Originally Posted By: Todd W


Are you doing your entire driveway ? How long? How wide?

Why not get a plow-blade for your tractor? Those are $1k or less depending on size.


Driveway is L shaped, long part of the L is a taper, starts 18' goes to 24'wide X 200' long, short part of the L is 16' wide by 80' long.

It's paved.

also have 72' of brick walk way, and 45' of unpaved path to the hen house.

Now sit down. I don't own a tractor or ATV. I have a very long term borrowed (going on 3 years now) Ford 3400 with a massive scoop up front and backhoe. I found this thing to be WAY too big and hard to move around on the snow. Also, at this point, I need to work on it a LOT (it's REALLY OLD) to be ready for winter - the power steering pump needs replacing, for starters, and there's all that hose to be looked at. All in all, I have little appetite for repairing internal combustion equipment, although I will do it, I don't enjoy it. My enthusiasm wanes at about the "swap alternator" level of repair and I recently did a Clutch replacement on friend's Rav 4, and that was 8 hours of my life I'd rather have spent doing pretty much anything else. Small engine work is less horrid, but I still find rebuilding an engine for a log splitter or some such machine more of a chore than anything else.

Having used and worked on borrowed tractors, ranging from 1958 Farmall Cubs to more recent Kubota models, I've found them to be a maintenance headache that just makes me grumpy. Every 250 hours it seems that you're up to your elbows in grease and grunting while working your way down to some exotic 9/17"reverse thread slightly tapered outside torx bolt made of a soft metal like bismuth and it can only can be reached by a triple jointed gymnast in possession of a $95 special socket wrench that is only sold by impertinent elves in a distant machine shop that does not take phone or internet orders.

That's why I'm going with the snow blower this year. One, single cylinder 4 cycle engine. A few linkages to grease, and a low parts count. I like that