2wd plow truck?

[stegomon]

kind of piecing a plow truck together for the winter....
any who how do you think a 2wd f100 plow truck with welded gears good tires and chains with lots of wight in the box be for plowing one drive way?

 

[BRUTUS_T_HOG]

i have no experience with plows...

not sure if a half ton front suspension will be able to handle the weight and abuse of a plow though.

sounds like you should have enough traction if done correctly

 

[Captain Ledd]

I imagine it'll push snow around with enough weight for sure. I'd probably try to keep up with the fall so it never gets too deep. Is it JUST for plowing? like keep a good 1,000-1,200 lbs in the bed for the whole winter?

What happened to the J truck by the way?

 

[85_Ranger4x4]

With enough weight and tire in the right places it should.

I push snow like a banshee with a 2wd tractor. Runnging with the blade up 1-1.5' off the ground and drifts up to the differential (3' off the ground) it paws a little without chains... with chains generally all I gotta do is point it where I want to go and it goes. It has a nice matching set of 13.6-28 Firestone Field and Road tires... so they are a touch bigger and more aggressive than a pickup tire.

5klb tractor + the 6" Dearborn blade... rear mounted.

One other thing though, instead of the "thrust vectoring" front wheels of a 4wd, I have differential turning brakes... there are times I just mash the brake and slide the front wheels around on the snow because they usually won't do anything but plow snow anyway... not sure how that would effect a truck because then they would run in plowed snow. The differential brakes are also sweet for a crude yet very effective tracton control

 

[Will]

My garden tractor at a about 900# with a 4' blade pushes it okay, but if the snow is over a foot deep, the front of the tractor gets pushes off course. I don't have brakes on the rear to vector it like you. F100 might have that problem, too.

I don't think I would weld the rear. A welded rear will really suck ass, especially if you will be working on any slopes. The ass end will find it's way down the hills and you won't have the front pulling to control it. I would pile a ton of weight in the back and leave it open.

 

[stegomon]

the j-10 has a tost trans...i have a 2wd f-100 laying around.

 

[02RangerXLT]

People now plow with half tons, granted it's harder on them... but an F100 should be built like an actual truck should be right? I wouldn't be worried about the weight. I'd be worried about being able to turn if it gets slick where you're driving.

 

[lil_Blue_Ford]

2wd trucks can work for plow trucks... as long as it's relatively flat and you plow WITH the storm, not after it drops 6".

See, some idiot convinced the boy mayor in Pittsburgh that the city could save money by buying 2wd plow trucks, so he did. And when we got a big snow storm, SUPRISE! The 2wds got stuck more than anything. It's either uphill or downhill here, there's not much flat area to plow. Of course, it came down fast enough and hard enough that the little lawn tractor (18 hp Craftsman II) made it 5 feet down the driveway before getting stopped cold. That's with chains and 160# of tube sand strapped on the fenders. I tried plowing halfway through the storm, I should have been out there sooner.

 

[Will]

Our county uses tandem-axle dump trucks. In Iowa when I was a kid they used road graders.

A newer 1/2-ton is much stronger than an old 1/2-ton. Either would be fine with 2,000# of sand stacked in the bed. I'd put more than that in if it weren't going to leave the yard.

 

[85_Ranger4x4]

Our county uses tandem-axle dump trucks. In Iowa when I was a kid they used road graders.

A newer 1/2-ton is much stronger than an old 1/2-ton. Either would be fine with 2,000# of sand stacked in the bed. I'd put more than that in if it weren't going to leave the yard.

Is a F-100 even really a half ton?

They use tandam axle dump trucks here for the most part. They also have a rediculous amount of sand in the box, and four chained duals makes for a lot of bite. They use graders too I think mostly just because they have them and therefore don't have to buy as many trucks just for pushing snow.

It will be two years ago this winter they had full blown dozers out for the big drifts, one swipe at a time into the ditch. Dump trucks, graders and even end loaders were getting buried. The state sent down this big two engined snowblower truck because their dumptrucks couldn't push the snow off to the side enough for 2 lanes with shoulders in places.

 

[lil_Blue_Ford]

The state and county around here uses 10 ton dumps and tandem dumps for most of the snowplowing, although I have seen both the state and local around here using 4x4 pickups and dump trucks/flatbeds for clean-up work.

Up where I went to college (Edinboro), they used to plow the roads once a day whether it needed it or not with tandem dumps, one 4x4 dump truck (1-ton) and a front end loader with a giant plow blade (not a snow pusher, a plow blade). And they never bothered with salt. At the end of winter they took a road grader around to pry the 6+" of melting ice off the roads.... I kid you not.

 

[The purple one]

I use to plow 3-4" of snow with my chevy 1500 in 2wd all the time on flat ground. It had 3.73 and a open rear. only put it in 4wd when I got stuck