In the north 800 pounds of sand on my 1/4 mile drive does 1/2 way.. EODMSgt how long is your driveway? Yes my town asked why I needed so much. Town sand truck came up I had done 1/2.. He did front hill to get out.. edit to add if ya need to and rock salt becomes unavailable.. water softener salt pellets are larger and will Swiss cheese the ice so bucket of tractor can break it up..
Good point. I only have 150' of driveway plus another 50' of sidewalks to cover. And who's to say we don't get into a freeze/thaw pattern, or a rapid succession of ice storms. We'll see...
Your warmer but here sand in cold snaps freezes.. so you add/mix a bag of salt in barrel keeps it soo you can shovel it out here I am giving all these gems of knowledge away ok since its FHC
That's what I do too. Well, I didn't mix the salt in at the DPW yard but I mix it in with the 5 gallon buckets I keep on the front porch and in the rear of the house. So far the 55 gallon barrel hasn't frozen yet, but it was bone dry when I put it in.
We had one growing up (our driveway had a good slope) and I don't know why I haven't set up a sand barrel yet. Tired of lugging 5-gallon buckets around. Something like the one below but with more of a lip to cover the opening so the mix doesn't get wet. We have a similar setup where the town has two sites where residents can get a salt/sand mix for free. Not going to lug a 55-gallon drum there to fill it up but would make several trips filling up 5-gallon buckets to put in the drum at home (one of the sand sites is not far from the post office and I have to go there every day anyway since they don't deliver mail in our sleepy little village). Driveway isn't that long but I also have the drive going past the sheds to the wood lot to do. I've learned over the years how to make 5 gallons of sand/salt go a long way and it typically takes about 10 gallons to do the area well enough for safe walking and driving.
99 lbs fell this past week by a dog induced catalyst but there was no stopping the motion since the driveway was ice underneath the thin snow. Sore for a couple of days, is all. I went up to get the mail when we had guests over between Christmas and New Years and fell on the ice, I thought it was in secret but as soon as I got in the house, some of the women asked if I was okay after falling..... "Oh, you saw that, huh?" "We did but watched you get up relatively quick so thought all was well." Yup, there is no more bouncing when you land. I always try to tuck my chin onto my chest as I am going down.
Slipped and fell on a patch of black ice in 2000 and had to have an MCL repair. Slipped on ice while walking dog about 10 days ago. I was going one way and Bucky decided to go the other way while crossing large patch of ice. I didn't go down but twisted the same knee I hurt in 2000. Both MCL and ACL are hurting. Feels like a strain more than a tear. Time will tell. Knee brace back on for now. It helps. Ice sucks. I've used more salt this year than the last 4 years combined. Snow blower hasn't been used yet this year. Leaf blower and cheap shovel have done all the work. Be safe!
This will definitely make life easier. Just need to trim the PTO shaft and then I can finally start hauling a bunch of logs out to where I can more easily process them. Most of the time tractor will probably stay in the configuration with the grapple on the front and the logging winch on the back.
Just got it on the tractor yesterday, and still need to trim and install the PTO shaft, so I haven't been able to test the winch itself (other than free-spooling the cable a bit just to test it). As far as everything else is concerned, I have been impressed. Customer service has been superb compared to most companies I have dealt with. I sent them a message inquiring about the veteran's discount, which they advertise, and immediately received a response and after a couple quick exchanges, a full invoice was sent (all within the span of less than 30 minutes). Shipping was quick (6 days from time of payment) and the winch arrived extremely well packaged within a steel 'cage' (top was bolted down, every piece that might move in transit was tied down with heavy gauge wire, plus thick foam or bubble wrap around all the spots where metal touched metal). The construction of the actual winch appears to be well made and heavy duty, everything was well greased with no burrs, rust, or damage, and the PTO shaft is one of the better I have seen. One more plug for the customer service is that I had paid for the delivery liftgate service. When the FedEx TT arrived, the driver did not want to use the liftgate or pallet jack due to snow and ice on the road. He saw my tractor (which I had smartly already put the pallet forks on) and asked if I could just unload the winch off his trailer with the tractor. No sweat. I figured I would just end up eating the $80 liftgate fee but emailed customer service and let them know what happened and that the liftgate service was not used. No questions or comments from them and I immediately received an $80 refund. Doesn't sound like much, but customer service is a rarity these days and MechMaxx has been excellent with theirs. Is the winch on par with the upper tier companies such as Wallenstein or Fransgard, probably not, however I'm not a full-time logger or someone who processes firewood for commercial sales. I read a lot of reviews, watched a lot of videos, and was impressed with what I saw. To get a skidding winch for a Cat 1 tractor with 200' of 3/8" cable shipped free to my home for barely over 2K is an excellent deal in my book. Can't wait to put it to use as I have a decent amount of timber just waiting to be hauled out of the woods. Without this, I would be cutting everything piece by piece and hauling it out with the ATV/trailer, which is fine and has worked for me for a long time, however at this point in life I am trying to streamline some things and would rather just get the logs to my wood lot and process them there. If we hadn't been hit with the caterpillar apocalypse, I probably would not have purchased a skidding winch as over the years I had already slowly cleared most of the dead and down on my property. Fast forward to now, where I have a large quantity of caterpillar-killed trees, some of them oaks of substantial size, and the skidding winch just makes sense. Additionally, the woman who lives across from me and burns wood as well, has as many, if not more standing dead than I have, and I will have access to some of those trees as well. It would be difficult to access a lot of the dead trees on her wooded property without the skidding winch.
Thanks for the reply. Give us an update once you have used it some. We don't normally skid logs, try to keep them a clean as possible, but when we do tree jobs and need to pull a tree, a winch might give better control.
