.
Looks like a truck needing a little TLC found a good home. Keep us updated with the pictures...
Well I cleaned and cleaned and cleaned for about a month and she polished right up! We put a septic system in yesterday and I got to do its first working load. She's a beaut!
every once in a while we get lucky and reminded why we live this crazy adventure
A buddy of mine went to that last Richie's brother auction in Wasilla a few months back and said good stuff was going cheap. Also Bristol Const is getting rid of some of their equipment as well.
This next RB auction is going to be good here, yard is already 2/3 full and we are months out. Lots of ok looking goodies down there. Last auction there was some killer deals, bank repo 2014 doosan 235lcr with 1000 hrs went for 75k. Absolute killer deal.
Yea, the upside of the failing economy and departing oil company's.
Good pics!
We had a very dry summer which ended up creating some forest fires. By the time it was put out, over 7,000 acres and 50 homes burned. It was about 40 miles from where I live. We have never been called by the forest service to assist in fire lines. Usually it seems they use a D6 or greater for pushing in fire lines, so with my little JD 450 I knew I didn't have much of a chance. The whole fire was pretty much out when on a sunday night I got a call. They wanted us the next morning bright and early What had happened was 50-60 years ago old timers had pushed up windrows of stumps in various places and they had caught fire and were considered "hot spots" that could possibly re-ignite something. So we loaded up and headed down there, these fire fighters were the hardest working bunch let me tell ya. They had these old stump rows pulled apart with pick axes and shovels and were spraying water on the coals. They had been at it for days it was pretty impressive, all of them were just covered in soot, loaded with gear and FR jackets and pants just getting after it! Anyway, when we showed up and grabbed these stump piles and broke them up so they could spray them down, they were overjoyed! once the areas were cold they would come through and "rehab" the area by bringing in whatever brush was left and lay it over the area for re-growth. They would then have a helicopter fly over with infrared and get a list of "hotspots" and we would load up and head to next area. So they had a Excavator and operator, Lowboy and myself as transport, they paid a little better than $300 per hour, 12 hr shifts that included 1 hr travel time, paid for fuel and meals and at end they filled everything up and did a post inspection for damage which they would have covered if there was any. We were at it for about a week. It was good duty! After I got the government check I signed it back over to them for this years taxes. It was painful but also felt good to get that out of the way in a week
View attachment 150212 View attachment 150211
Hope you can turn your neck, I changed the original 90*, saved it and re-uploaded and still wrong:beatsme
Those are pretty cool pictures, you got lucky with that Pete! You did a nice job cleaning it up, it went from something I'd have walked right past to a truck I'd definitely drive. A 3406 and an 18spd is a great combination. The forest fire deal sounds like it worked out pretty well for you and probably was a pretty neat change in work. I did spend way to long looking at the burned vehicle picture trying to figure out what kinda car or jeep it was only to realize I was thinking way to hard into it and it looks like the remains of a Polaris Sportsman.
That's a nice looking dump, great specs. for it too. You done good!
Haha, yeah, the poor ol' 4-wheeler, its amazing the devastation that was left behind. Even now after people have rebuilt, the forest isnt very nice to look at. I guess in good time it will grow back. Thanks! I love that POR-15 paint, I have always used their black color and topcoated it most of the time. This round I used 2 coats of silver but didn't use the "topcoat". I was out looking at the box yesterday and apparently the paint is highly sensitive to UV light and it is turning a nice yellow/green :throwup Live and Learn!
