Snow plowing with tractor vs. pickup

I want to either set up my tractor (a MF 135) or buy a pickup for snow plowing of an unpaved access road. This road is gravely and not too smooth. It is an old logging road. Anybody have advice as to advantages/disadvantages for using a tractor versus pickup. My tractor is a 2X2 1974 Massey Ferguson that I would have to outfit with tire chains and buy a plow.

Having plowed snow both ways I vote for the pickup truck. Sitting in a warm cab beats getting soaking wet and a stiff neck from twisting to see the back blade.

Chains & plow sounds like the cheap, better way to go!

using a tractor ,advantages; you can get into smaller places and overall manouvering is better, you already have the tractor, disadvantage is its 2 wd, and will be cold, pickup takes more room to get around,you will have another vehicle to maintain and maybe insure if you use it on the roads,i have had 2 different plow trucks both worked fine but expencive on u joints ect, but you will be warm, if the heater works

A 4x4 pickup has much better traction than most farm tractors on ice and snow , as I put a shovel full of cinders under a pinto's tires and helped a 806 out of a icy ditch one cold day

Pickup or cab tractor has my vote.

I have both. I have an beat up, but healthy, '78 Chevy 1/2 ton 4X4 with a plow on it. I don't bother putting plates or insurance on it anymore as I just use it off road for plowing snow, cutting firewood, etc.

I also have a professionally built Vee snow plow that replaces the bucket on the loader on my H Farmall by pulling three pins. With chains and a heat houser, it will move a lot of snow, but it's SLOW.

Cleaning out a 300 yard driveway and the farmyard, I can do in an hour with the pickup what would take all day with the H. Plus, the pickup has a helluva heater in it. Most years, I don't even bother to put the plow and chains on the H.

I also have an 8 foot rear blade for my D19 diesel, but I usually park that old crate in November and forget about it till March or April.

If I could have only one of the three for moving snow, I'd pick the pickup, hands down.

I should have mentioned, I always run the transfer case on the pickup in Low when I'm plowing snow. It's a lot easier on the transmission and driveline.

I have done it both ways and the tractor only has an advantage if you need to stack the snow high with the front end loader. Otherwise I would rather sit in the nice warm pick-up and plow.

Tractor/plow is pretty useless when the snow gets real deep. The road I live on is on top of a mountain and all dirt. I plow half a mile at times on an very steep road - just to get in and out. I keep one truck with chains on all four wheels setup for plowing my road. I keep a rear three-point hitch snowblower on my tractor for those times when the snow gets too deep for plowing with my truck.

The only way I'd do it with the tractor is if I was broke or I had a plow on the front of the tractor.
I know a guy that rigged a plow on the front of his 135 many years ago. With a blower on the back and chains he pushed a lot of snow with that tractor. It was probably slow, but it did work.
A back blade would be useless on that light tractor though. The front blade allowed him to push and he got the maximum weight transfer to the rear wheels that way. It did work well.

Rod

4WD kubota yuppie tractor with a cab and loader worked well last year. It went through out pathetic central ohio drifts like nothing, and it worked fast. You can see where youre going and stay warm doing it. Haveing never driven a truck, i cant say anything about them.

Pushing snow just makes snowbanks that cause more snow to drift in.
A snowblower gets rid of the snow.

If you use the tractor, you will want fluid in the tires in addition to the chains. As others stated, it will be cold. I have a 7.5' Meyers truck plow on my 5500 lb Case DO. It works pretty much the same as a 4x4 1/2 ton pickup. It doesn't go as fast, but I don't have to ram the banks to push them back. A 135 is a little bit lighter and not as powerful as my Case, but it should work fine for you, if you dress warmly and are not in a hurry.

B&D has the right idea: snowblower. It doesn't make banks (that cause drifts) and drifts don't stop the blower like they stop plows.

i do the same thing. tire chains on every tire with limited slip rear diff, detriot locker front end. you can really push the snow, or break things. i ordered a new V plow a couple weeks ago, beat the stuffing our of the 9 ft straight blade last winter.
just my 2 cents worth
johndeeregene

I have plowed snow both ways. Sitting in a warm pickup cab is a lot more comfortable.

