Spring Road Work

The other yellow. Winter makes a mess of our gravel state roads. Always happy to see this big fella tuning things up. I am amazed at how fast he can travel while grading. Takes me a couple hours to do my 3/4 mile driveway

Those graders were built right here in Goderich ON about 20 miles from where I live. Factory had been building road maintenance equipment for close to a century. Closed several years ago; production went to Pennsylvania I think; heard that that plant was moving to Mexico.

Ben

I go up the Parr Line , through Holmesville and past the pit where they used to put the graders through all their tests. Its too bad that Volvo moved the plant,there were about 750 jobs in Goderich before it moved.

Not sure about graders, but I have run several different excavators, and the Volvos (especially the new ones) are WAY better than the others! JD, Komatsu (garbage), Hitachi, Linkbelt.... None hold a candle to the Volvos. Never spent any time in the modern Cats though, I suspect that they MUST be nice!!!

Any relation to Craig? Bought a Blazer from him when he worked at HMP
Ben

Our county has one of the latest Cats as the newest of 16 units. It's awesome! Doesn't even have a steering wheel, just a joystick on each side of the seat, with all controls for steering and controlling the blade in the joysticks.

The fellow who operates it says it takes a bit of getting used to, kinda like a zero turn mower, but he says he'd hate to have to go back to one of the others where you have a steering wheel and have to constantly reach for levers to control the blade.

BTW, we have a Case unit and a New Holland unit that are perpetual "hanger queens", spending more time in the shop than on the road. We plan to dump those two within the next year.

Who in there right mind would turn a 16 year old loose on an excavator? Enough experience to rate different brands, BS!

My brother is running a new 966 loader with joystick, said its great, their was a post here the other day guy had to much of a load at the pit,
this has scale built in he can see how much a load in the bucket.

Our local municipality used to run Cats until they went to joystick control, drivers like them for road maintainance, but struggled with them when plowing snow due to the speed of snowplow ing... They have Deeres now.

Our gravel roads get graded about twice a month, year 'round. The GOOD operators have learned that traveling TOO fast will not result in a nice, smooth road.

The same guy that turned a 12, 13, 14, and 15 year old loose on an excavator!

I don't think that is all that uncommon in many areas. You turn them loose with other equipment worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in the fields.

I started pulling shoulders last fall, Been rebuilding crown since it thawed. I have got 5% crown and good slope to the ditch on about 95% of my township. The rest may take a shoulder disk or some cleanup with the ditching crew.
The speed you can grade changes with the moisture content of the aggregate, blade angle, condition of cutting edges,blade pitch, degree of articulation, tire lean, tire pressure, and the shape of the road. It also changes by the minute. There is no speed that works all the time. And you can make a dry road look like glass but it won't hold up to traffic for a day. Moisture is the key.
My rig is a remanufactured 140H, the New M's won't fit in our old shed. We are scheduled to get a new shed next year and then I will finally get an M with joysticks. The guys that been here along time are resistant to the joysticks and want their H's. I have run so many things with joysticks I can't wait to get rid of the 13 levers and steering wheel.

Nothing but Cat here in our county, they had Deere's but they were continually blowing head gaskets, So back to Cat

It was a good feeling to get all this snow equipment off so I could grade again

I operated a road grader for 23 years for a local municipality. started with an old champion with a 671 detroit and a nasty shifting trany with rocker switches on the side of the shifter for hi and low the other for reverse
I got treated at the end with a brand new 2007 volvo that was unbelievable. the hydraulics were very quick and responsive, very nicely laid out for the operator with the low cab, and lots of power. It had a power shift transmission that was amazing. It would go 50 km an hr snow plowing. and my boss found out one day trying to catch up with me that it would do 50k in reverse. the mirrors and visibility was perfect.
I could grade twice as fast if I wanted but there is a proper speed to go that would make the road turn out like glass.
If you went to fast in the spring the moldboard would start to chatter and it would be hard to get them bumps out of the road all year. I really enjoyed grading the roads in the early spring but when it was time to be in the field planting corn I could barely wait to get home to get into a tractor. My last Volvo was a great machine and one of the last good ones made before they closed the plant. Its good to hear there are other local guys reading on this site.