What causes tractor rollovers?

[riptides]

Angle, load and ground conditions.

Ground conditions change my angle, Load pushed me over. End result was a medi-vac.

 

[Vigo327]

 

[3 Horse Ranch]

View attachment 731992

Move the line to the inner wheel as though it were a standard 4 wheel tractor and the picture would look a little more precarious. As noted, the wheels are there as much for stability as for traction.

 

[Buggs67]

FWIW mowing with my tractor and a 5' finish mower even a slight sideways angle felt like a rollover. I removed the FEL just to get more maneuverability around the trees and the tractor felt much more planted. Also less weight to compact the lawn.

I still will not mow sideways to the hill; only up and down. And driving up the hill, and then mowing the next stripe down works well. Backing up the slope is good too but much slower.

 

[RoyJackson]

FWIW mowing with my tractor and a 5' finish mower even a slight sideways angle felt like a rollover. I removed the FEL just to get more maneuverability around the trees and the tractor felt much more planted. Also less weight to compact the lawn.

I still will not mow sideways to the hill; only up and down. And driving up the hill, and then mowing the next stripe down works well. Backing up the slope is good too but much slower.

FEL's add weight and raise the center of gravity...bad news on a slope

 

[Oaktree]

The guys mowing the medians and sides of the highways is Vermont amaze me.
Vermont isn't called The Green Mountain state for no reason. Some of the slopes have got to be 20°, at least.
The tractors are large, cabbed utility machines...mostly red, so I'd guess they're Massey's. Some have dual wheels on the rear, some don't.
They all run across the slopes towing a good-sized rotary cutter (I'd estimate 10 footers ± a foot in width)

The ones I've seen have large counterweights on one side, I'd say they mow in one direction to keep that side uphill.
Lots of JDs up this way, though maybe those are in N.H.

 

[Jstpssng]

Operator error, almost every time. In most cases I suspect that it's when people are just starting to get comfortable with their machines, and push the limits a bit too far.

The only rollover I've actually witnessed was when the owner of the orchard I worked at was loading a forklift off the loading ramp, and the board he was using to bridge between the ramp and truck kicked out. It started to go slowly, and many of us would have tried to jump. Instead he grabbed the uphill side of the roll cage and held on... at a certain point it went from slowly tipping to quickly on the ground.

 

[JWR]

Gravity, it is always the gravity that tips them over

When the center of gravity is directly above a point outside the footprint of the rear tires, left or right, it has already upset. Until then it has not. Anything else is a needlessly long story.

 

[fishdrivel]

People that do not know what causes rollovers are what causes rollovers. The hill is just sitting there. The tractor can just sit there.
The problem starts when someone starts driving the tractor in a situation they should not. You should drive the tractor according to your experience.

 

[RKP in SB]

This thread reminds me of the time I decided to take my old Gator up the steep hill on my land to make use of the some of the many dead ash trees which I figured, were either going to become firewood or just rot. On the way up, it was very scary - it felt like I was close to rolling the machine over, front to back. I'm guessing the weight of the plow out front helped.
The bad part, though, was coming back down. I knew it wasn't going to be fun, but the land is very heavily wooded and there's no other way out. So if I didn't want to abandon my Gator up there, it **had** to come back down that hill. Unfortunately, the thin layer of a few tree roots and weeds on top of our pure sand soil immediately broke loose and the Gator was basically skiing downhill with the wheels not turning. Smacked my head into the windshield pretty good when I hit the bottom of the slope and slammed the plow blade into the ground, coming to an immediate stop. I got out and shook like a leaf for a few minutes and vowed never to do THAT again!