Any opinions???.........

Goose

Well-known Member
Last year our county bought two new motor graders to replace two "hangar queens" that spent more time in the shop than out on the road. We went state of the art with Cats that had the two joysticks instead of steering wheels. The assigned operators were enthusiastic about the joysticks.

Last week at our Commissioner's meeting we signed a lease-purchase agreement on three more new units. By popular demand of the operators, we were asked to go back to steering wheels. Are the joysticks a fad, or do we have some operators who are too set in their ways to adapt to new technology? Or a combination of both?

BTW, we have sixteen motor graders, and should be simply replacing the oldest one every year. But-due to inactivity on the part of a prior Highway Superintendent and a prior Board of Commissioners we're face with upgrading all of our equipment in a short period of time.

Of a five member board, three of us were new a year and a half ago. The three that departed weren't all that effective, but tied the hands of the two others. All five of us are now on the same page and trying to get things moving again.
 
From talk over coffee with a commissioner and several grader operators it sounds like the guys that were used to steering wheels still like them. However it also sounds like it's mostly a learning curve. The biggest thing to get used to is wearing the seat belt and using the foot pegs when busting drifts. They used to be able to brace themselves with the steering wheel, but now they cannot with joysticks. I haven't heard anything really bad about the cats, just takes some getting used to.
 
Look at the cutting edge along the side of the road. If it weaves in and out its a joystick. Guys don't say to much, just that it seems to always creep one way or the other.
 
Our township bought a new cat a couple years ago and the operators like it. There is a learning curve, but not bad. Also the county has both cat and John Deere and the operators I have talked to say the cat is a much better machine. What machine did you lease?
 
the left joystick has steering and left side blade controls not just steering and drive like you would think making adjusting to it somewhat complicating. the steering wheel is simple and keep your operators happy. when I worked construction and even in the municipal job I have now it is extremely irritating when they buy equipment and don't seek any information from the people operating it
 
Where the heck do you live? There is 1,200 miles of roads in the county I live/work in. Unless your road only gets scraped once a year, or they are solid clay, they'd be shot around here. In the early spring we scrape them and put chloride on them. In the 2.5 months between that time and the next application of chloride, they are already toast, all chattered up, especially if there has been no rain for the chloride to pull moisture from. So, we rescrape and reapply in the middle of summer, and by the time when the fall rains come when they lock down, they are getting to be pretty bad by then. I also have 80 miles of roads to maintain in my territory alone, 50 of which are gravel. Unless you do a terrible job scraping them, it can take 2 hours to get a road back in shape after being beat up all summer, and get the loose stone mixed back in where it won't cause chatters. After you get through all the gravel in the territory, which usually takes at least 2 weeks, you start over again, until they free up. Lightly traveled roads you may only have to scrape twice. The heavy traveled roads you might have to do twice a week. Other wise, you have the people that moved from the city out to the country calling and whining about the road bot being smooth. And, if you are unfortunate enough to live near one of the mega dairies, you can expect your road to be impassable a couple times at least a year. And once it starts snowing, our policy is EVERY road gets plowed, The day of a snowstorm, and again, day after day, until the roads are pushed back and clear. You have to be MOVING to plow 80 miles of roads in 8 hours, since you are actually plowing 160 miles of road. And every turn you make at every mile, slows you considerably, especially if there is ice under the snow, or if it is wet snow. And we do this with trucks, there are 14 of us. I have 3 villages in my territory that have to be plowed as well. A truck gets around much faster than a grader, and will plow snow faster than a grader. But, a grader is a more useful tool for scraping roads, it has more capabilities than a truck. Thats why they probably need 16 graders. One per township most likely.
 
the left joystick has steering and left side blade controls not just steering and drive like you would think making adjusting to it somewhat complicating. the steering wheel is simple and keep your operators happy. when I worked construction and even in the municipal job I have now it is extremely irritating when they buy equipment and don't seek any information from the people operating it. also ask about demos first when buying something. A demo lets the operator get a little seat time and figure out what they do and do not like. this could save some money as some options sound great but are useless or unpractical in some situations
 
Since they are being paid for with tax dollars(other peoples money) I'd expect you to buy whichever one is least expensive and least likely to give you a maintenance problem. Also, do joy sticks contribute more to carpal tunnel syndrome than steering wheel and levers? I don't know just throwing it out there. Also allowing the operators input is wise, those guys LIVE in those graders every day, happy workers are productive workers. jmo gobble
 
You make a good point Tom, we wenter that route at work for MANY years buying Freightliner trucks because they were the cheapest. Well, they were the cheapest all right, they were nothing but wiring nightmares, and DPF issues, but mostly wiring. We had 4 new Freightliner trucks at the same time, and during a particular bad winter a couple years back, we usually had only one or two of the 4 that were working and not being worked on at any given time. So, we switched to Peterbilt scrapers 2 years ago, and have had zero issues since. Yes, they are a bit more money, but when the highway needs to be plowed, they aren't broke.
 
