Georgina gets lake-effect snow off Simcoe, and a long rural driveway in Pefferlaw or Virginia can take an hour with a truck plow and still leave you nowhere to put it. A compact track loader solves the where-to-put-it problem because it stacks. Here is how to use one well.
Why a track loader instead of a plow truck
A truck pushes snow; it cannot lift it. By February the banks along a truck-plowed driveway are taller than the plow and there is nowhere left to push. The SVL75-3 pushes, then scoops the pile and stacks it as high as it can reach. Tracks give it traction on ice that a two wheel drive truck does not have, and it turns in its own length, so it clears around parked cars, garages and turnarounds without the back-and-forth.
Attachments
A snow pusher, a wide box on the front, moves the most snow per pass on a long straight driveway. A standard bucket is fine for shorter driveways and is what you use to stack. A snow blade angles to windrow snow to one side. For a small commercial lot, a pusher for the open area and a bucket for the piles is the usual pair. Tell us which you want when you book and they come on the trailer.
Technique
Clear early and often; six inches moves easily and eighteen does not. Push with the pusher or bucket floated just above the gravel on a gravel driveway, or you will be spreading your driveway across the lawn in April. Windrow to the downwind side so drifting works for you. Stack piles where meltwater will run away from the house and the driveway, not back across it. Leave room for the next storm's pile, because there will be one.
Safety in the cold
Let the hydraulics warm up before working hard. Tracks on glare ice still slide, so go slow on slopes, especially with a full bucket raised. Keep the bucket low when travelling. Know where the septic bed, the well head and the culvert are before the snow hides them, and never stack on the septic bed.
Renting for the winter
A monthly rental at $3,500 covers a season's worth of storms for a rural property, a small plaza, a church lot or a farm, and the machine is there for the ice storm when the plow guy is not. Many customers rent November to March and use it for firewood, manure and fence work between storms. We deliver across Georgina, Brock, Uxbridge and Kawartha Lakes.
Call or text 905-251-2521 before the first snow to reserve a machine for the season.