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Post by Oatking on May 19, 2021 6:24:44 GMT -6
I was wondering if any farmers have taken it upon themselves to gravel R.M roads or have got permission to do so.? I have several fields where I have felt it necessary to gravel at least a half mile. So far the R.M of Morris is not in favor of that idea. I have also found it necessary to clean out R.M ditches on my own. You would think paying almost 5000 a quarter in taxes you would have most of your needs satisfied by the R.M.
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bob123
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Post by bob123 on May 19, 2021 9:34:23 GMT -6
My dad gravelled 3 miles at at his own expense here in rm of morris. Rm now puts a thin layer on once in a while but it would never have been enough to support semis. We have cleaned out a couple miles of ditches too. Haven't had a problem getting them to come out, but they make the whole thing black and very steep so it ends up eroding to worse then it was before. Usually there are just a couple bumps that need taken out along the bottom to fix it
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Post by torriem on May 19, 2021 21:13:12 GMT -6
Our roads are well graveled (we are luck to have a lot of gravel available in this MD), but the problem is the grader. Our local grader never cuts the washboards down. He just smooths out the gravel a bit without doing anything about the underlying washboards. It's so maddening. We've complained to the reeve a few times. As near as I can tell we're wasting our money on the grading. One day later and it's as if it was never graded at all.
When my grandfather was alive he'd regularly fix MD roads around our farm. Anytime there was a soft spot he'd dump a load of coarse pit run in it. I think it annoyed a lot of people. But to this day those spots are firm as can be and look absolutely great.
Right now our biggest road problem is essentially vandalism. from bored kids (no thanks to the pandemic) who do donuts in every intersection. I've seen ruts dug so deep if you hit them at any speed it would do serious damage to a semi truck. I've gone out with a loader to try to smooth and fill them from time to time, just to save my equipment. Very frustrating. Been happening for about 10 years now so it's kind of multi-generational unfortunately.
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Post by meskie on May 19, 2021 21:40:55 GMT -6
Our graders aren’t much better around here. My neighbour and I joke that we need to let some air out of the tires so the blade will go lower. And my neighbour is the RM councillor for this area and he isn’t one to not tell somebody what he thinks. We are the last road in the RM at the very east edge so we get forgot about a lot. Gravel is never an issue though. We have lots in our rm. I wish they would gravel some back roads less. Since they did a couple right by us everybody thinks they should drive down it after it rains and makes a mess. Hunting season is the worse as there is lots of wildlife down the road.
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Post by northernfarmer on May 19, 2021 21:57:08 GMT -6
Undergraveled roads is a problem around this county, now they are so broke because of lost revenue from oilfield that has left or in the last couple of years totally defaulted on payment and they can't squeeze anything out of them. Sounds like they need a different grader operator or give him one last chance by bringing in an instructor that knows his stuff and teach the guy and if it reverts back to chicken shit grading, they find someone who can run it properly.
We had problems around here somewhat years back from more then likely a few of the young hutterites spinning donuts but that faded away, but then a young defiant little snot of a brat on a farm not far away was old enough to be driving ( he was 16 but looked like he was in grade 7 ) and mummy and daddy gave him a duramax to drive and he would go down this main wide gravel road from ditch to ditch weaving back and forth cutting deep into the road with all that power. I never happened to catch him do it myself but neighbours did and his parents instead of kicking their brat in the ass were defending him claiming it wasn't him. Well that's the sort of kid you create when the parents are aholes themselves. You would think the rear tires would be ripped right off of the truck in no time flat pulling a stunt like that and it was just awful driving down the road with equipment until the grader cut it out of the road.
Torriem, I don't know what exactly one does to put a stop to what you have going on if its various kids doing it, if the MD sends out a notice to residence with what will happen to anyone caught doing that or instead if its possible to set up camera's at a few key intersections that would capture a vehicle spinning around and around and have the police weed out the guilty ones.
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Post by torriem on May 19, 2021 23:22:22 GMT -6
I think the grader operator thinks there's an award for having a single blade that lasts an entire career. I'm not sure what the problem is. I am friends with someone that works with the guy in charge of all the graders and he's a sharp fellow. Somehow they have a couple of operators that won't take instruction and training, and for whatever reason the powers above won't take any action. One can hope he'll retire soon! We have a grader and I know it's not easy to be good at operating that machine, but it is possible!
Our MD revenue has really dried up also to the tune of millions of dollars. Many abandoned oil wells. There will soon be an experimental project to install solar on some of these un-reclaimed sites. There's hope the highway expansion project will benefit the MD by bringing some companies into the area, but I'm skeptical.
I wonder if the day is coming we'll have to maintain our own roads. We already maintain a few miles of private roads.
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Post by cptusa on May 20, 2021 5:44:39 GMT -6
Wow, listening to you guys I think you all live in my county.
I think there is an award at the end of the year for most paint remaining on blade.
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jaymo
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Post by jaymo on May 20, 2021 5:55:32 GMT -6
I have not operated a grader but you would think that if you feel the grader bouncing, you would slow down. I watched a grader this spring for a few minutes and I could see it bouncing and surprise, the road was complete washboard!
It may have something to do with the blade angle too.
I know a scraper will bounce and washboard the bottom of your ditch if you are trying to go too fast!
