Re: Front snow blade shoes

Posted by JRM on October 16, 1999 at 13:46:02 from (152.163.207.77):

In Reply to: Front snow blade shoes posted by Mainbrace on October 15, 1999 at 17:46:44:

I'm a commercial plower with that has a few gravel parking lots and drives. I've plowed for about 17 years and have found the following to be helpful. We use this advice in training our new plow operators.

When plowing gravel in wet snow, the snow will roll off of the blade kinda like a jelly roll, with this rolling action you can pick up gravel even with the blade up a little bit.

Shoes will sometimes dig in if the gravel is not frozen and more than an inch or two thick.

If you plow with a back blade, go backwards. Use the blade to pull snow away from garage doors, etc., then push backwards off to the side. Don't try to push the whole drive in 1 pass. Push until the blade loads up and then dump the snow off to the side. We use a 4x4 tractor in condominuim drives with a box scraper on the rear and bucket on the front. Very efficient way to go.

#4 Best advice on gravel is to make a couple of passes over the snow with the blade up. This will pack the snow under your tires and allow the plow shoes to ride on the hard pack, minimizing any other problems associated with plowing gravel. In lighter snows, you can back drag gravel drives since the back edge of your blade will tend to ride over the gravel and not have the tendency to scrape the gravel.

If you have any other ?'s please feel free to e-mail me.

John

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