deerhunter10
Well-Known Member
I'm a little shocked they were working in those conditions. I would have lost my temper with that.
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Road maintenance
- Thread starter BSK
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@fulldraw
Well-Known Member
BSK
Well-Known Member
Mine was the "wet weather property" they moved to! They honestly believed our chert hills would hold up in very wet weather. They were wrong.
BSK
Well-Known Member
I didn't lose my temper until the picture with my ATV sunk in the mud. And I real got pissed when they tore even the ridge-tops roads up so bad I struggled to get an ATV down them. Worst of all is their bulldozer operator knew absolutely nothing about repairing roads. He knew how to clear a skidder trail straight up and down steep hills, but nothing about roads. All he did was trench them deeper (although temporarily smoother). Some of ridge-top roads got trenched so deep, later rains turned them into long, narrow lakes. I'm not exaggerating when I say we could have floated a canoe down some of roads along ridge-tops.
@fulldraw
Well-Known Member
BSK
Well-Known Member
Yup. Loggers were from Toone, TN. We got lucky in that prices for White Oak were through the roof at the time, so the payout was amazing, but wow did they tear our place to pieces. Still haven't been able to fix some of it, and that was 4 years ago.You must have used some loggers from west TN and not knowledgeable of our terrain. They must have thought since it's not swamp, it's solid enough.
BSK
Well-Known Member
One of things I've had to learn the hard way is that EVERY commercial logger (not so with small family operations) will tell you they will leave the roads exactly as they found them. And that's a lie, every time. In the future, I will require loggers to put up bond for road repair. If they do not return the roads to the prior state, I keep the bond to have the roads professionally fixed. I just have to remember to photograph every road beforehand, so I have proof of road damage.
Below is a picture of one of our primary ridge-top roads. before the loggers started, it was a beautifully crowned road with zero erosion problems. In the picture, the ground is frozen solid, but when it thawed, it was impassable. And the loggers "fixed it" by just driving a dozer down the middle to level the ruts, but they left the huge piles of dirt on both sides, which forces all storm run-off right down the middle of the road, guaranteeing erosion. Oh wait, they did push up water bars in this main road which if you don't know are there will throw you right off an ATV or UTV when you hit them in the dark!
Below is a picture of one of our primary ridge-top roads. before the loggers started, it was a beautifully crowned road with zero erosion problems. In the picture, the ground is frozen solid, but when it thawed, it was impassable. And the loggers "fixed it" by just driving a dozer down the middle to level the ruts, but they left the huge piles of dirt on both sides, which forces all storm run-off right down the middle of the road, guaranteeing erosion. Oh wait, they did push up water bars in this main road which if you don't know are there will throw you right off an ATV or UTV when you hit them in the dark!
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@fulldraw
Well-Known Member
Sounds about right. Also, sounds like if a contract was used there were no measures for repair to roads. I always tell landowners have a contract and make sure BMPs are included. We've had to issue a NOV to loggers before after they left a property a mess. They had to stop working at current site to repair the damage they agreed to repair. Talk about being pissed but they didn't do what was agreed upon.
Deck78
Well-Known Member
How far are you from Centerville? I got a guy I will send you in DM. We don't have near the topo challenges you have at our farm but we aren't far behind in some areas. We got lucky with our loggers last year and other than the first month being too wet, we hit into that drought and managed to pull the last load off of 300 ac just before the rains started back up. They ran a 24 hour logging crew and that helped keep us in that favorable weather window.
We are addressing some of our roads right now within reason depending upon weather. Due to the pine stumps being cut at ground level, we can't effectively bring in a dozer for new roads and have to use our big trackhoe(55k lbs) to pop stumps and rough cut and grade. We aren't pushing the envelope when it gets wet and as such, haven't created any issues but it isn't the most efficient time of year to pay other folks to run equipment right now. If I were you, I would wait a little longer and catch it late spring before dead of summer sets in. I like a little moisture in the soil. Not enough that it is pumpy, but just enough that you can shape what you are working on.
I am also trying to make sure the roads I am building are getting used often to help repack the fines that dont get compacted or come loose in the fast rain events. I think one thing that keeps roads from staying in place is an assumption that if you do them right once, you don't have to worry about them ever again, but as you know from all your posts above, it takes constant maintenance. My word of advice is spend the money to not only make them safe to maintain but also make them enjoyable to drive and that extra money spent on operator's time will go long in ensuring that you can achieve your goals, IMO.
And for the guy that commented about what a truckload of gravel costs these days....it is painful. On average, I'm paying around $850-$950 for a triaxle of #57s. Long gone are the days where I would bring in cheap loads of crusher run just because they were so cheap
BSK
Well-Known Member
We're 36 miles from downtown Centerville. The last dozer operator we hired to fix roads - and he did a fantastic job - came from Centerville (although I cannot remember his name off the top of my head).
And most of the roads we need built do not need to be all-vehicle access. They just need to be usable by ATV/UTV. If the operator wants to twist and turn to go around larger trees or avoid difficult spots, that's fine with us. Again, most of what we need is just reopening old skidder trails, with the addition of adding water turnout features to reduce erosion. The only difficult road section we need is crossing a particularly steep valley that has no old skidder roads, so that will require cutting a road crosswise down the hill at an acceptable grade (say 10-15%). But most of the work (a couple of miles of reopening skidder trails) would be clearing trails that parallel creeks or run up and down slowly descending points that access the creek-side trails.
All we want the roads to do is give us UTV access to the valleys for transporting ladder stand, accessing those stands, and retrieving downed deer.
And most of the roads we need built do not need to be all-vehicle access. They just need to be usable by ATV/UTV. If the operator wants to twist and turn to go around larger trees or avoid difficult spots, that's fine with us. Again, most of what we need is just reopening old skidder trails, with the addition of adding water turnout features to reduce erosion. The only difficult road section we need is crossing a particularly steep valley that has no old skidder roads, so that will require cutting a road crosswise down the hill at an acceptable grade (say 10-15%). But most of the work (a couple of miles of reopening skidder trails) would be clearing trails that parallel creeks or run up and down slowly descending points that access the creek-side trails.
All we want the roads to do is give us UTV access to the valleys for transporting ladder stand, accessing those stands, and retrieving downed deer.
