Both could be made to work, and there are lots of different opinions, with none of them being wrong.
My thoughts (for what they count): For long driveways with lots of snow, buckets are a complete pain, as you can only push so much, then you have to carry and dump it. If you have a lot of snow, this can take a lot of time and really wear on you (and your clutch).
Blades are only a pain if trying to push straight because (as mentioned) you can only go so far before you have to push it off to the side. But I don't know why you'd ever have a blade pushing straight and not angled.
We now use blowers at both farms, but before we had them we had best luck with a rear blade set at a good angle to plow off to one side, and the sway chains tightened up to make sure it goes past the tractor wheel on that side. For drifts up to about 8'' deep, you could drive forward with it (using either our Kubota 4WD or a Ford 5000 with chains). Up one side of the driveway, down the other, and you're done. Might do three or four passes at the start of the year to make it nice and wide so it doesn't crowd in by the end of the year. In really, really deep snow would you have to go backwards, which was a pain, but as long as you had the blade angled you didn't have to stop. During a heavy snowfall it was far better to go out once or twice while it was snowing and take a few minutes to clear the driveway before it built up too much.
We use the blowers now because there are a couple of other driveways we do where a blade wouldn't work (short, awkwardly-shaped), but for our own long driveways I often wish I had the blade back on. In 8'' or shallower snow you could clear the whole driveway in less than 5 minutes driving forward with a blade behind you, whereas the blower is slower, makes you drive backwards, and covers you in snow if the wind's blowing the wrong direction and you don't have a cab.
This post was edited by DanielW on 09/13/2023 at 07:45 am.
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