# track or skid steer



## jacob land and (Jan 25, 2006)

i own a land and lawn company and am planning on buying a bobcat t190 this april, i planned on using it for snow removal in the winter but from what ive heard they arent as good as a skid steers in the snow? im sure it would get the job done but is there really a big difference between the two in snow?


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## dirt digger (Feb 27, 2005)

yea...tracks with the pad style footprint on them stink. Tires are better in my opinion in the snow, unless you go with the CAT trackloader which has the bar tread pattern. But tracks are far superior in the dry and muddy condidtions of summer, you have to decided which you will use it for more often...personaly i love our Takeuchi


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## jacob land and (Jan 25, 2006)

do you use yours in the snow


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## jacob land and (Jan 25, 2006)

do you use yours in the snow and for the people who use skid steers for snow removal how do you get them to the job, trailer it?


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## ProWorkz.com (Nov 29, 2004)

*tracks*

Jacob I run CAT track skid steers. I have installed custom cross link chains on my tracks. My tracks machines will run circles around my rubber tire machines in the snow or dirt.....


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## dirt digger (Feb 27, 2005)

jacob land and said:


> do you use yours in the snow


 tried to with a 7foot blade and it pushed fine downhill...trying to push up hill is a battle you just can't win with that type of track.


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## drmiller100 (Jan 26, 2005)

tracked machines might run circles around my chained skid in snow, but i push snow on ice, not on snow.

think about it for a second. you are pushing, and you are going to be either on wet pavement, ice, or wet ice.

guys with tracked skids around here can drive out across the meadow, but they can't cut through the burm on edge of the plowed road. 

asv and cats are good enough to be considered worthless. the rest are just flat dangerous.

grouser tracks on skids can work in the mud. i'm going to try a set of the chained tracks you see on ebay.


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## ProWorkz.com (Nov 29, 2004)

*tracks*

Miller I have both CAT rubber tire and track skid steers. My track machines with 5/16 V bar cross link chain bolted to the rubber track will out push and out work any of my rubber tire machines on ice. As of 1/29/06 I have 5 CAT track machines and 2 CAT rubber tire machines. Next season I will have no rubber tire machines.

Now maybe my track machines work better for me because get the snow off the pavement and do not leave any ice. Ice is always a problem for the guys who seem to pack it down instead of getting it up.....



> grouser tracks on skids can work in the mud. i'm going to try a set of the chained tracks you see on ebay.


Your rubber tire machine will work better with 235/85 studded snow tires than those cheap over the tire tracks ever will. I have 235/85/16's studded snows on both my rubber tire machines. No chains required. Stock skid steer tire is 14 inches wide. My 235/85's are 7 wide...


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## drmiller100 (Jan 26, 2005)

conditions are different everywhere.

first, i was going to use the chain/tracks for only mud. i'm pretty happy with my skid steer chained 12.50 tires for what I do.

we try pretty hard to get down to pavement each push. we use a big snow bucket and scrape.
One thing different we have here is a LOT of freeze thaw cycles. Once a week or more it will warm up enough that snow turns to water. Further, customers won't pay to push 2 inches of snow.

So, we end up with ice on pavement. If it never thawed, then there woudln't be problems. if it warmed up enough to compleetely melt the snow off, then there wouldn't be problems. if we used salt to get the ice off, there wouldn't be problems. 
but no one here uses salt either on driveways. a fair amount of salt is used on walk ways, but not driveways.

maybe your chains work pretty well on the tracked skids. I'm not thinking I'm going ot tell my competitors though.
tires are simple. they work. they don't get eaten up in rocks, they don't have bogies go out, they are very low maintenance.
tracksmight be pretty cool though for deeper snow.


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