What's the worst you've ever stuck one?

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arkie1

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Well I managed to bury the tractor to the running boards yesterday. It's been raining here but I have a pasture that is about to be overrun by weeds and we also have 100+ acres of hay that needs to be cut. The logic (I never said it was good logic) was to bush hog while it was wet and we obviously couldn't cut hay and then hit the ground running as soon as the hay fields dried up. Two tractors. One pulling a 15 foot hog. Shouldn't take any time. I had made a couple passes trough the same place and she never bogged down and never even stirred any mud like it was bad. Next round I guess I came at it form the right angle or something and the next thing I know I can barely see the top of the front tires on a four wheel drive 70 horse tractor. No big deal right? The front end just found a soft spot. I've got a loader. Been stuck worse than this before. Put the bucket down to push myself out and engage the diff lock. The bucket sinks like a spoon in a bowl of chocolate pudding. :bang: Make the call of shame to brother man to bring the chain and come give me a pull. We hook up chains and give her a go. Not happening. Try it a few more times and finally decide that his 2wd isn't gonna get it. Walk to barn and get the landowners 4wd. Still not happening. It's dark at this point...and raining...and the girls are calling saying supper is ready...and did I mention it's raining?

There's a pretty good size stump in line with the stuck tractor. Put the bucket of the landowners tractor against the stump. Run the chains to the bucket. Idea is to pull the chain tight and hook it on the bucket then curl it back to pull the stuck tractor back a little and then set the loader down on the stuck tractor, hope it stays in place, and readjust the chain. It's a slow process but I've made it work before. All I'm gonna say is I'll never going to buy an LS. Weakest hydraulics I've ever seen. It's still raining. I'm aggravated. Brother man is aggravated. We finally decided we were screwed and to take another stab at it the next day. So when I get home I'm going to load up all the chains block and tackles and the big come-a-long and go get the thing out. If that doesn't work I may be making the call of shame to a friend to borrow his dozer.

This could turn into some pretty good stories here. What's the worst you guys have ever buried one up?
 
They rented me a big Komatsu dozer over in Marshall, Texas to clear roadway survey when we broke up Grandaddy's place. We cleared it. We had some hours left on the machine. My uncle wanted some dead pines pushed by the creek. That Komatsu sunk. It really sunk. We chained the tracks to pine trees and tried backing out with the tracks pulling. We broke several chains.

A friend borrowed my caterpillar to clear river frontage. He sunk in the sand with the nose pointed into the Brazos. I did everything I could to get it out short of going forward into the river. No dice. Chains wouldn't work this time. A big excavator pulled it back up off of the river. I'm not sure what he paid that guy. That was a bad day.
 
I never had one stuck quite that bad, but had a situation where I kept getting bigger and bigger stuff stuck. I took my 2wd pickup to check on some heifers one morning before work about 25 years ago. It was at a rent pasture that had a lot of sandy ground. I drove through a flat and got stuck. I walked out and got my father to come with his 65hp tractor with a FEL on it. I told him that the ground felt hard close to my truck so I didn't think we'd have any trouble pulling it out with a chain. And I was right. We pulled it right out. Then we're heading back up the hill going out and instead of following the road he cut across a corner with the tractor and got it stuck. He fooled with it a little while, and I asked him to let me try. I had always heard that you could walk one out with the FEL, so I wanted to give it a shot. I rolled the bucket all the way down, put some pressure on it and rolled it back up to move the tractor. However, for every inch the tractor moved back, it moved an inch down. It didn't take me long to figure out that wasn't going to work.

So we got in my truck (because I had followed the road coming up the hill) and left to get his buddy that had a winch truck. We told him to look at the ground real good because we didn't want to get his truck stuck. Because of the way the tractor was positioned he couldn't get to it from the road, but he said he thought it would be okay. So he set up and let the cable out to the tractor. Got it out okay. We're in business now. Until he got ready to leave with the winch truck. It was sitting on a little bit of an incline, and when he tried to move it the front tires were pushing up sand instead of turning.

I neglected to mention earlier that this guy owned a bulldozer or two, and at least one of the big articulated 4WD 8 tire John Deere tractors with two dirt scrapers behind it. He said he'd let the truck sit there for a few days until he got his tractor out of the shop, then he'd come in and pull the truck out with it. I was sweating bullets about this time, since the way our luck had been going I figured we'd get it stuck too, and if that happened I'd have to buy it and let it sit there, but he assured me it would be okay. Anyway, a few days later it was out of the shop. It was so big that we had to take a gate off the hinges and pull a post to even get to the truck, but it turns out he was right. Pulled the truck right out without any problems.
 
Have you ever had a Dozer sliding sideways down a slope? I was clearing trees, nothing big. Biggest was 6 inch diameter so was doing it while it was wet in the spring. I was pushing perpendicular to the slope. Piling the brush in a ravine that ran up and down the slope. The ground was muddy in one spot. I looked down at the ground and the tracks were moving forward but the dozer was going down slope sideways at a faster speed than it was going forward. The cleats were acting like runners.
 
