Question for tractor owners

[Jay Jolliffe]

I would like to know the pro's & con's of a snow blower vrs a snow blade on a tractor...I caretake a house with a very long driveway. The owner wants to get a midsize tractor with a bucket to do the driveway. I'd like to know what would work best. I live in mid coast Maine & we can get 2' of snow at times....

[David G Baker]

I have a walk behind snow blower and a tractor with a back blade and a bucket. The snow blower does a very clean neat job of clearing a driveway. I have problems with the snow blower when the snow is very wet and heavy. I have a 300 foot long driveway that is dirt and gravel. The back blade frequently scrapes a lot of the dirt and gravel and deposits the mess where you pile your snow. If you can wait until you have an inch or so of frozen snow covering your drive then most of the mess is avoided but you still have piles of snow that can get pretty high. A front bucket is pretty much useless until you need to move the piles of snow to another location. I have started using my back blade more often as I get older due to getting out of shape and lazy. My snow blower can handle 21 inches of snow if it is pretty dry. The best option I have seen is if you get a mid size tractor and a hydraulic controlled front blade like the snow removal trucks use.

[David Weaver]

If you can get 2 feet of snow at one time and you're working by yourself, you probably want a utility tractor with a PTO driven snowblower.

We have a large walk behind snow blower, but when we get the rare snow above 20 inches or so, someone has to work ahead of it with a shovel.

[Randy Rizzo]

I live in the wilds of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. For the past 10 years I have used a small skid steer, a Case 1840 with a dirt bucket. The drive is about 300 feet long and a fairly steep hill to boot. Gravel and iron ore mostly. I need to wait until the ground is well frozen before running this thing up and down the drive to avoid tearing it up. But, once it's frozen it does a pretty good job. Might take an extra pass or two with the bucket versus a blade, but with the bucket you have the ability to stack higher than with a blade. Last year that was a real help as we got a lot of snow and I was running out of places to put it. Or if you need to move a pile it's easy enough to do. It is also maneuverable enough that I can clear the parking pad in front of the garage with no problem. The only problem that I have encountered is when it gets icy, without chains it's a no go. So I keep the chains on year around. That is why you need to wait until the ground is frozen before using it.

[Ed Aumiller]

It is a lot easier to PUSH snow with a blade, so recommend a front mounted blade on a utility tractor...
I have a blade on the 3 point hitch... for just a few inches or so, it is not bad... but when 12" and up, I end up reversing the blade and pushing the snow (very hard on neck when constantly backing up)
A pto snow blower would be ideal....
My drive is about 3/10 mile and mostly on hillside... looking to get a front mounted blade for the JD tractor fairly soon...

[Lee Schierer]

You just need to remember that when you push snow into a pile, that pile becomes an immovable object until it melts. If you don't push the snow far enough the first time your drive way gets smaller and smaller with each snow fall. A Bucket may help, but, you'll need some power to bust into frozen snow piles. With a snow blower, you can keep blowing snow up and over any high spots along the side of the driveway.

I have a Simplicity 8 Hp snow blower that handles the heavy wet snow we get along Lake Erie in the snow belt. We average over 80" of snow per year, usually the heavy wet kind. In the five years I've owned it, it clogged once when I tried to blow slush through it fresh out of the garage

[Val Kosmider]

You didn't mention what sort of surface you are clearing....dirt/gravel, crushed stone or blacktop. That can make a LOT of difference in your choice of implements.

Assuming the surface is hard enough to run a blade over, or use a snow blower without fear of running too many stones through it, those are your best options. "Plowing" snow with a bucket is a real pain. It is great to move the piles, but for clearing long stretches you get one long run, then a series of short pushes which move the snow off to the side...off to the side...off to the side....you end up with a hacked up mess, if visuals mean anything to you.

In my prior life I owned a JD 750. It is a utility tractor, four wheel drive, and will push down a house if you can keep the traction going. I had both a bucket and a hydraulic plow--both up and down pressure. It had a 'float' setting, but the blade was so heavy I had to have larger shoes made for the plow to keep it from digging up my asphalt. It was good for plowing snow, especially the long runs where it really got the snow rolling out the side when you angled the blade left or right. I would say that unless you have a four wheel drive tractor, pushing heavy snow can be a chore. Two wheel drive probably requires a set of chains.

And then, when I lived in the snow capital of the entire united states where we easily got over 100" of the stuff every winter (the last year I was there it was over 200"), and lake effect storms of two and three feet were common, I relied on a walk behind Ariens snow blower. The thing was a horse, and would belch out the snow. Nine or ten HP, the only thing that slowed it down were the frozen walls at the end of the driveway which were many times four or five feet high from where the town plow came through. That drive was asphalt, and just a little bit of sun after the storms and the thing melted down quickly to bare pavement after a good blow job .

Every situation is local, but if budget is no problem, I would suggest a utility tractor with a blower--front mount, not the rear, you will never get your neck straightened out--followed by a utility tractor, four wheel drive, with a front mounted plow; and lastly, a front mounted bucket. Diesel is fine if the machine sits in a warmer garage, otherwise you need to be able to plug it in.