That's a big county,, ours only has 2 ,one new, one much older,,do you have township road crews in your county?,, Our county has several, but I think it would be smarter to do away with them...
 
We have 16 Twps in my county, instead of TWP road crews, we have what is called a Road Commission that is basically a "contractor" that does as the townships specifies, with advise from the road commission. The road commission is solely responsible financially for the class "A" roads, while the "B", or local roads, are financially covered by the TWP, but if the road commission has enough extra money, they will try to help a TWP financially to rebuild a "B" road. A class "A" road can be gravel or pavement, as a "B" road can also be pavement or gravel. It all depends on the width of the road, the amount of traffic, and the substrate and base of the road. There are many more "B" roads than class "A" roads. That is why townships have such a hard time having the money to pay to have a lot of their roads repaved, as many of them are the class "B" roads that they are solely financially responsible for. But, like I said, the road commission is basically the contractor that all the Twps hire to do their maintenance work, like plowing snow, scraping roads, shoulder gravel on blacktop, cutting and removing trees, patching potholes, ditching, berming, hauling gravel, fixing signs, a fixing washouts, mowing roadsides, etc. We are each responsible for a "territory", which is about a township and a 1/4 of another. 1 person for each territory. We also have 1 grader and an operator for that grader, and same for the excavator. They cover the whole county, doing things we can't do with the trucks. We do turn into a crew when we do chip sealing, I also run the tack truck, and also work as a crew when we crack seal, due to the amount of labor and flagging involved. We sometimes pair up when cutting trees and work together. There is 4 guys that are paid by the state that maintain the state highways that run through my county. Their job is just like ours, only more highway type work oriented, even though they actually work for the road commission. All of us are on call 24/7 for any type of emergency such as washouts, treespecially down in the road, and working on the highway when the state crew gets tired out plowing in the winter. Lots of variety.

Ross
 
We have the out dated township form of government....Our grader is an old Gallion that is worn out and often broke down..Theres no money to replace it with..
 
Most of the joystick graders are made to be operated with gps.($30-40000 option) Basically the "operator" steers, the rest is controlled by the gps. From my experience it would be better to lease rather than purchase,especially with the new machines. Too many electronic,dpf,and sensor issues. Lease for 2 years/2000 hrs.,turn it in on a new one before they start to eat up your maintenance budget. Basically anything that goes wrong with them will require a Cat tech ($125/hr plus to and from mileage to come plug his laptop in to hopefully find the problem. Your maintenance budget and constituents will thank you.
 
My opinion is get rid of all of the graders, shops, trucks, and any equipment larger than a half ton pickup. Take bids from private contractors that know how to run a business efficiently and pay taxes. I think you'd be amazed at the amount of money that would be saved.
 
Cats. John Deere actually had a slightly lower price, but the lease terms weren't as attractive. Also, JD was talking six months delivery, where we have a Cat dealer 25 miles away who can deliver within 30 days. Which also simplifies dealer maintenance.

Like they say, the lowest bid isn't always the best bid.
 
You should come out for a visit. What we call gravel, you would call crushed stone. Red Willow, Frontier, and Furnas counties grade once a month. Grading consists of sliding the gravel ridge from one side of the road to the other, leaving (hopefully) a light layer of loose gravel over the packed dirt underneath. The gravel will get windrowed out over the next week or so. If they layer it on too heavy, the first empty trucks through can't get traction, spin anywhere they have to put down power, and washboard the snot out of it.

We don't get enough moisture to pack gravel in if we could get good road gravel.

Frontier also has a pintle on the back of a grader so they can use it to transport a track loader, payloader, or skid steer to a project. Then the operator will drive a pick-up to use to get home at night.

I think Goose is in Dawson. They have a lot of paved roads compared to frontier. Frontier has three paved county roads if you count the two that cross the dam at the lakes.
 
We have 16 Townships, and one unit per Township. Total of 1800 miles of gravel roads. The rest are pavement or blacktop with a few non gravel, minimum maintenance roads.

And the terrain varies greatly from one side of the county to the other. Steep hills referred to as the "Bohemian Alps" in the east half of the county to flat, irrigated land in the west half.
 