Ive often wondered my own motivation behind posting on this forum. As I greatly enjoy looking at everyone else's photos, I've thought it only fair to share my own experiences. Well just recently I've also found that it has become like a pretty neat picture journal of our progress as a company! Hopefully this forum will be around for a long time to come! 2016 was a very big year for us as we took on a very large debt and purchased a competing excavating company and large gravel pit. The ability to have screened gravel products on hand has greatly benefited us for both our own projects and bidding others. No crusher as of yet, but eventually. A local company started renting a larger excavator and dozer which helped with our decision to make this very large purchase as we now offer gravel delivery as well. It was a exciting year getting involved with MSHA, nothing like more paperwork! Thankfully it was a operating pit before hand so most everything was up to code. But they always find something! The place has been for sale for quite sometime and the owners kept it going with minimal maintenance. It has been a long year of repairs but I feel we are somewhat getting on top of it. The plants are old and cobbled together but they are still producing product and that is what counts! The gravel screen is a Kolman triple screen, it is pretty slow but seems to match the feeding equipment and operator quite well. The topsoil screen is painfully slow and is due for lots of modifications this winter, the feeding hopper goes from 8'x6 down to about a 3'x18" and if the soil has any moisture at all it just clogs and then we have to poke at it for 20 minutes. I plan on rounding the corners and lining with UHMW to help with the sticking, maybe installing a vibrator. We shall see. The ol' Pete has just been awesome! Such a great truck and a pleasure to drive. In the sale we picked up 2 KW T600, a '89 and '91 model. I sold the '89 and the '91 is the main delivery truck. Is has airbags which I'm not too fond of on a dumptruck. but oh-well. It needs a lot of love this winter.
Once we finally got the papers signed and started getting the pit ready for operation I wanted to do oil changes in everything. The 966 C Model loader is really the lifeblood of the pit. Its moved some serious yardage in its life and at the time was coming up on 27,000 hours. So we swapped oils in the ol' girl and put it back to work. Right directly after that it lost alot of its power, started blowing black smoke and wouldn't spin the tires going into the bank. One of the guys then proceeded to empty the transmission oil pan and found these in the bottom After diagnosing the issue we found that the Turbo had failed, so we got another one of those but still had these undetermined bearing pieces that came out of the transmission. After putting nearly every last penny into this venture and being at the beginning of season with the weight restriction still on the road, getting another loader or transmission was financially impossible. After talking with Cat we determined that it is probably one of two bearings in the transmission, either one at the top (which was more common) or one at the bottom, they quoted me around 3k to fix it with a warranty. So the process of pulling the motor & trans began. It took a week to get it repaired, in the meantime we used my old JD 644, while still a great machine, it definitely isn't up for the challenge of day to day Pit life. But it is a great fill-in loader and handles topsoil and the lighter tasks most excellent. We got the repaired transmission back for the quoted price and re-installed it. Had to do another oil swap but she is good to go now. We ran it hard for the entire summer without another problem. I was quite impressed for 40 yr old machine with 27k hours to hold up like that, Cat did good on that one
The Pete cleaned up nice. Gravel pit should be a good venture after you work the kinks out. Sucks that you had trouble with loader already. That topsoil screen looks like it would be aggravating to run.
Thanks Hvy, yeah I am hoping it works out, worst we can do is fail The plant is actually pretty relaxing when its working good, I rarely got to run it but when I did it was pretty fun. The dryer the material the better, we ended up tarping everything after each use and that really helped. Here's I quick video I made this summer https://youtu.be/O3egDulTj6Y
We did fire up the ol' Bucyrus Erie to load some coal out of our little "coal seam" Its super hard digging, no diamonds yet. We do find petrified logs though. Its always a treat seeing this old thing chug along
Looks like a 15B just like the one i have in my yard.
Just read the whole thread...Good stuff.Alaska is a beautiful place and I plan on visiting it.Its on the list of places I am going to tour once the Grizzly truck is back on the road.... I like the no permit/inspector thing.I have just over two acres and the city wont give me a building permit to put up a 40x50 building.I live out in the country on ALR land.....go figure..
They were pretty neat old machines, does yours run or is it a "ornament"? Yeah the no permit/inspections thing is a double edged sword, there are a lot of improperly built and downright scary buildings. One guy wanted me to install a sewer and waterline stubbed under the house. It was a 3 story place. After looking at the foundation, it was built with a single cinder block placed on dirt, spaced about 8' apart. I politely declined that one. Of course the no permit thing is just the tiny little town I'm in, any of the larger areas have the same bureaucracy that you face.
