[Stonehenge]

At what point do you decide that you're better off renting a dozer for the project you have coming up? Is it based on size? Specific task?

I ask because I had my first experience on a dozer today, and I was pretty disappointed.

I'm sure part of it had to do with my lack of experience in the saddle, but it seemed like the machine should have been able to do more than it did.

We rented it to do some rough grading on a 1+ acre lot because I thought I'd be far more productive with that machine than I would with our little skidsteer, given the volume of dirt I was going to be moving.

The thing kept bouncing on me, digging in then coming out, digging in again, leaving these 9' wide waves of dirt in the grade. And for it's size, it seemed to struggle pushing a thimbleful more than a yard of dirt. After a few hours I swallowed my pride (and about $500), parked the dozer and got back into our skidder, and started making better progress.

Are there tips anyone can offer about how to better operate these things, or possibly choose a different machine, or is this what I can expect from any dozer?

[mrusk]

I had a deer 450lpg on rent for 3 weeks earlier this year. Honestly, i could not run it for the life of me. I felt the same exact way about it as you did. Then i let my foremen run it, who has had dozer experience btw. He did incredible with it and moved way more dirt then a skid steer could ever. It comes down to experience.

Its definetly way harder to run a dozer vs a ss or mini x. You can not just hope right in one and expect to get work done.

[cutntrim]

When I worked for a grading and sod laying company after high school, the owner ran a dozer all day long finish grading ahead of the rest of us (a dozen guys) laying sod. We did entire subdivisions and he never had a problem staying ahead of us as we laid 3 tractor trailer loads of sod each day. He was pretty darned efficient on that dozer.

[AZTLANLC]

I have never used one but we did a job for a builder that did the grading and then we were behind doing the final grade he finished in about 3 hrs. 20,000 sqf or so it took me about 7 hrs with the harley rake to finish.

[Paul]

Ok Crash course in dozer operation.

Jeff the first thing to do is to make a smooth spot. It doesn't have to be big just some place to get a handle what you are doing. As with smaller machines a D3 in this case your tracks have to be flat other wise you start making choppy cuts. As a beginning operator you need to make shallow cuts, nothing more than 3". This prevents you from digging too deep and developing the "wave" look behind you. Once you get the hang of shallow cuts you can roll about 3/4 of a blade of dirt for about 100 yards, spoils will spill to both sides with the blade level and straight.

Next you angle the blade to the side you need to move the dirt to. This is where you have to plan your attack, where you want the cuts made and where you need to fill. A dozer works best with short pushes, so start at your shallowest cut and push toward the shallower fill, As you get used to pushing dirt you can angle your blade taking smaller cuts but moving more dirt in the heavier cut areas all the time keeping the machine level.

Most beginners think they can just hog out an area and then push the spoils toward the fill. You just want to take a 1/4 blade width and keep making deeper cuts into the cut areas then on the next return pass you can straighten out the blade and push loose soil toward the deeper fills. This way a beginner can move 500 to 600 cu yds with out too much problem in a 8 hour day unless you have to move the dirt a real distance.

My 450 long track at the farm has made a couple of ponds and leveled out just a bit over a mile of atv roads, along with the guest house site. I wish it was a hydrostat like that D3 you have there but it was the right price at the right time. Hydros are so much faster than the old gear/hydros.

[Stonehenge]

Hmmm... it seemed that machine couldn't handle cutting more than 4" deep for more than about 4 feet before it bogged down. There were areas that were wet, but some weren't, and it seemed to struggle equally in both areas.

The starting flat spot makes sense - I do the same thing with our rock rake on our skidsteer- it always takes new guys a long while to hash out how to run the rock rake, and they also often end up with waves of dirt instead of nice, flat land.

Also, for some reason I was thinking that clearing a site that had a lot of vegetative growth would have been easier. Just like a skidsteer bucket (without toothbar), the dozer blade seemed to glide over the vegetation unless I really forced it down, then it would cut to deep and bog down.

Maybe I should try to spend an afternoon watching a dozer operator at work.

[Stonehenge]

One thought - how much adjustment of the blade do you do while making a pass? I'm thinking it should have been zero, but it wasn't.

[Dale Wiley]

4 inches is a bit much to ask a D36 to move very far at all.

Pauls advice as usual is great.

We use dozers when we have fairly long shallow cuts to make. We knobbed off a hillside a few years back, and I used a D8 size for that. Just took nice shallow cuts and kept pushing easy.

Dozes and scrapers are not meant to take off 4 inches for long at all. I would get an excavator in for deeper cuts requiring moving a lot of soil. We use dozers for shaping more than moving copious amounts of material.

I useed them a lot when building golf courses.. real easy to shape with a dozer....

[agla]

When do you rent a dozer?

When you rent an operator with it, I think.

[NCSULandscaper]

a piece of equipment is only as good as the operator, that dozer could do 100x more in a day than a skid if the operator knows what they are doing. You were getting more done because you know how to use a skid

[Paul]

The idea behind dozers is to roll dirt, not push huge mounds in a single pass. You need to get the dirt rolling in front of the blade. A 4" cut might be tough if it wet has lots of grass and roots in it. But a 4" cut with a 1/4 blade angled to the side allows it to keep cutting while the spoils roll to the other side. Now you have moved 3' x 4" about 8' to the side for as many feet or yards as needed. You then back, up straighten out your blade and push the spoils to the low spot or where you need to fill. If the machine starts to bog down angle your blade back towards the cut area that way the windrows of spoils stay close to where you are working. Then back up again straighten out the blade and push the same way as above. The D3 size machine is made to move about a yard or so of material at a time, in no way is it able to push large amounts for great distances, if you need to do this then you need to rent a track loader.

Here are the blade cap.
Blade capacity - XL
1.88 yd3
1.44 m3



Blade capacity - Intermediate
1.86 yd3
1.42 m3



Blade capacity - LGP
2 yd3

[prapoza]

Sub-contract it! Less headache and more productive.

[PSUscaper]

Sounds like it may have been better to rent a larger excavator to do the the cutting and grading, and then have the skid move it around as needed when you have piles. I've done that and it works well.