Operating a dozer on slopes

ernemats · Mar 17, 2003

How steep a slope can a dozer work on safely? I have seen dozers operated on slopes you can hardly walk up. I realize there are a lot of variables to consider, types of machines, operator skills,etc. Any input would be appreciated.

Dozernut · Mar 17, 2003

There are too many variables to give you a set answer. A lot depends on the condition of the soil you are working on. Working on banks or dams, you have to be careful that the embankment does not shear off from the weight of your machine. Several experienced operators have been killed from banks shearing off. Never work a slope crossways, always work it head on. If your inner voice is saying don't do it, pay attention.
Some soils will pack well and some won't, especially sandy soils. This will impact the amount of slope your machine can safely handle. I know this doesn't answer your question, but every job is a different situation and there is no set limit on slopes.

Egon · Mar 18, 2003

If working a dozer on slopes It's best to watch someone with lots of seat time do the work. Proper ROPS and seat belt too. If the ground is frozen it could get real touchy. The condition of the growsers is also a factor.

I've seen a few go down a slope while the operators were making the initial road backslope cut on a side hill. The operator was very skilled and always ended up going blade first down hill. Another 9 with winch was required to get him back up as going down and around was not an option.

Egon

MarkV · Mar 18, 2003

Ernemats asks an interesting question that I have always wondered. Dozernut I am sure is right on with his explanation though I still wonder if there are some general guidelines. It is generally excepted that compact tractors are tested for a 20 degree side slope and 15 degrees is the reasonable working limits with the variables Dozernut mentions to be considered. If a CUT will work 15 degrees, in many conditions, will a dozer work 25?….30?…????

I am reminded of a story that kind of fits in with this subject. A couple of years a go we had a fire on the mountain where our weekend home is. The fire burned about 250 acres before forest service could get it under control and left for the day. During the night the fire jumped a fire line and started slowly heading down hill on our property. The forest service came back and used one of their dozers to cut new breaks and backfire the slope. All was well.

One of the firebreaks this guy cut was from an old logging road about 200 feet behind and above us to our parking area. The slope is at least a 45-degree angle with a great deal of rock. Where the hill meets our parking area it is a 12 – 15' vertical rock drop. The operator took a look at the drop, put his seat belt on for the first time that day and drove straight over with his plow down as a brake. With his blade flat on my parking area the rear half of his tracks come about 2' off the wall and I thought he was going over. The dozer settled back down against the wall sitting near vertical and he started crabbing his 6-way blade and walking the dozer down into the parking area. IT WAS AMAZING!!! This guy had been with the forest service for over 30 years so I guess he has done it all and has enormous amounts of experience. His only comment was "Guess I was all prayed up today."

Not that there is enough money in Fort Knox to get me to do something like that, I was impressed to see what could be done. This was a JD 450C dozer with a firebreak plow and 6-way blade.

MarkV

ScottAR · Mar 18, 2003

Most specs for dozers I've seen indicate **under ideal conditions** max working angle is 100% grade or 45 degrees. As Dozernut has already pointed out, ideal conditions rarely exist in the real world. Soil type, compaction, and ground debris can alter the safe working angle. Experience is the only way to gauge the safety of slopes and even that isn't absolute.

MarkV · Mar 18, 2003

Thanks ScottAR, do you know if that is a running cross slope or perpendicular to the slope?

MarkV

ScottAR · Mar 18, 2003

45 degrees along the slope. Up and down is a steeper angle though I forget what it is.

Taylortractornut · Mar 18, 2003

When i was 5 or 6 dad worked along time as a foreman operator for Wright Brothers Construction and they had a big job cleaning rocks and trees off a slope. The slope was too steep to stop on once yo broke over the edge it was a commitment. They let one dozer at a time go down it and when it go to the bottom it drove around to the otherside off the hill to go up an access rod. One real young operator went down it and raised his blade in the air like youd take out a tree on the ground instead of using dad and others advice of keeping the blade down and use gravity and the machine to push the root ball out. when he contacted it the tree fell over and the root ball got under the skid pan. dad said th dozer made about 13 rolls on its side. It messed the guy up pretty bad he had his belt on but he still took a beating. They rolled it over with a 245 and put a mnew muffler and changed the oil in it and put it back on the hill in the same day.
Dads tken i D8 hightrack on slopes id be afraid to take a little machine on. Ive gotten better at running on a side slope after working directly with him. Before my time when the Tenn TOm water way was built through here they had a few fellas that dressed slopes with D4D and such with swamp kits they had 36 inch wide pads and a straight blade with tilt. THe blade was 10 feet wide and abot 12 to 18 inces high. Ive seen pictures of them hangin on a slope id be afraid to look down lol.

jtn · Mar 18, 2003

I have taken a dozer up and down a 35° slope, and up a 40° slope. I know it does not sound like much but let me tell you it felt like it was vertical.

The most impressive side sloping I ever whitnessed was a guy working a D8R with an A blade. The A blade was the only thing holding the machine on the slope. The uphill tracks were barely touching the ground. I watched him work the slope in 1 direction and then turn around on the slope and work back the other direction. It was more slope than I ever want to work across.

JT

Egon · Mar 19, 2003

There are times that a big dozer with a winch line is on the top holding a smaller dozer working on the slope.