Brought mine home in the fall. It is one of the shop projects this winter. Mostly needs just a little TLC. .
the nice thing about having your own coal,you could heat the shop. O r build a building with container boxes and heat it with the coal.
I have a video around here somewhere of running it, I'll have to dig it up. They are a treat thats for sure! Yeah, its nice to have around thats for sure. Although it isn't very high grade coal and creates quite a bit of ash. Additionally we have an excess of wood, people always try bartering down the price of a project if we keep the timber, I usually go for it once or twice a year and get stocked up. One year I struck a deal with a wood processer and he came and cut and split everything. That was nice, took the work right out of it!
I don't know about you guys, but we are always being asked to move buildings. Personally I've always rejected the idea, it is really quite the specialty trade, with numerous jacks, beams, dunnage trailers and so on. I'd rather leave it to the professionals. In this case though it is my building and I wanted it moved to another area on the property as the main house was build directly behind it. The cabin was build in 1960 and is really quite run down. I had originally planned on just demoing it, until the wife got some "ideas" We ended up fixing up the inside and turning it into a nightly rental. I was skeptical to say the least, surprisingly though with all the tourism in our area we kept it rented for about 4 mo. strait at $90 a night! I still wanted to move the thing this fall, so I thought we'd give it a shot. I was not at all concerned if it came crashing down and we burned it in place. Upon digging it out we found it was just placed on topsoil with now rotten piles, half the floor is rotten. Its probably a waste of money but a friend has a mill so we made some beams to stick under there. The plan was to get the loaders swapped over to forks, stick some steel beams under it and lift it up high enough to get a trailer underneath and away we go. We had another site for it about 1/2 a mile away. We got everything staged and I played conductor for the two loader operators and it lifted right up. Pretty heavy old building! We then built a 3" pony wall wall round it for a small crawlspace. We ran out of time to backfill it, froze up pretty good now. It still requires quite a bit of money to get it finished out. Hope it doesn't collapse in the meantime
Bucket Maintenance. Let me start by saying that I am not a welder or make any claims of such, But! I do really enjoy it and am slowly learning how. I have even more respect for the welders and fabricators out there who can do it relatively fast and make it look easy. Doing our bucket maintenance has been a perfect spot to practice. I am still amazed at how much time it takes, These are relatively small buckets and I have about 80 hrs into them. I see those monster buckets with miles of hard facing and I now have twice the appreciation. We installed a WB coupler on the Komatsu 160 so we can interchange buckets between the two, this is the 160 dig bucket. Basically just needed a few hardfaced wearstrips along the bottom. On the sides of all the buckets Ive been recycling our old 1" hardened cutting edge and applying it along the edges, as this is where the majority of the wear is. On the 160 Cleanout bucket I cut all these little pieces out, welded them in place with .045 dual shield base pass and covered them a .045 Stoody Hardfacing Talk about time consuming! The idea is that between the small plates and in all the XX hardfacing is that the dirt will pack in there and wear dirt on dirt, versus wearing directly on the steel. Works great for the material in my area.
This bucket picked up at a auction and it was pretty feeble. So, It got a complete makeover, on this one I opted to just cut solid plates out for the sides and hardface those. Somewhat less time consuming but it still took forever. Along the bottom I placed a few pieces of grader blade, as well as extending the sides up a bit more. The bolt on cutting edge was pretty warn, but I still have about 1.5" before it comes in contact with the bucket so I opted to weld on some extension pieces to get into next year. With cutting edges from Weldco Beales at $1000 plus $50 in bolts I am all about extending the life of them This is the JD 120 bucket, This one got a new edge as well as some recycled cutting edge corner pieces, we are going green! Hopefully with all this work I will just have to "touch-up" some of the hardfacing from year to year. That's the plan anyway....
nice work it can be fun fixing up a bucket but then when it come back in after a year and you see all your hard work gone.
Its all just soooo........***CKIN EPIC!!!!!