I've gotten a couple trucks stuck in places I shouldn't have tried to go. Dad got a tractor stuck trying to pile brush. I didn't think we would ever get it out. He got a 4wd pick-up stuck trying to pull it out. He finally had to have a neighbor use a loader to come get him out from a pretty good distance.
 
Margonme":160ympcj said:
Have you ever had a Dozer sliding sideways down a slope? I was clearing trees, nothing big. Biggest was 6 inch diameter so was doing it while it was wet in the spring. I was pushing perpendicular to the slope. Piling the brush in a ravine that ran up and down the slope. The ground was muddy in one spot. I looked down at the ground and the tracks were moving forward but the dozer was going down slope sideways at a faster speed than it was going forward. The cleats were acting like runners.
I bet that puckered you up..

There are some good stuck vids on YouTube..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSUXdKTfDrI
 
The first thing is to quit digging once your stuck. I've been stuck plenty and a backhoe will get almost anything out. Just chain the front bucket to a tree and hook a chain to the rear bucket teeth. I've pulled loaders, and dozer out with my backhoe.
 
my brother stuck my old J10 pickup one time and water was over the doors and flowing thru the cab. I asked him how he accomplished that he said everything was fine till it choked down. we unspooled a 1/4 mile of cable off of a rain bird traveler and hooked it to truck and got on a hill with 4wd JD tractor . at one point the whole cab when under pulling it out . I drained all the fluids let it set a few days and refilled and she fired up and I drove it several more yrs
 
HDRider":1v7wuk42 said:
Margonme":1v7wuk42 said:
Have you ever had a Dozer sliding sideways down a slope? I was clearing trees, nothing big. Biggest was 6 inch diameter so was doing it while it was wet in the spring. I was pushing perpendicular to the slope. Piling the brush in a ravine that ran up and down the slope. The ground was muddy in one spot. I looked down at the ground and the tracks were moving forward but the dozer was going down slope sideways at a faster speed than it was going forward. The cleats were acting like runners.
I bet that puckered you up..

There are some good stuck vids on YouTube..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSUXdKTfDrI

Ever wonder how that little hole gets in the middle of the seat on some pieces of equipment?
 
Margonme":ny1a78fs said:
Have you ever had a Dozer sliding sideways down a slope? I was clearing trees, nothing big. Biggest was 6 inch diameter so was doing it while it was wet in the spring. I was pushing perpendicular to the slope. Piling the brush in a ravine that ran up and down the slope. The ground was muddy in one spot. I looked down at the ground and the tracks were moving forward but the dozer was going down slope sideways at a faster speed than it was going forward. The cleats were acting like runners.

Sounds like a tall tale to me margon.

Where you located?
 
I've had some experiences over the years with cotton pickers that would've made good videos. Had as many as three 200 hp fwd tractors hooked to them on a couple different occasions. Had a neighbor that was picking his cotton and it kept raining and raining. When they finally got back in the field the literally pushed the cotton picker with a d8 dozer from one end to the other. Made a terrible mess of the whole field. And nearly demolished the picker in the process.

Don't know if it's true but I heard that in the 90s they were building a road down around lake okochobee in Florida and "lost" two new d8 dozers. Marshland that ate them up like quicksand and they supposedly just sank so deep they couldn't get them. But this may or may not be true.
 
I have never got one stuck too bad. But I have helped pull out some real well stuck big pieces of equipment. With half a dozen well placed blocks and 1,500 feet of 7/8 inch haul back cable I can pull the plug out of the bottom of the ocean.

Watched a guy ride a D-8 down a nearly vertical hillside. I was cutting road right off way up by Forks, WA. Steep ground into virgin timber. The bank gave way under the Cat. He managed to get it pointed straight down the hill which kept it from rolling. He road it out to the bottom which was probably 800-900 feet down. I scrambled down there and he was still sitting on the Cat white as a sheet. I asked him why he never put the blade down. His answer was he was afraid that if the blade caught on anything that the Cat would flip endo. I had to half help him walk back up the hill because he was a bit weak in the knees (a little flatter route than he took on the way down). The Cat stayed there until they logged the unit. Used the tower with inch and a quarter main line to pull it up the hill.
 
There is a reason there are brush sweeps on a dozer. I have had a couple locust trees spring out of a pile of brush with such force they will take your head off. When pushing a big blade of brush, a long limber locust trunk can become compressed and when it unbinds, it is a deadly danger!
 
True Grit Farms":3ng40knx said:
The first thing is to quit digging once your stuck. I've been stuck plenty and a backhoe will get almost anything out. Just chain the front bucket to a tree and hook a chain to the rear bucket teeth. I've pulled loaders, and dozer out with my backhoe.
A backhoe works great.Guess how I know. :D
 

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