Egon

Jag · Mar 19, 2003

E-Mats, I now have about 500 hours seat time on my JD-450C. I have worked it on a side slope of about 32-35 dregees, not on purpose that is just the way it ended up. I hung a hole and slid off a bank just above my fence. If I had gone another 2-3 feet down hill I would have been in ditch on it's side. I was able to turn it around and get it back up hill with only taking out 2 posts, never busted the wire. Have push brush over into a 12-16 deep ditch and gone down into it at a little over 45 dregees and backed back up with no problem.. When talking to my father-in-law (35+ years of full time heavy operation) said a dozer will take a lot more than you would think, and they will slip, specially working the side of the slope, before a dozer will flip , as long you do not hang a root or rock. In my linited experence you will be way scared long before get there....

ernemats · Mar 19, 2003

I have a JD 550 with a manual 6 way angle blade. I only have about 20 hours running it . I have had it on side slopes of 20 to 25 degrees and it has not felt uncomfortable . On lesser slopes with my tractors it feels a little iffy. The 550 has a full cage and brushguards and I always use the seat belt, I don't think I am experienced enough to go on slopes in excess of what I have been on already, and don't know if I want to try. Thanks for the input all of you.

Dozernut · Mar 19, 2003

Hey Jag, where have you been hiding. I hope you didn't jump off one of your cliffs and skin your tukus /forums/images/graemlins/shocked.gif! Sounds like you got that 450 backup and running again. If my memory hasn't completely failed me, you were getting ready to rebuild the steering clutches. 500 hours, you have been doing a little work. Don't be jumping that Deere from the cliffs /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif, later dude.
RB

Jag · Mar 20, 2003

HI, you Dozer Nut you. Man I have really missed you guys. This site is getting so big it is hard to keep. Just been real busy, too many irons in the fire and you would think there was little room left with my big rear staying in the fire most of the time. No-- the 450 is still down, blown head gasket, but that should change this next week or so. I have to clear and level off a place and get a place for a barn before the end of May when my wife brings in the horses. I got about 200 hours seat time on a friends 450. Man getting paid to pay on someone else dozer, what a great life...

E-Mats, what model is the JD-550 and do you have hydro drive.. Keep us up to date on the learning curve...

JAG

ernemats · Mar 20, 2003

tHE JD550 IS A MODEL 6410, AN OLDER MODEL NEW IN 1979 WITH A 3 SPEED POWER SHIFT CONVERTER DRIVEN TRANS. i DON'T KNOW WHAT THAT LEARNING CURVE WILL BE LIKE, HOPE IT GOES FAST. I SURE WISH THE DOZER HAD A 6 WAY POWER ANGLE BLADE AND i HAD SOME EXTRA HANDS FOR ALL THE LEVERS (BLADE, CLUTCHES, TRANSMISSION)

Egon · Mar 20, 2003

No problems with the hands.
Left hand on powershift to 1st. for begining work' then on to clutches along with left foot for brakes, right foot on decelerator and the right hand on the blade controll. Have fun.

Egon

wroughtn_harv · Mar 20, 2003

<font color="blue">No problems with the hands.
Left hand on powershift to 1st. for begining work' then on to clutches along with left foot for brakes, right foot on decelerator and the right hand on the blade controll.</font>

Hmmmmmmmmm, back in 96 I got to operate a Vermeer cable plow about the size of JC550. It was tough. There was the steering wheel and the two gauges on the dash. The object of the excerise was to use the wheel to keep the two needles on the gauges vertical. If one lost vertical it meant that side track was losing power and needed a little help via the steering wheel.

Back in the early eighties I was following a cable plowing crew in California. Cat D-7 cutting through dirt and rock outside of Bakersfield. More than once I saw the operator plowing in along a road with one track on the roadside and the other floating in space. He had unbelievable faith in the strength of the plow and his own ability.

BTW bulldozers and grades are just the opposite of motorcycles and hill climbs. Many is the time I've climbed a hill with a bike that I'll never live long enough to grow the cajones to ride down. /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

DKinWA · Mar 21, 2003

ernemats, I've wondered the same thing too, but for a slightly different reason. Every time I see a dozer or an excavator hanging on to the side of some hill I wonder how on earth all of those bearings in the engine stay lubricated. Do the big diesel engines on these machines have some special system for ensuring oil gets pumped throughout the engine when working on these steep slopes? At some of the angles I've seen dozers working I'm not sure the pick up tube for the oil pump doesn't wind up sucking air at times.

jfall · Nov 6, 2009

2:1 slope is possible to trim,but you better have your blade in the ground,and it better be good dirt.
im going to demo a new john deer 764 high speed dozer tomorrow,and i'd like to know what slope its good for.
i ran it today for a few hours,its a cool *** machine,despite how gay it looks.
i dozed up a 2:1 no problem,but it seems a bit narrow to be trimming anything more than a 2:1/2 or 3 to 1 safely,but ive heard the centre of gravity is very low.
sitting in the seat,its pretty hard to tell,your feet are about a meter higher than the top of the blade.

LBrown59 · Nov 6, 2009

jfall said:
2:1 slope is possible to trim,but you better have your blade in the ground,and it better be good dirt.
im going to demo a new john deer 764 high speed dozer tomorrow,and i'd like to know what slope its good for.
i ran it today for a few hours,its a cool *** machine,despite how gay it looks.
i dozed up a 2:1 no problem,but it seems a bit narrow to be trimming anything more than a 2:1/2 or 3 to 1 safely,but ive heard the centre of gravity is very low.
sitting in the seat,its pretty hard to tell,your feet are about a meter higher than the top of the blade.

Did you expect your post to apply to a 6 year old thread?
Jus wunderin.