First Experience with a Cat D5G - Transferred from QDMA Forums

[yoderjac]

The certified burn coordinator unloaded his Cat D5G to make a couple last minute breaks before the burn and used it to break up some smoldering piles yesterday. I had asked him to destump a couple small areas while he had it on the property.
To my surprise, he asked if I wanted to do it myself. I jumped at the chance. I had operated a Cat track loader with leaver clutch steering when I was younger but nothing this big. He gave me a 2 minute tutorial, handed me the key, and took off for the day. I worked till dark last night. The first hour or two were getting used to operation. What a beast! They were calling fro increasing chances of rain today so I got started at first light. I ended up getting 2 small wildlife opening, and a spot of an archery range destumped. I also got an area leveled for future equipment storage structures. I worked until about 2:30 pm today and by then the rain picked up so I quit.
I've got to say I can do much more in 1/10th the time with this than I can with my DK45 and FEL.
Thanks,
Jack

You dog!!!
One of these days, I'd love to have a 953 track loader.... And when that day comes, I'm going to dig, push, lift, dump, rip, pile, create, build, and everything else I've always wanted to do on our property w/ a real piece of equipment. A fellas gotta have a dream and that's at top of my list!

Sounds like a lot of fun!!

^^^^^ completely agree

Felt like I was 3 years old sitting in the sandbox moving dirt. Not much changes....boys become men and the dirt piles get bigger!
I have to say, this was a good experience for me. It gave me a very good idea of how realistic my expectation are for operators. When we first bought our property, one of the owners had a friend with a big track loader who did some food plot clearing. We ended up with large piles of topsoil and debris mixed together around the plot. We completed a logging operation where the contract called for the logging deck top soil to be removed and saved and then reapplied. Again, lots of piles beside the decks after they were "reclaimed".
I thought this might be a limitation of the equipment. So, when I made other plots, I cleared trees by hand and then used an old backhoe to dig stumps. This was time consuming but I easily separated debris from soil and all the soil was retained in the plot. So, I've ben advocating using a track loader with a thumb for clearing verses a dozer. This would speed things up and retain top soil.
Well after using this dozer for destumping, I found that a good operator could easily retain all the top soil. Piles of mixed topsoil and debris beside a new plot are simply a matter of either laziness or an attempt to keep cost down. I'm a novice and it took me some time, but I had no problem destumping my heavy clay and retaining 95%+ of the top soil.
Thanks,
Jack

Lots of folks run on a big dose of dgas. Owners are different.

If I ever win the lotto one of the first things I will buy will be a dozer(INTERNAL IMAGE LIKE EMOTICON REMOVED) I got to try out one of the large Deere dozers a few years ago on a timber company lease I had, what fun! Big boys, big toys and dirt are a good combination.

 

[yoderjac]

END OF TRANSFER FROM QDMA FORUMS