Have many hours in both types. Much prefer the steering wheel. Listen to the people that spend all day in them.
 
As a heavy equipment mechanic I'll say this, for what it's worth. Send the junk machines back and repair the old ones.

Over the years I've had several customers that 'restored' their older equipment instead of buying new. You'd be amazed how much money can be saved by doing that over buying new......

Seriously, unless joints/wear points are worn outside of the bushings, replacing them is an easy task. That is if they need it, and if they have been greased properly they probably don't.

For the engine, figure around $2000 per cylinder to have an independent pull, rebuild, and reinstall it. The transmission and drop box would probably run about the same, depending on what brand it is.

In other words, you can spend $100,000 plus on a new machine that will be a constant, electronic problem, and will always require dealership involvement, at elevated labor rates........Where the older, mechanical ones, could most likely be rebuilt for $50,000 and can be serviced by independents for about 1/2 of what the dealerships will run.

But that's just an opinion from someone who actually knows something about heavy equipment.......as opposed to some 'politician', with an education, who thinks he knows what's needed because his college/business courses taught him that new is always better.........

As far as what to buy in regard to the operators... reference what I just said. In other words, get what the man running the machine wants.....NOT what some salesman, or college educated idiot thinks they should get.........
 
When I went to work at ADOT, the fleet manager bought whatever he wanted and shoved the equipment onto the operators. After he left, I got the new fleet manager to hold meetings with the district that was due for new machines. We incorporated whatever operator requests that were reasonable. However, in most cases I opened the specs for competitive bids instead of being just written for CAT. CAT had been ripping off the taxpayers for years. After losing a couple years of bids, CAT dropped their prices by half! The counties were following the state and started buying JD and Kumotsu graders. Operators liked the Kumotsu graders the best.

I deplore the wisdom that causes the specification to be written in favor of one brand in most cases. And in most cases lease purchases are another rip-off of the taxpayers. Open, competitive bidding is the best way to save taxpayers money. A good spec will still keep out known trouble machines - if the spec writer knows machines.
 
Since you are dealing with public money how do you write Freightliner out of the specification?
 
It's been my experience that most people don't like change. Remember when the headlight dimmer switch moved from the floor to the turn signal stalk? If the old pharts don't like the new machines, let the young guys run them and put the gummers on the old junkers.
 
The young man that grades the road past me is running one of those joy stick machines and you can sure tell it too. He is all over the road leaveing zig zag lines and will not get onto the shoulder to crown the road.
 
Wait, your county does road maintenance?

My county has enough equipment for a few good ol' boys to play around with and make it look like we're paying them to do something. All road maintenance is left to the townships.

Our road would see a grader about once every other year. The highway superintendent would be driving a brand new town pickup truck, but the road grader was something from the 1950's.
 
RBOOTS,We have 4 road crew types,State,Town,County and Twp and all are separate operated.Motor graders ,maybe3- 5 total per County or less.I was born on a gravel road which was done away with in mid-late 40s.EVEN the poorest Twps.had done away with all gravel by the mid 60s. They found it was CHEAPER to maintain paved roads then gravel.Less Equipment and less man power needed.If anybody has them,then 80-90 per.cent are ownedy (used) by the state.
 
I have heard that same story many times Wayne, just like glider trucks. I think you're a bit cheap on your price guess though lol. I believe last I heard a grader was 250-275,00!
 
Wow, must be a lot of pavement there! The funding for a road department around here comes from motor fuel taxes. As cara get more efficient, tax revenue has gone down and down and down. The budget the department I work for is working off the same revenue they have had since around 1998, while the cost of materials has almost doubled and tripled. The initial cost for all the pavement around you must have been horrendous, but maybe you have a different way of funding that stuff. Michigan passed a road funding bill last year, because the roads and bridges are so shot. We'll see how that works out...
 
I have no part of spec-ing out the trucks, I'm just a worker. But, you spec the trucks you need, that will perform a job, and as Dick2 says, if you spec something right, it works out like it should. We were also having trouble with rust out on parts of the Freightliner cabs, so the new spec was written so that it had to have an all aluminum cab, which basically includes everyone but Freightliner. That way they can't bid, because their product can't meet the needed specs.
 
Yes the startup was more,but by doing it right the first time lets them go 5-10 yrs.with little cost.Same as you putting a good roof on your house and not worrying about it or having to get up there and patching it every year.Each twp.only has or needs 2 or 3 workers because of the low Maintenance needs. I don't have a twp miles breakdown,but county and twp.comes in 1100-1300 miles on average .
 

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