So heres the long story short, but still long, if you can get through the whole tale without falling asleep, tell me if im wrong: the guy that maintains the road decides he hates certain people. Its a culmination of: how you behave on the road, what you do with your life, who you voted for, and if you treat him as almighty and important. Because he hates people down the road from me, he decided not to maintain the road because he thought they were going too fast and "tearing up the road" which was completely bs, they've fueded for over 20 years now, and this stunt was just ruining everyones struts and ball joints. So my neighbor and I have built a couple different drags as we're the first on the road so it'd be quick and easy to drag, and I dont have a tractor. YET. After our first drag, 2 or 3 weeks ago, the road from my neighbors house to the pavement was substantially better but his setup didnt work the best. Took a lot of passes, and wasn't rigid so it mostly just contoured to the road shape. So I rigged something up that scrapes but doesnt dig much, mostly just gouges the surface, and has some chain link hanging off the back to smooth as i go. Got it setup so the drags at a 45° angle and it works really good.
Now before i mention our interaction, i need to specify, the road has no crown, nor ditches. We mention it needs these and his response is "the ****bags up the road will just drive their trucks through and ruin it." Its basically wide and flat but pot holes galore.
Also, when we complained the president gave us some speech about how its so much better than it used to be blah blah blah, (Hadn't graded it in almost a year at this point) and that its everyones responsibility to help maintain the road. Last meeting, no one mentioned us dragging the road at all, but suggested I take over running the old grader the road association bought as Tom's no spring chicken anymore and its time for the young buck to take some responsibility. Which to be fair, i rented a massive breaker and spent 12hours breaking up rocks to make grading easier last fall, and probably have twice the hours as Tom invested into fixing the road this year, before I even complained. So im under the impression they want me to do something.
After we did the first passes with prototype 1 he came out and graded for the first time this summer the next day. Presumably because we had a road association meeting coming up and didnt want to go to the meeting where we could honestly say we put more effort into the road than him. The road was covered in rocks. We made our new setup and dragged the rocks, and only the rocks the next day. Idk how it works so well, im not an engineer but it works out so well that theres nothing but large rocks being pushing similar to how a plow pushes snow. We did our whole section up to my neighbor's house. Best the roads been the entire time i've lived here. Fast forward about few weeks, starting to get a few washboards and come home from work he had come up and graded that section and ripped up copious amounts of rocks anywhere from 1"-8" ish. Couldn't even drive straight down the road, had to drive around rocks. So we went out with our rig, which I'll say again, works surprisingly well at sifting the rocks off but allowing the finer stuff to slide underneath a day or two later. Got all the small rocks(at least a couple yards over the course of approximately 2000') on the side of the road, but not in the ditch, as there isnt one, and he came down saying we were ruining the road and yelling. Said those rocks are what holds the road together and we were ruining it, we needed to drive over them and pack them in over the next few weeks.
Long read but the drama is sickening and I just want to live in the woods, hunt, grow vegetables and fruit, and have a reef tank. Watch my kids grow. Not deal with road drama
we dont have anyone here who knows a decent bit about maintaining a private dirt road do we?
