Crawlers Sure Are Handy Around The Farm

[Tigerhaze]

These pictures really aren't too exciting, but I have grown to appreciate having my 2010 crawler around when I get in a jam.

Over the last couple of weeks our snow and ice melted and caused my medium duty grain truck to get stuck in a drainage swale in the mud. I couldn't drive it out and was dreading asking neighbors for help (again) if I couldn't get it out with the 2010.

I first got behind it with the 2010 and pushed it out of the ruts about 20 feet or so:





My brother standing next to the truck after we pushed it the 20' or so out of the worst stuff:



I then got the crawler around the front and had my brother steer the truck while I pulled it out with the crawler. My tracks were slipping some (the GVW of this truck is 26,000 pounds) so I found that pulling it a bit at a time with the loader hydraulics and then moving further back worked better. I used 3/8" Grade 70 transport chain to reduce the chance of breakage and flyback- that always scares me to death.





The power of these smaller crawlers always amaze me.

[Lavoy]

Many years ago, we had a wet fall and had so much water standing in the ditches that we could not even cross them with the combine. I took a 4 roller 40 I had at the time and went into the bottom of the ditches in the standing water and started digging out the high spots to get the water moving. My brother came out to see what how was doing, and could not get to me on a 4 wheel drive Honda 4 wheeler. He then tried to walk further and finally gave up, so I drove over to him. What these little beasts will do in marginal conditions is just amazing.
Lavoy

[mini kahuna]

they sure do earn their keep,many times our 1010 has saved the day pulling our pushing stuff hung up.
one day after a misirable week of heavy rain,a large water heater"about five hundred pounds worth" gave out on us,the building it was in was unreachable by truck.
we slid the heater from the truck,strapped it into the bucket and the 1010 walked the heater right up to the front door.
that little machine saved all our butts that day.

[Bret4207]

Lavoy, your story reminds me of taking my little 40C out in spring in a really soggy plowed field. The open ditches had been plowed through. I hitched an ancient Oliver 2-14 trailer plow behind the 40, set the plow as deep as I could and headed for open water! I had a fair idea where the ditches were and just kept heading for the culvert. Just before I got to the culvert there was water running up over the top of the tracks, I had drained about 15 acres in an instant. Of course it nearly washed out my culvert, but it sure dried things out.

[scottmi]

i've had to use my 40c to pull my 4x4 pickup out of the marshy end of field in mid-summer... very handy indeed! But i have to ask, what in tarnation was that truck doing in that mud in your pictures!? no, wait...on second thought, I really don't want to know!

[1949JDMC]

What were you doing around there??

[Smokey450C]

You were in some serious mud! I had a similar situation this spring. I was loading some dirt into my buddies one ton dump (novel Idea, use the loader for what it was intended) with my 450 and we were loading it pretty heavy. We probably had 4 or 5 tons in it and about half way to the field his back tires cut through the sod. We hooked up a chain to the back of the loader and the front of his truck, I put the loader in low range, low gear and off we went. The only problem was instead of rolling out of the ruts the tires just went deeper, piling sod in front of the tires. It was hysterical, we were plowing his yard with truck acting the part of a bottom plow. We went about 50 or 60 feet like that until he figured out his truck was going in deeper instead of coming out ...and the loader? acted like the truck wasn't even hooked up, the tracks barely slipped and they're pretty smooth. By the end of the "run" his ruts were 8 to 10 inches deep. These machines are amazing!

[Tigerhaze]

I was trying to park the grain truck on my property after quite a bit of rain. The mud caused the truck to slide down a short slope into a nearby soft area. Those single axle grain trucks don't get very good traction on mud when empty.

Now when it is muddy I have been parking it in a different spot on my property right near the gravel road. Unfortunately it atracted the attention of thieves who stole the stereo and siphoned off the external gas tank.

[1949JDMC]

Me and my dad used to have a Chevy C-65 single axel dump truck