Haha, so true. But atleast we get some good use out of them and make a little $$, hopefully. This bucket we actually did last year, It just needed a edge flip and a little touchup hardfacing. I'm really hoping that by going over all this stuff it will just require routine maintenance and not have epic failure. Thanks for the enthusiasm!
Since alot of places are remote access around here we do quite a bit of Helo-assisting. This particular project was placing a radio tower atop of a mountain for the Alaska Railroad. They flew up a very miniature bobcat skidsteer and excavator, looked to be about as useful as a decent laborer
That is a abandon Alascom "earth station" in the background. They built a bunch of housing around here in the 80's and moved some 25 families up to run it. It has sat dormant for the last 20 years, rusting away. Its a shame to see such hopeful infrastructure fail like that.
Nice work on the bucket.:thumbsup I'm the same way, we don't scrap any useful steel that can be used as wear strips on buckets. I've been known to change out dozer cutting edges a little early in order to have material for a bucket that needs repair. Building a dump trailer out of spare parts at the moment - We get a kick out of taking the old and making something new out of it.
what no snow??? this time of year that far north & you can see green grass!!!!
Thanks CM, I greatly enjoy reading about your conquests! I am not much of a hoarder, but when it comes to steel..... well lets just say I cant throw it away Haha, yeah that climate change is really getting us this year Actually it has been a much normaller? year, It reached 40F last week, which I haven't seen in my area since I was a kid. Up in the arctic circle where I used to work if you throw a cup of hot water up into the air it will evaporate into steam and ice before it hits the ground. So we tried that... Not much to do when its that cold except feed the fire.. Heres the full video https://youtu.be/X24R9AzOKAE We have been getting a fair amount of snow this month, we have 3 plow trucks and trying to keep them all up and functioning is like trying to hit a moving target. They dont like being mini dozers... :beatsme When it was really cold I tried moving one of the trucks and the shift tube sheared right off inside the column! oops
That shifter problem is very common on Ford pickups. I've had to replace one before, and I've only owned one Ford.
Yes, after researching it for a moment I found lots of others with the same problem. I was NOT looking forward to taking the dash apart, as in my experience some chintzy plastic piece usually breaks. Once again I was astonished by Youtube and how useful it can be! Watching it being done first is a great help. Good thing too because we have been getting hammered with snow this January. Currently we are working on hauling 1500 CY to a cell tower site, It has been a complete nightmare so far. I thought stripping overburden was tedious, removing 2.5' of snow with a excavator bucket is mind numbing! The ground is just rock hard, trying to scrap out 6' of frost to get to thawed material is a nightmare as well. I don't know what I was thinking, taking on this winter work? We are supposed to start trucking it today, I hope so because it wont be long until it turns back into a frozen block.
We made it through the frost! Once we had a hole going we bailed as much as we possibly could. Turned out to be a very impressive hole! We sucked about 1200 CY out of there. This year I installed a Quicksilver plastic liner from Quadrant and it worked flawlessly. No sticking whatso ever. In the KW we sprayed it down with a 50/50 antifreeze mix and it would last all day. After about 15-20 loads we were getting minimal sticking but would still slide right out. Still have a few hundred more yds to haul but the temps have dropped way down again. Hate running anything below -10f seems that things just start breaking.