But I didn't like running around with that big plow on the front of the pickup all winter. It made an already long vehicle that much longer. I also think that plowing is pretty hard on a pickup. And buying a pickup is a huge investment these days.

When the guy who had the pickup and plow died, I lost access to it. So for years, I have plowed snow with my Ford 641D. I have an extremely heavy rear blade that I usually plow with going forward, with the blade at an angle. It works very well that way, especially if I can get some speed up to throw the snow a little bit. It isn't very hard to turn the blade around and plow backwards. Amazing how much snow it will push going backwards, but it is hard on the neck to keep looking behind the tractor all the time. I also use the frontend loader to pile up snow banks.

I learned pretty quick that a 2 wheel drive farm tractor without chains was pretty useless in the snow, especially when the snow was packed down to ice.

Last winter we had a huge amount of snowfall--just a couple of inches less than the alltime record. We were on vacation when the biggest storm hit, and my son couldn't get the diesel tractor to start, as the power was out. So when I got home, there was a huge buildup of snow. The power came back on, and the old diesel machine was soon running. I ended up spending about 5 hours getting the yard opened up enough so we could get in and out more or less normally. But then it snowed a whole bunch more, and I began having trouble finding places to put the snow.

A neighbor came over with his now deceased father-in-law's Kubota. He had unburied the snow blower that had been in their barn unused for about 20 years and put it on the Kubota. In about 15 minutes time, my neighbor widened my driving area to as big as I ever need it. The Kubota is a much smaller tractor than mine, but worked great for that purpose. My neighbor had never seen the snow blower before that day and was having fun learning to use it.

Over the last number of years, we have not got nearly as much snow as we used to in the 70's and 80's. But last winter, it made up for it, and what had been working very well to move the snow we had been getting was just not really adequate to deal with the huge volume of snow we got. I was sure glad my neighbor's father in law bought the snow blower attachment way back when, and that they had never got rid of it, even though then had not needed to use it all those years.

So I guess the answer depends on how much snow you get and how much money you want to spend. A decent rear blade for a tractor you already have and a set of chains should cost quite a bit less than $1000. I have seen used pickup plows for about that amount, but it would cost some time and money to mount it up on an existing 4x4 pickup (I wouldn't even consider using a 2wd), and a plow is not a handy thing to have on the front of your truck if you drive it around much. A snow blower is the ultimate snow mover, but for my area, it isn't something I would need very often. I don't know what my neighbor has tied up in their snow blower, but I would guess several thousand. And it was never mounted on the tractor during the preceding 20 years. How much do you want to spend?

Last winter I was having hydraulic problems with my tractor, and the loader didn't work well at all. I finally found the internal leak and fixed it. Hopefully next winter will have more normal snowfall...and my existing snow moving system will be adequate. Good luck with your choice.

I have plowed snow with a 4wd compact utility tractor, plowed with a plow on a 1 ton 4wd truck, and blown snow with a blower on a 3PH.

[b:654c4848f0]Truck pros and cons:[/b:654c4848f0] For comfort and speed you simply can not beat a truck. OTOH, if you're looking for a way to tear up the frontend of a truck, mudbogging or rock crawling is about the only thing worse than plowing. It's hard on the transmission too (tho that can be mitigated by good technique) and hard on gas, and most plows are a PITA to put on/take off and you do NOT want it on there unless you are actually plowing. This was on a 1 ton 4wd. I wouldn't even consider putting a plow on anything lighter than a 3/4 ton.

[b:654c4848f0]Tractor and plow:[/b:654c4848f0] Easier on the equipment, way cheaper on fuel. My tractor was too light, didn't take much to stop it. Weight and chains are pretty much a given. COLD! Plows, whether tractor or truck mounted, stack snow up, and in a long winter you WILL wind up running out of places to put snow and have to move it with a bucket.

