I got a stable full of equipment; tractor, bulldozer and skidder, not to mention chainsaws, but today I finished the last few off. With this weather, my bulldozer will not start: PERIOD. Nice tight 4 stroke engine, lots of moving metal parts, deep reduction final drives...grrrrrrrrrr...this cold is just too much for the old girl. The Kubotaa tractor is a lot newer, but the starter just gave up the ghost. Its not a battery or cold start issue, the starter just needs to be rebuilt. Of course I cannot do that until the parts shop is open tomorrow. But that is okay, I got a skidder so I finally decided to get that started. It took two times of jumping it with my truck, a full can of starting fluid, but ultimately it started...but barely. It would not even push snow it had such frozen fuel filters. I dumped some 911 into it, got it running okay, but it took a full hour for it to run right. Then I headed up into the woods to cut some trees. 2 twitches in, I ran over a stump and heard a pretty good bang, so checked everything out and and the main driveshaft bearing had snapped. It still worked, so I figured I would finish up my twitch. True to my name I lodged a tree, and in doing so pinched the blade on my bar so hard it kinked the chain of my chainsaw. For those keeping track, that is: Bulldozer Tractor Skidder Chainsaw ALL Broken down. 2018 is not looking good and it is only 14 hours into it!
Look at it this way, you got all the bad luck out of the way in the first 14 hours. The rest of the year is going to be smooth sailing!
Sadly, that is just how I feel lately. Health, equipment, energy levels...about the only thing I got left is Katie, trees and the kids.
This weather really stinks. We work at least 4 times harder & so does our equipment to produce a third to half as much production.
