New tractor advice for a campground

[HappyCamper]

OK, here it goes. I am in need of a tractor for maintenance of a campground. This is about 10 acres with the usual campground maintenance needs such as:
Gravel roads maintenance
Gravel RV sites leveling
Sage brush clearing
Digging to repair broken utility lines
Post hole digging for new fence/repair
Moving picnic tables and other campground equipment
Towing of hay wagon for rides
Winter snow removal at main roads
Ground leveling for future pavilion to be built

There are other needs that will surely present themselves as soon as I have the tractor. I have decided a Kubota is the way to go. Have looked at buying used but have not found anything yet. One thing to note is that the ground where I am at has a lot of volcanic rock and for building/road construction they blast rather than dig with any equipment. Have been told that it is best to add dirt where you want to build rather than to dig. For major construction diggin I would hire out the work.
Have been shown a NH TC30, MF 1531, Kubota's L3130 and B2630. I have seen some advice being based on number of acres and type of work that the tractor will be doing. Therefore, I have tried to list the tasks that are currently on my mind. Please give me an idea of the size tractor that you would consider for these types of tasks. Thanks in advance for your help.

 

[Bird]

Whew, tough questions there, HappyCamper. Are you sure you only want ONE tractor? One of the summers when we were full time RVers we worked in a much bigger campground (1,000 campsites) and we had three (of course that was in addition to a very old, small bulldozer and a bunch of golf cars). One was a dedicated tractor/loader/backhoe. The others were used for the other jobs you mention, except no snow removal. Now we may have needed bigger tractors than you do because we had a big storage lot with a lot of RVs stored there. Owners would call and we'd pull their trailers from the storage lot to a campsite for them, then after they left, we'd pull it back to the storage lot. How heavy is the wagon, when loaded, going to be for the hay rides? You need enough tractor to easily control and stop it. For the terrain you described, I'd sure want a subframe mounted backhoe; no 3-point backhoe. Then how often do you expect to take the backhoe off to pull other things and put it back to dig?

Now without knowing a lot more about your campground, the tractors you've been looking at might be OK, but for a purely personal opinion, I'd be looking for something bigger; say 50-60 horsepower range.

 

[Bird]

Re: New tractor advice for a campground *DELETED*

Post deleted by Bird

 

[HappyCamper]

Unfortunately Bird, the budget will only allow for one at this time. The campground is only about 100 sites. I do not expect to be digging that much except to fix or upgrade the utilities. Therefore, I will not be getting a backhoe at this time but would like to be able to rent one and run it with the tractor when needed. As a matter of fact, according to the dealer, there is a trencher that can run off the PTO that may be better than a backhoe. I don't know how heavy the haywagon will be since it is in its conception mode and may or may not get off the ground.

Its main use at this time will be road and site maintenance. I have a lot of road to maintain. Is a box scraper or blade better for the job? The road is currently very dusty because the gravel has been shifted to the sides by the heavy RVs. According to a gravel company, they will scrape it and add gravel where needed for a lot of $. With my own tractor, I can do it myself and use it for other tasks saving myself some considerable $ in the long run. Did you use it in a similar fashion while workcamping? Glad to have found someone with both tractor and campground experience.

 

[Bird]

Don't know how I managed to double post my last response; must have accidentally clicked twice.

I know you can rent backhoes, but the only ones I've seen were complete; tractor and all. If you can rent just a backhoe to use on your own tractor, that's something new to me. The campground we worked in had a lot of underground water leaks (poor initial installation of water lines), so that was one thing the backhoe was used for. The other use for the backhoe was a bit unusual, in my opinion. We had several dumpsters for the garbage, and the company charged by the dumpster load; not weight. The owner of the campground didn't want to spend the money for more dumpsters, so the backhoe was used frequently to "pack" the dumpsters as full and tight as possible. /forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif

</font><font color="blue" class="small">( I have a lot of road to maintain. Is a box scraper or blade better for the job? )</font>

Other members can probably answer this better. I've only used a box blade, but not in that campground. All the road maintenance had been done before the start of the summer season, so I only did electrical, plumbing, carpentry, mowing, "security" (more like a greeter) at the front gate, pumping LPG, running a bingo game, and towing trailers with the tractor. A box blade is better for moving (dragging) material from one place to another, but I can see how the straight blade, angled, might make it easier to bring gravel from the sides back to the middle of the road.

If your hayride wagon is light enough, and you don't intend to buy your own backhoe, then a smaller tractor might be suitable for the other jobs you mentioned. I annoyed the campground manager (daughter of the owner) because I refused to drive the tractor for the hayrides. It was a big 4 wheeled wagon that we also used to move picnic tables and such; no side boards; just put bales of hay on it for the evening hayrides. We had too many people on the hayrides, jumping on and off the wagon, and pedestrian traffic all over the campground, and only one employee along (the driver). I told her the only way I'd do the hayrides was if she could show me their liability insurance policy, which she didn't do. /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif

 

[RonR]

If I had a lot of roads to maintain, and it was a gravel to the center issue, I'd look at building/buying one of the units where the front blade angles the material to the left and the rear blade levels. To me, that would be the fastest method; you would just drive down on the right of each road and move material to the center.

ron