[b:654c4848f0]Tractor and blower:[/b:654c4848f0] Nearly as fast as plowing. No worries about where to put the snow. No ramming drifts. Easier on the equipment. Downsides would be snow blowing around, looking over your shoulder, picking up the odd rock, tendency to plug in wet snow if you get in a hurry. And cold, of course.

I just bought a new truck and couldn't bring myself to put a plow on it and beat it like I did my last fullsize truck. I bought a used blower and put it on my tractor.

IMHO, if you had a frontmount blower and a heated cab, it'd be the ideal snowmoving setup. However, my rear mount with no cab is working fine for me, and looking over my shoulder isn't near the pain in the neck (literally...) I thought it would be. At less than 1/3 the cost of a new plow for my truck, way less than 1/10th the fuel and I'm still on my first set of front tires on the truck, I'm a happy guy.

And I live in Maine. It does snow occasionally up here...

For the 1-2' of snow (at a time) that we get here in the midwest, our '46 JD B does the job quite well. It is a little breezy but I still enjoy it.

We have chains for it, but have only needed them for the freak 3'+ snows that we get once in a great while. A little traction braking is needed, and if you catch a big drift you might have to raise the blade a little and hit it again to finish it off.

It is also nice to be able to see exactly what you are doing depthwise so you don't have to rearrange the gravel in the spring. Plus, I think in our contorted driveway you would spend more time trying to turn the truck around than actually moving snow...


For an access road, just do one pass with the blade angled to the side, turn around and come back and you are done.

"An old logging road" might mean it's in a wooded area. If so, drifting shouldn't be a problem as it would be in an open area. Blowing has definite advantages but it takes power (maybe more than your 135 can muster) and blowers have moving parts that wear out and get damaged giving you more downtime and $$$$. We used a homemade snowpusher on the back of an AC WD for over 20 years. It worked so good that I built another one for a newer, bigger tractor and use that as much as the blade. Advantage of blade or pusher on the back is that you can then have a loader on the front and the blade or pusher on the back will give you some added weight on the rear end. And, you can put both ends of the tractor to good use for the task at hand.

Not when it's completely dry and blows right back into the path you just made!

4wd pickup w/plow is the way to go, no doubt about it. 2wd tractor, no cab, with rear mounted blade is the absolute worst way, front mount considerably better. Blades are better than loaders up front. I have a Case 40XT skid-steer with heated cab and hydraulic angle plow, and still use my 1986 chevy K-20 with meyers 8' plow. Truck is faster and I can drink coffee. Once the drifts get over about 3' deep for an extended distance, skid-steer w/bucket is better.

I can always tell when we get a pickup in trade that has had a plow on it. Not from the holes for the plow mount but the fact that the front suspension is completely worn out. Ball joints all steering linkage, p/s system flush are a given. Tractor with blower would be the best performer.

Try turning the chute to blow downwind instead of upwind.

Lots of good insight in the replies here, but here's my $0.02.

I have an old snap-coupler snow blower. That means I can only run it on my old allis tractors (no cabs). Even though it has a turnable spout, I still end up looking like the abomidable snow man every time I run the thing.

The worst part about it though is the mess it makes out of a gravel road. In the spring there is a solid coating of gravel out in my fields, pasture, and lawn. With a plow/blade that mess can be mostly pulled back into the road in the spring.

Anyway, I would recommend the truck with a plow. I know I would like to find a plow for my truck before snow flies.

Check out the "snowsport utility plow" from realtruck.com. no hydraulics,but i think it works great for me.1000' foot driveway.I ordered the angle blade model.

nothin beats a 4wheel drive tractor and a blade you can plow full bore and never get stuck i knocked over a 200 foot hard drift last winter with it i also got a 4320 with a cab and its grea with its little degelman blade the only thig is if you use a 2wd tractor get some big wheights for the back orelse whenever you lift the blade to back up ull be stuck and get your self a good set of duals