That's a great price for that winch, and they sure are handy! I bought one last fall (different brand), and it is a game changer. I can drag a lot more stuff out of the woods with a lot less damage than having to go in and get each log individually with the skidsteer. The one thing I don't like, though, is there's a lot more dirt on the wood when you winch it versus picking it up with a grapple. But it's definitely a great tool and a real work saver. Enjoy it!
I agree that skidding logs does add another issue with dirt, however I'm hoping to get a decent quantity moved while there is still snow on the ground so dirt won't be as much of a problem. I already have two log piles to process that don't need to be skidded out of the woods, and if I can get the trees/logs out of the woods that are ready to be moved while there is snow on the ground, that will give me a decent quantity of wood to process for the year. For the future logs that may be skidded out during the non-snow months, it is what it is. Still a better option in my book than the old ATV/trailer route. Glad to know you're enjoying yours! To access a lot of the dead trees on my property I would have had to cut trails in my woods just to get the ATV in, and with the cab on the tractor, it is pretty much a non-starter for getting the tractor in the woods. I agree that there is the trade-off with getting dirt on the logs by skidding them, however I've already dealt with that over the years when winching logs up (or down) steep slopes with the vehicle-mounted or capstan winch. It's a trade-off, but at this point I'll take a little but of forest dirt on skidded logs versus the other options. Which brand winch did you end up getting?
The dirt is certainly not a deal breaker, just a consideration I wanted to point out, and it's really the only bad aspect of using the winch that I've run into. And as you've pointed out, working in snow or on frozen ground helps minimize embedded dirt. I ended up buying a Tajfun 45, in part because there's a dealer a couple hours away and he had a demo at a discount price. I liked that I was able to look it over before committing to the purchase. It was still WAY more expensive than yours, but it's a nice winch and I'm happy with it. When I began looking for a winch the MechMaxx was a little over $3k delivered, and there wasn't a lot of info on them yet, so I was a little leery of buying one sight unseen. I'm glad that you think it's well made, which I believe makes it a very good value. Tajfun also offers a hydraulically-controlled winch that has a remote control, so you can work the winch from the log's position if you want to. That feature would be NICE, but unfortunately it almost doubles the cost of the winch. I could never justify that for my use, no matter how nice it is. LOL
I saw the Taifun brand pop up when I was looking into the winches but had never heard of it so didn't research the brand. I've been chomping at the bit to get a skidding winch since so many of my trees started dying off from the caterpillars a few years ago but kept putting it off due to the cost. When MechMaxx came out with their winch, I wanted to wait until it had been around for a while to be able to read some honest reviews. After reading so many positive reviews on the winch (as well as other MechMaxx items), I felt comfortable purchasing one without being able to see one in person first. Another point that pushed me to finally purchasing my own winch was that when the logger has been here with his skidder (and other heavy equipment), it's costing me around $1500.00 per day. Granted he is doing most of the work but if I wanted him to skid some logs out for me, it's still going to cost that amount to bring the equipment over. For not much more than what I would pay for one day with the skidder I now have my own winch.
Skidding winches for tractors aren't common in my area at all - even equipment dealers will just look at you blankly when you ask about them. Used ones will show up on Craigslist or FB very, very rarely and then the asking price is same as new. And they're usually well-used Farmi or Wallenstein winches, although I think those are pretty solid brands also. So I started from scratch and reviewed all of them. The deciding factor was the location of one within driving distance, and once I looked it over I could see how well made it was. The Tajfun is made in Slovenia, where they do a lot of logging, and Tajfun makes a lot of other neat logging equipment, firewood processors, etc. But I swear, it seems like I missed a good bet on the MechMaxx. And yes, if you rent or hire equipment time often, owning your own quickly seems like a much better deal!
I've been chomping at the bit to get back out and process some firewood but have been waiting for some better weather. While waiting, I'm trying to come up with some kind of plan for the best way to proceed. I currently have five stacks of logs, plus two piles of rounds that are ready to be processed before I even cut any more standing dead. The problem is that with the snow pack, there is really no place to put any more splits, other than finishing up a few stacks I already started. As it is, I'll have to dig everything that needs to be processed out from under the snow and winch a couple piles of logs up from the woods. I have about three and a half cords left in the wood shed, and will probably use only another cord or so unless we have another deep cold spell. Despite my preference for not stacking new splits right into the wood shed, I'm debating about just splitting and stacking into the empty bay in the shed this go-round. That would free up some of the log jam (pun intended) and allow me to clear out some space in the wood lot (and other areas). Before anyone has a cow about stacking splits right into the shed, 99% of what I am processing is standing dead, with only a few small red maples that were green when cut (and those splits would go into an outdoor stack). The vast majority of the rounds and logs are red oak, and most of the trees died off several years ago. Some of the rounds are from four (or more) years ago, and a lot of the logs were from trees felled in the fall of 2024 (after they had already been dead for at least two years). I think between the length of time the wood that would be processed and put in the shed has been dead, that my wood shed gets a lot of air circulation (and a lot of sun), and that I probably wouldn't even need this firewood until possibly spring of '27, I should be okay with splitting and stacking right into the shed. We'll probably have snow on the ground well into April (or possibly later), and then it will turn into mud season, so I would like to process some of this over the next month or so. I would obviously prefer to process everything and put the splits in outdoor stacks, however I find myself with an abundance of logs (something that hasn't happened before) and no place to stack the splits outside until the snow is gone and I can reorganize some things. I'm going into my 17th year of processing firewood here and have to say I haven't run into the problem of not having space before...I guess having too much firewood to process is a good thing. A couple pics of some of the current situation and an older shot of the wood shed showing how open it is to circulation.
