We totaled out our new equipment & it was my fault... The damage cost as much as a small used car!?!

Speaker 1: All right, guys. Well, I'd be lying if I didn't say I was speechless today, that's for sure. It's snowing, as you can see, and I should be prepping and getting ready to go out plowing all night long, taking out the equipment. Is prepping code word for sleeping? But instead, I'm going down to the repair shop because my guys destroyed a brand new snow plow. It's one of those things where, as an owner of the company, I have to take responsibility because I didn't catch the continuing ongoing mistakes that were being made. But sometimes as owners you can't be everywhere. There you go. You know what? I just made an excuse, that's BS. It's my fault. It's not their fault, it's my fault. I should have caught them, I should have warned them and showed them the right way. I didn't do it so the snow plow that got destroyed, brand new snow plow that got decimated. That's on me, guys. So, we're going to have some fun today. Yeah, not every day goes the way you want it. Today we're going to go pick up the snow plow. It's repaired, ready to go. 

It's one of our favorites, I'll be honest with you. It's a Quattro Plow, I love this thing. The production of this machine has, it just transformed one of our skid loaders. Take it right out, and let's go.

Hey guys, I want to jump in here and ask you what's your favorite brand of snow removal equipment? Put it in the comments down below, because a lot of guys watching this video read through the comments trying to help them make the decision on what they should be buying for themselves down the road. Like this pull plow. You guys suggested I try one out, so here's one in the back of my truck and I found out I absolutely love this thing. It's a game-changer. So, I made a review video on that. So, I want to hear from you, what else should I be checking into guys?  So, put it in the comments down below. Oh, and now would be a good time to subscribe, because his videos aren't boring at all. 

Really, now you're using a cat to try to get people to subscribe to your channel? What is wrong with you?

Sometimes guys, it's not just one big event that destroys something, it's a daily bad habit that adds up over time that creates all the damage. 

Whoa! Okay, so one of the things Elliot, when you scrape like that, you're not getting any more down pressure than if you scrape at a lesser angle. And what can happen is you're going forward, if you hit something, you can bend, slightly bend the hydraulic arms and hydraulic cylinders, and then you get a weird leak out of them, okay?

Another thing that'll is that you'll create uneven wear in whatever attachment that you're using with that skid loader. Now in this example with the Quattro plow, it has these wings that fold forward. And when you put too much pressure on the front of those wings, you're going to wear the cutting edge down faster than if you had even pressure distributed underneath the entire attachment. And that's exactly what happened to us. Right here I had the opportunity to catch this and correct this before it got worse, but I'm too busy filming Instagram posts to notice that they're destroying my snowplow. My fault. Not theirs.

Well, you are kind of Polish, just take it easy on yourself. 

There's something you don't know until you don't, you only-

Speaker 2: [inaudible 00:04:01] until you find out.

Speaker 1: Right. So, let me show you. Go ahead and angle it down, yep, back it off a little bit. All you got to do is have just the slightest bend. It doesn't improve anything. Now if you hit something, you're less likely to bend those cylinders.

Speaker 2: [inaudible 00:04:20]

Speaker 1: You should never have the skid loader angled so far back that you're sitting in a lounge chair looking up at the sky. In fact, the right amount of down pressure is just enough that you could slip a piece of paper underneath the front tires. The reason you want to do this is, if you do hit something, you want to transfer that hit through the entire machine and not just on your front cylinder arms or on the pins holding your boom arms in place. In an ideal world, your boom arms will actually rest on the stops of the machine. That way when you punch something with the machine, the entire machine's taking the brunt of that force, and not just a few select points. That, my friends, I learned the hard way when I destroyed a few different machines before my light bulb went off and said, "Hey maybe I'm doing something wrong."

It goes back to that point where, you are a Polish.

You don't know what you don't know. That's what I like about a skid model. Plow one way, plow the other. Now check this out. This thing is fricking massive. The amount of snow this Quattro plow handles is insane. Look at him. He's going, he's articulating around the corners. What a hot shot. Actually, I love it. 

So what happened to us, guys, is we didn't notice the wear on the side wings of the Quattro plow. We were using it with the angle slightly off and rapidly wearing down the very front cutting edge on the side wings. But, when that happened, we actually wore so far through that we went right past the boltholes on the side wings, and those had to be completely removed and replaced. There is actually an upside to this story, because when we removed the side wings and replaced them with new ones, we were also able to update the Quattro plow with a new steel floating side edge. This thing is insanely cool. Guys. What it is is we updated the cutting edge to a steel plate, but the steel plate isn't stationary. It actually floats up and down with the contours of the parking lot. Now only does it take some of the abuse of the parking lot into the plow, and not into the machine itself, but it also gives you a cleaner scrape. It's just really cool. 

Dude, who gets excited about crap like this? Only you.

Actually, I you look closely right here, those front cutting edges are already starting to wear out. Right there, I should have noticed it. I mean, I'm filming it, why aren't I noticing it. I'm literally watching my plow getting destroyed in front of me without doing anything right now.

Well, the truth is, guys, it didn't last much longer after that. In fact, the side cutting edges popped all the way off. And if it wasn't for Mark with Snow Wolf calling me up because he looked at it on Instagram, I would have probably totaled this snow plow out. 

Just saying, it might be something to that Polish thing.

So, the next step is to get it repaired. And of course, it has to be snowing when they finished repairing the snow plow. And what I'd like to do right before a big snowstorm comes in is nothing. 

