Plowing the First Snow of the Year.

well guys mother nature decided to drop the bomb on us this year and it laid out eight inches of snow on us now this was on october 20th which is the record breaker for how early that we got that much snow and a lot of the guys were asking well do you think it'll stick and what do you think will happen and some people are saying oh it's just gonna melt nothing's gonna happen the problem is about a week and a half before the snow came in we had also some insanely cold temperatures in the 20s and 30s and so the ground was slowly decreasing in temperature which means if we get eight inches of snow all at once it's not going to be warm enough to keep up with melting that much snow and you're going to get this weird ice slick and then the snow will accumulate on top of that and so that you'll get some of that eight inches gone but some of it won't be gone and so we have to get ready for it whether it sticks around or not so now this is actually a sectional snow plow it's not a containment unit it's actually an angle plow and that's black beauty the rhino line skid loader we write online this probably five years ago four years ago five years ago something like that and it's been holding up great [Music] but the company that ryan aligned it knew what they were doing they did a good job because if you don't scuff the paint when you rhinolight something it'll just release [Music] two more to go we'll see that again in april ah that's the worst part about minnesota it's cold that's fine i don't care i don't mind the cold it snows i love the snow it makes me money but the lack of sun is what really bites oh let's talk about something that some guys have questions on tracks versus tires let's cover that actually i want to just tell you in order my preference first off you see those tires on that skid loader those are snow tires they're a thinner tire and they've got um a smaller tread pattern so they'll bite through the snow better and yeah that's good blade we'll we'll get to this so what did you have to do to get her to bolt in fine we just need to get up are you dropping the whole thing right out of the frame can't get her to go down watch your toes now so real quick blaine used to run the short iron but now he's going to be running the snow power so he's just kind of getting familiar with it and we've got two ways of getting the snow power out of the truck you're used to the other one so we've got two ways of getting the snow power out of the truck we want to remove the entire frame out because we've still got equipment to haul and so that means we disconnect it from the back no matter which way just go one way and it locks into the bed with four pins and then a pin on the hitch once we get all of that removed in theory it should separate yeah yeah that's what charges it up did we get that center one out it's out the pin is out okay so technically so you should be able to pull away that side though okay now you guys now you gotta go down down to go up down to go up up to go down it technically should drive out down to go up all right we're going down all right blaine you're good so now we're completely free of it and we can haul a trailer whoa whoa whoa no he's going to go back down there all right guys we got most everything here so this little mini arctic sectional is actually super nice for curb lines this was the one for the sledge western goes on front of the plow truck this has to be brought in yet i got to get that cutting edge fixed and repaired on the short iron this western it goes on the other plow truck that sledge matches up to that pusher over there i should probably get that put together we got to get air in this tire that does not look good this one has been reserved it's not our first choice it's just like a regular pusher it doesn't have that live edge so it doesn't scrape so that's got to get moved so we can get at that one because that one goes on we still got to get a dedicated pusher out here for this tlb we got booger the rebuilt arctic pusher we're going to definitely be using that one just to see if you can rebuild an arctic and if it'll hold up we got our 10 foot snow plow right here we've got our protec fusion edge pusher right here and then over here we've got our other arctic sectional now this one is actually fitted if you notice we've got actual winter equipment cutting edges on the sides and that winter equipment cutting edges does a phenomenal job probably the best cutting edge we've had for saving equipment and so i still i'm gonna put a set on my uh my snow dog to prolong the life of that because that blade's about got three seasons on it going on this year so she could use a little protection and tim's plow trucks gonna be broken for the first time there's zero snows on that one well one didn't count though we're missing two skid loaders still and the tracks on the cat are dirt tracks they won't move and snow the asv is ready the volvo is technically not ready hopefully that gets ready pretty soon that's all right it's just the first snow of the year see you later wish me luck you guys oh yes and it starts so great we haven't even started and we're broke down hey tim you want to show them what you got going on does that lock it in like that let me see that up the hub fell right out of the wheel but like when you turn it i think it just pushes it right in right so like when you turn this if this turns right i guess i don't really know how this works but it looks like it gets pushed in and that's what locks your hubs in that thing yeah so at this point we have no four-wheel drive in this truck but the truck's still moving it makes sense doesn't it so if we get something in here they're able to like strap it in put some pressure on it you got four wheel drive right maybe oh an awesome redneck crap but i don't think we need it tonight for this we'll bite he'll bite through yeah yeah because so if we could get this to yeah you can see how it comes down and then it's got the little locking tabs there and it locks off them bolts so yeah i don't know if it's missing the pieces there where it like holds itself on that's supposed to be a full circle there and just kind of get pinched in there well here here's how it goes but uh it's down like that so we had it on just like this that's how she sat before and i just noticed it was loose and just gave it a little but do you see how rusty this is but it's not going to work this is there's got to be something that's this is must be uh all corroded off or what i don't know and there's a little pin right there but now i think replacing that is just a matter of pulling those four bolts out there and replacing the actual mine did it back in height or uh when we were in college yeah i think that's all that that consists of is that because it's air it's like vacuum yeah but when you turn this it just pushes these it pushes it forward locks it up when you go this way all right i'm gonna take zach and show him the account because he's never seen him so what i wanted to show you is you guys seen how rusty that was uh we never did get it repaired that night but we did get it repaired the next day and that is kind of the way the an entire plow truck is underneath it so if you guys are ever gonna buy a used plow truck what my experience is is the plow trucks if they don't get washed almost after every single event you start to get the connections and the transmission lines rusting and all the little things that you can't see start going to heck behind the machines so plow trucks can be kind of problematic for you um that's one thing that if i i know a truck has been plowing for four five six years that's when all of the nickel and diamond