Then there's the practice of leaving a berm on one or both sides of the road. Nothing better then trapping a 3 foot wide strip of water on the road and then blowing out a big washout of gravel into the ditch at the bottom of every dip in the road! (Actually a rain like that would be ok right now! hehe)
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Post by kevlar on May 20, 2021 7:58:03 GMT -6
I didn't know there was so many people on this site who live in my RM!! lol A good operator is hard to come by. Our RM has gotten better recently, have some pretty good councilors and reeve. Sure there are some issues at times, but over all pretty good. We have had some terrible ones in the past though. When all our roads washed out last summer, they really stepped up and did an amazing job, fixed something like 50 washouts, and some of those were massive, in about a months time. What helped was they didn't piss around with all the governing boards that want you to get a permit every time you move a rock. Some other RM's were weeks before getting much done, and some still haven't finished them all. Then the good old Provincial government just got around to fixing some this spring, then the engineers screwed up big time and put the culverts in way too deep, not a huge deal, if it wasn't under 30 feet of fill and cemented in  .
I too have heard the grader coming down the road going to fast and you can hear it bouncing and the engine even revving up and down quickly because it's bouncing so much, mostly in the winter though, sure makes it nice to drive the semi down the road as it's rocking back and forth over the bumps made.
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ltk
Junior Member
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Post by ltk on May 20, 2021 8:05:06 GMT -6
Couldn't help but think of this after reading the comments.
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Post by northernfarmer on May 20, 2021 8:48:24 GMT -6
For a number of years around here they were equipping graders with a spreader on gauge wheels trailing on the back and if ran improperly and going too fast that would certainly create waves in the spread gravel and wasn't helping anything other then the ground they could get over in a day. More recently they have been using a multi wheel packer bar on the rear of the grader that packs as the final blading to spread out the created windrow of gravel is done. That indeed makes for a smooth surface and lessens the loose gravel feel but they have only been doing that on certain main wider gravel roads and not the narrower ones.
What really has ruined roads around here is if they get out the powered drum to "reclaim" gravel from the ditch and I don't know if that is outside contract work or they own one of those units but my god have they made a mess of some roads where they ended up being too aggressive and shovelled top soil from the ditch onto the road and then graded that smooth pretending all is good as the first rain that comes along turns the road into a pile of mud and so bad in certain cases that a two wheel drive vehicle will get stuck in the middle of the road with a rain, its that bad. It can take many years to get a mess like that straightened out and if they don't regravel the road its never the same again. Its a make work project that costs lots and saves nothing in the long run but they are too stupid to figure out its extremely counter productive so they keep on making the same mistake.
By the way they made it illegal to do any ditch clean out work with ones own equipment as we used to do some of those things to prevent water from spilling over and washing out fields and no one said a thing.
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Post by torriem on May 20, 2021 9:14:48 GMT -6
Yeah that video has a ring of truth to it! It's not a simple task to run a grader. I'm sure I'd make a mess.
On the other hand, things definitely changed in the last 10 years. Before that they used to cut deeper and you could see the cuts. Now you see a gravel windrow but you can't see any real sign of a cut. Like I said our top grader boss knows there's a problem and knows it shouldn't be quite like it is, but for whatever reason he cannot make a change. A couple of years ago one guy in the area got so frustrated he stopped the grader and actually beat the operator up. Not a good thing!
Washboard creation by careless drivers is another of my pet peeves. My neighbor wonders why our road is washboards from one end of the road to the... well to his driveway. Although the washboards are now compacted deep enough into the road base that no matter how you drive they will get bad.
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Post by meskie on May 20, 2021 9:48:42 GMT -6
I’m pretty sure I could make a mess with a grader also but if it was my job i should be good at it. Moving gravel from one side of the road to the other doesn’t fix the washboard. They need to cut it then level and pack it. Around here it’s just a few spots at intersections and on a couple hills that require some extra attention (and maybe reverse) with the grader. I guess if that’s the biggest issue it’s not so bad. Haha.
I’m pretty sure it’s always been illegal to do any work in the road allowance they just enforce it more now for liability reasons.
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Post by northernfarmer on May 20, 2021 11:22:51 GMT -6
Yes I am sure it was not really legal before to be doing ones own thing in a ditch but it would have been seen by the county and not a word was said so they obviously were not too concerned back years ago as long as the job done wasn't screwing up something. One of the problems I had was when they did actually clean out a ditch and instead of themselves dealing with the crossing of a natural gas line, they left that area in tact. What that did was cause silt to drop out before the berm left in the ditch and cause water to flow over the ditch bank and into my field and erode it. So be it right or wrong ( of course it was wrong ) I took the big risk of skimming the ditch with the front end loader going from the road side to the field side and dumping the dirt on the edge of my field to add to the berm I had created from before. Luckily I never hit the gas line as I would have ended in a fiery ball ensuring a quick trip to hell ! . I would guess now that they would have to bring in the special vac truck to suck down to where the line is to locate it and use a backhoe to move the soil away from that local area.
Luckily we seem to have a good operator on the grader in the last number of years, sure some of the things they more then likely tell him to do are stupid that he wouldn't do otherwise but his ability at least is good. Some years ago we had someone on the grader that was too lazy to lift/tilt the blade at either field or other side road approaches and would cut deep into the lesser road with the end of the blade. I'd have to go with a front end loader tractor and try to blend the approach or side road before we started moving the drill around or in fall the combines/trucks as it was that insanely bad.
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Post by Beerwiser on May 20, 2021 18:56:07 GMT -6
Haha, I need to get to a computer to write up my essay on this topic. It is interesting though that you know exactly when you go from one Rm/county to the next. Same goes for grader operators area lol.
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