Have fun--clearing serious can range from everything from real joy, to complete agony. With a utility tractor you can choose an enclosed cab which protects you pretty well from the elements. Not so much with a walk behind snow blower. MY BIL, who is just west of Camden, has all three. I think he uses the blower mostly around the house, and the plow for the 300' driveway.

Quite honestly, when you are dealing with 18" of heavy glop, nothing works wonderfully. The blower struggles, the plow cant push it, and the bucket is like trying to paint a room with a 3" foam brush.

[Jay Jolliffe]

I guess I did fail to say what the driveway was. For about 1/4 mile it's reclaim & the end is about 400' of 3/4 stone. I was told by the tractor people the the 70'' snow blower would have no problem with the snow. Wet or dry....the tractor has 41hp so I hope it works. They'll tell you anything to sell you something.

[Jerome Stanek]

I have both a walk behind snow blower and tractor with a bucket and 6 foot back blade. I can clean my drives quicker with the blower than the 6 foot blade and I don't get a stiff neck from the blower.

[Kevin Bourque]

Here on the farm we use a movable front blade on our tractor to clear snow from the driveways. It's only a problem if we get new snow before the old snow melts.

[Jim Matthews]

Jay, aren't you out in the bay?

Are there any commercial outfits doing driveway clean outs?
I'm also Coastal, and the snow we get is heavy enough to clog a thrower.

I'm thinking a front mounted blade is less likely to foul.

You'll want chains, too.

[Jay Jolliffe]

I'm on an Island....There is a bucket on the front of the tractor.....The tractor's not bought yet. Looking at it on Monday so I'll see what the options are. Having to back up 1/4 mile with a blower might not be easy. The tractor were looking does not have a detachable bucket so I don't know how the blower would mount on the front......

[Jim Becker]

I have a Kubota BX series and use my front end loader to clear the occasional spot of snow we typically get around here. But if it's a lot, it takes a very long time to clear snow with a bucket. The FEL just isn't ideally suited to clearing snow. I've never been a fan of snowblowers for no good reason, but they really do a good job for what they are designed to do. They are just more complicated mechanically than a blade.

The investment in the tractor is a great idea for your homeowner...and it can be very versatile around the property year 'round. (mine has paid for itself many times over) But again, a blower or a blade will be better suited for dealing with a long, snowy driveway, with the blower having an edge when things get deep. And yea, a front mounted blower is easier to use than a rear PTO mounted blower because of the required direction of travel...

[Matt Meiser]

With gravel I wouldn't want a snow blower. Snow and gravel stick together. Its bad enough to get the gravel off the grass along the driveway in the spring--snow blower is going to throw it a lot further. I use a FEL and a back blade to do my driveway, mostly the back blade. If the snow is really deep (we once had a drift across the driveway over 3' deep I can actually dig it out with the loader. I can also use it to push snow straight forward once the bucket is full which is handy in some areas. And if we get snow after snow after snow, I can use it to pile up snow in the turnaround almost 6' high. But the back blade does most of the work. A tip an old timer told me is to actually run the back blade backward until the gravel is good an frozen to the driveway. It pushes most of the gravel down instead of digging in--not perfect but a lot better. I've also read that replacing the cutting edge with heavy rubber works well but I haven't found any yet.

I also usually end up plowing our road shoulder to shoulder in front of our property to keep the plow trucks from filling in our drive and the drive across the street. Also usually go down to the corner about a 1/4 mile 2 passes to clear a wide enough path for my wife (and the neighbors lucky enough to live south of me) to the corner since we live on a dirt road that usually won't get plowed for 8-24 or more hours. For the road which is better packed, I spin the blade around since it throws the snow better in that mode. If I had it to do all over again, I'd probably think about a plow--a friend has one and it works well. Wouldn't want to give up the loader though so it would be a tough choice.

I can usually do my driveway (maybe 1/8 mile total) plus what I do on the road in about an hour.

[Ken Platt]

I have a Kubota compact utility, with a front-mount snowblower. A couple of times when we had a snowfall and I didn't have the blower mounted, I tried to use the FEL to clear the driveway, and I cannot for the life of me figure out how people do this in any effective fashion. I have sworn to myself that I will never ever try that again. Of course, I may just be a klutz with the loader.

I would not want to have to use a rear-mounted snow removal device, but many folks do. I do have a regular hydraulic snowplow also (came as a package with the tractor), but have never used it because the snowblower works so darn well, I never felt the need for anything else. My driveway is asphalt, though. About 300 feet long.

Whatever else you get, I highly recommend some sort of cab. It makes all the difference between being miserable, cold, wet and wind-whipped, and being reasonably comfortable. I made one from a golf-cart cover (this is a popular workaround, I'm sure a google search will turn up lots of info). Cost me around $100 and some leftover 2x and ply scraps to make a support.

Hope this helps.

Ken