starts to really kick into high gear just like you seen right there that really isn't that much of a surprise shoot i gotta remember which one of these pushers goes on the asv so tires versus tracks it promised you guys i was going to cover this my favorite in order snow tracks absolutely the best for snow plowing then snow tires which you seen earlier in the video they they bite but they almost bite too much making it kind of herky-jerky where a good set of snow tracks will still give you traction but it'll let you slide just enough that you're not getting that weird herky jerky snow tires kind of a little bit then dirt tires [Music] and then last and least are dirt treads dirt tracks dirt tracks [Music] hahaha if you guys could see the look on sam's face in that machine i think he's in love so here's the deal with dirt tracks if you really don't like a guy you put him in a machine with dirt tracks and after about eight ten hours he's probably going to want to quit on you because it's that frustrating you spend more time spinning than you do starting to move and especially with this heavy wet heart attack snow where you're really actually the weight of the snow this is one of the few kinds of snows where the weight of the snow becomes a factor oh i love this part this is my favorite thing about these back blades no jockeying around these light poles i kind of screw this up actually i do screw this up big time i was trying to look cool and if i would have just taken my time i could have nailed it so you got the wrong angle i should have came straight on and then i could have cleaned all the way around that in two swipes without jiggle joggling so with the snow power what i'm doing now is i'm dragging it to the end of the lot and sam is in the asv he's going to be actually pushing it up and then once i get enough snow on the opposite end of the lot where i really want to move mass quantities i go bass backwards and i just use it like a 4 16 foot pusher containment pusher it goes out 16 feet and you can angle the sides in it kick me out of the asv he wants to turn that's right i did i wanted to work in the spaceship the cabin this thing is and amazing it's amazing i love i love this well boys we got a white buffalo type situation going on here stands out of the truck in the machine he's down in the trenches with the rest of us i'm you know i've snowplowed for 32 years and never missed a single season so i don't know what down in the trenches means sam [Music] all right let's take you along for the ride so you can see what we're doing now we're going to back drag this semi-circle i screw this up this first one if you really want to get a clean curved line you've got to be perfectly at the same angle as the curve so your machine has to be perpendicular if you're at an angle it's not going to do it but this is a curve so it's impossible i got to kind of face the curve so this one kind of angles in so it has [Music] all right this is going to sound counter-intuitive you guys but on bigger snow events where you got you're plowing for 8 10 12 16 20 hours what we found works to kind of help refresh the guys is to intentionally switch machines so everybody's got their own machine at the beginning of the night but at some point if a guy's feeling a little tired or sluggish throw them in a different piece of equipment just that little bit of a change helps to reorient themselves and kind of put them on high alert and it's just kind of a weird refresher i love getting out of the truck and hopping in something else especially something like this it works out pretty well that we don't have to do our huge main residential account because we don't have to send some of the boys over there and we can all stay here and we can all go home earlier [Music] [Applause] so the arctic sectional is the yellow one arctic also made that black plow but it doesn't have the sectional edge and that's really what does the job of scraping you need that sectional edge arctic makes the black one just to kind of be a me too with all the other pushers out there because i mean it's a cheaper pusher when you don't have the sectional edge it also doesn't work as good plain and simple so if you really want a good one you gotta fork over the dough to get the sectional pusher and but if you're salting you're gonna use a lot less salt like this lot i we most of the time we don't need to salt when we're done raw the sdlg you're number three for this machine been a pretty good machine i mean other than some odd quirky stuff because it is a chinese a cheap chinese loader i mean we only use it for snow plowing nothing else and then we give it a really good bath at the end of the season i mean just i'll be we really clean it up because i don't i don't want all the little crevices that you can't see starting to rust but we run i think that's a 17 foot pusher on that little tiny sledge the sledge isn't a big payloader but the pusher the reason we can run such a big pusher on it is because these aren't it is arctic's not paying me to say this i'm just telling you why you can run a bigger pusher i love this thing the reason you can run a bigger pushers because arctic's mole board is a lot shorter than a standard mole board meaning the whole unit weighs a lot less and it's a little bit more of aggressive curve to the moldboard meaning that the snow will roll in front of it so as an operator you've got way better visibility you can see what's going on you're using a lighter unit and it's just a combination that works well this was an october 20th snowstorm it hit and then uh two weeks later right now we've had 70 degree weather and we're back to doing fall cleanups and as i'm looking out the the window and looking at the weather report it sounds like we're gonna have snow coming up here in a few more days so in minnesota we've got the snow plows on the trucks we've got the lawn care trailer full of leaf cleanup equipment and we we're kind of in that stage where we're just bouncing between the seasons which means november is honestly the toughest month for us and i think for a lot of contractors out there because you've worked all year long and you're coming to the end of the year and instead of slowing down and taking a break if you're anything like us you've got to actually kick it up into high gear because november is the month where i firmly believe you can make the most money really you work all year long to kind of get all your bills paid and then you got that one critical month where if you kick it into high gear you're going to have a bigger fatter paycheck to live off from all winter long but that also means you're you're already at your most exhausted and now you're bouncing between seasons so you got to just you know bear down and just get through it and that's what we're that's what we're kind of in the middle of and that's what i got for you on today's video god bless go get him you guys and hopefully we'll see you on another one oh this week coming up sneak peek on wednesday at the new boss drag pro 180z i think that's what it's called we don't get to put it to a test because we don't have we didn't have it for this snow event so we're going to be able to check out what they did and boss literally transformed this is going to be the best backdrag plow i i predict that's ever been made i just from the way they built it um so we're gonna get to check that out on wednesday and then on friday we're gonna be doing more snow plowing and a utv um so we take the the gravely i think it's called an atlas i can't remember so much equipment um we're gonna take that out and use that and then next week i don't even know where we're at now god bless and go get them seeing another one guys