Here are a few pics of the liner we put in, Its 1/2" thick with all sorts of silicone and stuff in it. We dont haul asphalt but it is rated. It came in a large roll, had to stretch it out flat for awhile. We re-lined the corners with steel so it would sit flat against them. It is bolted down at the doghouse and then these "flaps" hold it in place along the edges, the rear is free. I personally dont like this, I think sand will eventually migrate underneath it. I originally thought about bolting the rear down as well but going for 60*f inside to 0*f outside, the entire liner will actually contract about 3 inches!! So apparently in needs the room to expand. Guess we will see how it holds up over time
looking good. they used stuff like to lines some of the big drag line buckets around hear. over 100 yards plastic can be wonderful things if used right but can be a bugger to work with. we make plastic rollers and shivs for the big guys they last longer than steel one to do plus the way lighter when you have to get them in to place up on the boom. keep up the good work,
I was wondering how you stopped stuff sticking. I guessed heated body, but much simpler and more cost effective. How do you stop muck freezing in the bucket? Graham
Thanks Mog!, Definitely less resistance. Im hoping to get at least five years out of it. This would make it comparable and better than replacing with steel. The other truck is a KW with a steel box, it is round so that helps a lot but. I spray it down with a 50/50 antifreeze mix and it actually makes the steel look "wet" It last for about 15 loads thereabout before reapplication is needed. I did spray the bucket as well but I dont think it really does much after a few dozen scoops. Thankfully this is straight gravel we are loading. If we are stipping overburden in freezing temps, dirt will stick in the bucket no matter what you do. I will usually cut a stump off high or use a sturdy log to scrape the muck out. Works okay. There is always a bit of chipping at end of day though
Oh well, hoped there was some magic cure you people who work in real cold use. Just have to stick with scraping it off at the end of the day. Not normally a problem, luckily. Graham
Hey alaskaforby4, neat pictures! Always thought the gravel pit side would be a nice niche and addition to excavating work. You can keep that cold though We have liners in both our tandems, mainly for wet clay and silt in the summer. We love them! Usually the load is sliding out a lot sooner, much safer for us. We haul everything in ours, dirt, rock, concrete, demo debris, they've held up really well. One liner is gray, like yours, we have 3 years on it and it looks like it will be good to go for a while yet. We dont haul every day, but it sees the most use. I asked the installer on ours about fastening the back down, expansion/contraction is the reason he told me they dont. Ours havent gotten anything trapped under there, it falls out when you dump. Only thing is, you have to be a little more careful scooping out of the back of them with the excavator The company here that does it has done buckets, articulated truck bodies, all kinds of stuff with it, pretty cool! Stay warm up there!
Thanks 1965, I am looking forward to seeing how long it holds up. Hopefully longer than expected.
This ol beast sure is a pleasure to operate. She has some quirks of her own but once you figure them out it's smooth sailing.
Here are a couple videos of stripping the pit. 'Just love the old iron!
The turboed D339 always had a sound that melted my heart.
nice pics and keep up the good work got my eye on a 17A maybe this spring
D7E sounds good. I stumbled on some of your older videos last night. If you have time i'd love to see some pics of the crewcab.
The ol’ Ford. It’s a pain keeping the wheel bearings and king pins in the front end, hoping to switch over to a 05 Superduty axle this winter... but we’ll see if we have time after maintaining the equipment that actually makes us money!
It's been a while Alaska - good to hear from you!
Thanks, it has been awhile. Today we finished our first borough approved road. We passed with flying colors and the engineer even gave Us a gold star! Haha.
We have been so incredebly blessed over our business. We’ve gone from owner operator to now having 6-8 employees. I’ve transitioned into more of a HR role dealing with people calling in, sick, quitting etc.. It is difficult as I originally started this company to do something I enjoy! I’ve just had to learn on focusing on the smaller enjoyable moments! This road had to be completed by the 15th as they close the ROW due to freezing. I found myself picking rocks more than anything, but I did get to do the ditches! Haha, good times
Nice work Alaska. The material you are using for the road - is that a bank dug material or a quarry processed gravel? We have nothing like that here in the Southeast but I've used similar material in Central America to build roads and pads with that was just dug out of the river. Great material as it was sand/fines to smooth rock 6" and smaller. 5' of it bridged over an old rice field like concrete.
Thanks CM, the area we are in is just strait river rock basically. This particular pit is very low in the 200# mesh sizes, we leave the dirt on top and it mixes in as we dig, it helps bring up the fines and help with compaction. It is very nice having a solid base 18” below the orgainic surface. I took some pictures for you today of our pit wall
Beautiful truck...got to love old ford 4x4s
I'm sorry to say I've been missing this all this time. Great pictures of cool stuff in a beautiful state! Thanks for posting and keep em coming!
The material looks similar to stuff we have around northern inland NSW (Australia) flood plains We have to mix clay with it, or it just unravels real fast.