Plowed for brother for 5 years. Here it’s not worth neck ache!! How you push banks with seat belt on is beyond me. Hit bank seat belt locks and bam whip lash! here everyone has 1/2 ton with plow. Money is at mid March storms those long drive ways that have been plowed banks can’t be pushed and too narrow for car.. big TLB pay for itself in week!
That’s one nice thing about a loader mounted plow. Pushing banks bank is pretty easy, at almost any height
Been plowing for almost 20years now. I can't wait for the day i hear the word snow and can just sit back and watch it fall (from my house lol). Plowing for a school has totally ruined it for me. My bosses are clueless
I am head of maintenance for a small school district with just one location. It’s a 65 acre property with two large lots and lots of driveways and walks. And of course playgrounds. I am fortunate that a good friend of mine was able to come on board a few years back. Both of us from construction industry with 100’s of hours of skid steer and equipment operating. We rent a skid steer by the year, currently a Kubota S65 I believe. Run a standard bucket, a 88” bucket, and a 8’ snow pusher on it mostly. I have a 8 1/2’ Hiniker V plow on a 3/4t crew Chevy gasser and am amazed what I can get down with it. We recently had a large snowfall for our area, about 16” at once, and we had it all cleared in 8 hours. beat thing that happened for me was a small snow when I was out for surgery a few years back, prior to hiring my fiend, and our Supt tried using the truck and plow. He’s pushed for bonuses for us based on time pushing snow ever since. I enjoy it mostly but when it turns into day after day it can get old.
Plow on my 150. It does the job. If we are getting a foot or more, I’ll plan on going 2 maybe 3 times. Don’t go out for anything less than 3”. All resi driveways/sidewalks. And at the house I have a 2025r tlb with a 6 foot pusher that does the trick. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
I swear, every time it snows they panick like they've never seen snow before. To make it even worse, my boss seems to forget how many years I've been doing this and wants to show us how it's done. He hops in a truck and pushes snow every which way then i end up spending hrs cleaning up his mess.
jtstromsburg sounds like you have a good crew and the right equipment for the job. I bet the superintendent didn't want to get in a plow truck after he got his turn at it lol. The school I work at has somewhere in the area of 120,000+ sqft of parking lots, probably a mile of driveways and the same in sidewalks i swear. We have an 05 f350 w/meyer lot pro 8.5', an 03 f350 w/western pro plus 8', an 08 f450 dump w/western pro plus 9', a kubota rtv1100c w/ western impact v blade and a kubota 6040 tractor with a 6' bucket and 10ft push box. Half of the time they don't even have enough employees show up to run the equipment. It's ridiculous.
I've plowed off and on for about 25 years. The only thing I havent plowed in is a loader. Highways in a tri axle dump were the worst. Boring as hell with way too much downtime sitting in the cab of the truck. Streets and commercial were easy, but loooong hours. I found I was happiest when I ditched all that and just had a small residential route. I only did it as a side hustle, so no need to have too many customers. I could go out in the morning after a small storm and still be on the road for my job at a normal time. I think it took me about 2 hours start to finish. I used to run Craigslist adds all winter and would pick up a few extra accounts here and there if they made sense. Those adds really paid off during the blizzards. Once there was 2-3 feet of snow on the ground they would realize they didnt want to deal with it, and would pay dearly to have me take care of it for them. I think I averaged about $200 an hour during those storms. I havent plowed anything more than a few of my neighbors driveways for a yearly dinner gift card since I moved to NH 4.5 years ago. I might change that next year though and pick up the contract to plow the 3ish miles of road in my neighborhood. Between that and the vehicle allowance I get at work, it would pay for my new truck. I just need to explore insurance needs / costs.
I’ve only ever done residential but a 6” storm will have me out anywhere from 8-15 hours or so and as you mentioned, the per hour works out nicely!
I plow in rotation 3 properties at work. I like to use the Ford F 350 with dump body for long rows in parking lots. When those are done, I spend the rest of the day at regular work site behind a snowblower. I don't mind it except when the wind is sideways. We just picked up a new sidewalk machine. Nice to be in a heated machine, once in a while, but it is loud, even with hearing protection. It is a huge labor saver though. Maybe two miles of walkways all said and done.
You’ll love the ventrack. How many different attachments did you get? You can buy just about anything for them but pricey. You get it at MTE turf?
I plow the local airport, this is their truck. Old highway department rig, it’s getting kinda ratty but it gets the job done. And I’m used to running old worn out equipment at work. I also use my terex 70 skid steer at the airport and do one of the local motels with the terex. It only has an open cab = no heat, so that sucks when it gets down below the teens. But that’s also why I could almost afford it.
We have the thrower and blade for it. I am not sure where the boss got it from, but it was southern NH. There are something like 30 attachments.
We used to have an old Bobcat 753 with an open cab at a job I used to have. I used to run it was a moving blanket on my lap. I could go out and stack snow for about 20 minutes, then Id have to bring it in the shop to melt all the snow that would fall in the cab and block the foot controls from working.
I see how that could happen. Fortunately I don’t get to much snow in the cab, anymore! My biggest problem is keeping my hands warm