Oh crap, I got to go plow.

I like to try to sleep or take a nap because I know there's going to be a very good chance that I'm going to be up for days straight. But this time, I get to go out and drive down the road and go pick it up.

You've got to be kidding me. My day just keeps getting better and better. One of my pet peeves is hopping into pieces of equipment and not having fuel in it. 23 miles to, look at that thing. It's, I mean, it is as low on E as you could possibly get it. God.

It's just tossing that snow. It's just so cool. Look at that fly. It is so cool. Love it. Oh my God, he's going to cover that side. Oh yeah. That is just wild. Sorry guys, this to me, I love. I love watching stuff like this. Maybe you guys do too, that's why you follow me. So, that's why I'm sharing it. But I'm off to my snow plow site now.

All right, nothing like a sketchy truck ride through sleet, ice and snow to wake you up for the day. But we're here. We're at the Quattro facility, whoa! This is really slick. We're at the Quattro, the home of Snow Wolf. Now we got to find a door that's open. Let's go peek. Anybody home? Hey, there's mine. Right there. Hello, somebody let me in. Little piggy, little piggy. Where the heck is the front door? I know there's a side door over here. Man, it is slick out, holy crap. Look at that one. That beauty. Let's go inside. Let's see what's happening. 

We made it. We made it inside. Let's go see my plow. Is this one mine?

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Speaker 1: Okay. So, there we can see how they've upgraded heavier, definitely heavier duty. Holy crap. Play, so there's, is this the, oh my gosh, that is much heavier duty. There's no comparison. Wow. That is definitely an upgrade. Hey, I parked right over there, so I don't know if I'm in that truck's way or not. Probably am. Yeah, I'm right on the side, I'm right there. I'm in the way. I'll move.

IT's so slick out here, you've got to get up to ramming speed. All right, let's see this sheet ice.

All right, there mine. Here's a whole fleet of new ones getting ready to go out the door. Definitely some improvement on those. Let's see what's [inaudible 00:12:37]. All back together again. 

Made it back safe. Look at that. I call that trailer juge. Time to get that off the trailer. Trailer juge. It's fun day out in the snow tonight. Did you just say a fun day out in the snow tonight? Polish. 

[inaudible 00:13:57] you got TLB One getting hooked up. TLB Two on board. There's my truck with the full plow. One skid loader, two skid loader, three skid loader, four. In line for fuel. All right, let's see what's happening with the guys. So, we got to have a little talk about the way we operate the snow plow, because some snow plows are pretty much plug and play. Others require a little bit of a learning curve. This one, because it's got the wings on it, the wings move back and forth, it does have kind of a learning curve to it. One of the things I want to make sure is we're not getting too much down pressure on the plow itself. If you guys are tilted back, like you're leaning in a lawn chair, trying to get a suntan, you've got too much down pressure on. If you can just let your front tires off the ground, that's fine, but I want you to take a look at the snow plow right now, the position it's in, that's the way I just put it. Do you see how it's completely flush with the ground? That's the way it should be when you guys are snowplowing. 

Also, look at the skid loader itself. You see how the skid loader all four tires are on the ground? It doesn't require much down pressure. Really, just even the slightest amount, because we're not trying to grind the asphalt away, we're literally just trying to scrape the snow off. Now, kick that one more time, Tony, would you, on this? So, now you've got steel edging on it. But here's kind of one of the things I want you guys to do with every piece of equipment we have out here, is as you're using a piece of equipment, if you notice or feel anything that's off at any time, it's just a matter of stopping. It's common sense. Looking it over. Look for cutting edges. Look for anything that's maybe an issue. Right? Just the other day Tim blew a hole [inaudible 00:15:51]. He saw a puddle of oil. He stopped it immediately. Like as soon as the hole blew. And we were able to make the repair without adding any more hydraulic oil and without trailing hydraulic oil all over the parking lot. So, just some little things go a long way.

So, as an operator, it's not just about being the best at running the piece of equipment. It's also about making sure that the piece of equipment is working the best it can for you guys. Just watch your cutting edges. If you ever notice that the cutting edge right here, on the side, if you ever notice that this cutting edge is getting up into the actual [inaudible 00:16:31] of the snowplow, then you've got to stop. That's what happened with this one too. Because once you get to that point, and you wear down the bolt load, the snow plow is dead. You can't save it. 

Whatever you guys do, don't do this. But growing up on the farm, whenever we wanted to get around, we just hopped on the back of the tractor and hung on. It wasn't safe, it wasn't right, but it's the way I grew up. So tonight, I want to have a little fun. I'm going to hop on the top of it and take you guys along for the ride. But whatever you do, don't do this on your own. But tonight, you're riding with me, so it's okay. And yes, that is the last time I'm doing that, because Johnny is half nuts. Take a look at the look on my face. So, let's get back to the point of this video and see how they're doing with the Quattro plow and if they learned anything.

All right guys, not every day's going to go the way you want it. But sometimes you got to look at the bright side. The upgrade is way better than the original design. I've got a better snowplow than I had before. I've also now got guys that know how to operate it. And it kind of refreshed me on making sure that I am better prepared to teach my guys the right way to operate equipment. Because they're going to be safer all the way around and my equipment's going to be better off long-term. So, it's win, win, win for everybody involved.

God bless you guys. I hope you guys have an amazing day. And if this video's helped you out, let me know in the comments down below, or hit the like button. Go get them, guys.