I'm Aaron Graver with Ventrac, and today we're doing everyone's favorite job; tough cutting.
We're out here on site for the local power company, and we're doing some clearing of the
right of way next to some power lines. They've got an area that has some massive overgrowth,
and we're going to go in and take it out with the Ventrac 4520 and the tough cut.
This is a pretty interesting property and the reason they asked us to help them out with it
is because of access. So even getting in here is a very difficult job. Getting a truck and trailer
is kind of like threading the needle down through this drive. So having a compact setup is paramount.
So these are some good examples of the types of stuff that we'll be in today and this is
perfect for the tough cut. This is kind of stemmy material. It's green on most of it but then the
deeper you get you can see that it's woody down at the bottom. You know it's approaching a half
inch, three quarters of an inch or so, and we're going to be able to go in and clear this stuff
out pretty efficiently. So the area we're working on today goes about 40 feet deep from where I'm
standing back towards the main property. And then it's also maybe 120-130 yards
down this direction as the utility lines go down towards the river. And you can see there's a little
bit of a step down here it's raised up, but this whole overgrowth this brushy area is what needs
to be taken out. And what we're trying to avoid is trees like this one that you see here in the
foreground growing up and getting close to those power lines. So if this stuff is left to go for too
long even in Ohio where we don't have a super long growing season, two to three years maybe
and that's enough that you can start getting some trees up towards those low power lines.
All right one last thing before we get started we're going to do a quick equipment check. Today
we're working with the Ventrac 4520p that's the Kawasaki engine. We also have what's a little bit
different on this tractor is the mid mount weight kit. Here you can see that mounted to the weight
bar that's going to give us a little bit of extra downforce on those front wheels and some more
traction. We obviously have dual wheels because on a job like this with slope terrain you need
that for stability's sake. And we'll be using the tough cut deck. It has a hydraulic flip up
kit, so if we happen to get into any garbage in here which is always a possibility. Any bailing
twine or barbed wire or something and we get anything wrapped up in there we can flip the
deck up easily to work on that and get it sorted out. And then the last thing on the tractor is the
optional canopy and fan which should come in handy here in about an hour when it's nice and hot. And
I'll be nice and comfortable under the fan. Mark will still be behind the camera sweating. Sorry
Good thing you saw that!
Yeah, so...
there's some pretty old barbed wire, but it is a lot of it.
Yeah, that would have been a big problem. So like I was talking about earlier I did not know this
was here, but when you work in areas like this, it's not uncommon to find garbage whether it's like old
fence posts, uh truck tires, pretty much anything. So here we have a gigantic ball of old barbed wire.
So it's always good to walk the area. Or at least proceed with caution.
While you're mowing just kind of tentatively move forward. Make forward progress, but don't
just go full on into everything because you never know what you might hit
and uh wrap up into your mower deck. So thankfully I didn't really hit this I just
kind of pushed it out of the way, but noticed it right away and uh hopefully there's no more.
Okay, so we are officially done with this job for today. We made it all the way to the water which is where our duties
end. It took us you know maybe two hours or so to do this and as you can see through the footage,
a lot of very difficult vegetation to cut through but tractor handled it no problem and uh was easy
to drive over these these terrain changes. So thankfully we didn't run into any other metal
pieces after the initial cluster of barbed wire. Did find a few logs but luckily they were back
towards the woods or we don't need to clear. So got the entire power line underneath it cleaned up.
And you can see progress all the way up the hill. So it looks like there's a couple things
um just some larger chunks that we'll have to drag back into the woods that we don't want
to leave in the farm field. And other than that we are good to go. Looks nice and clean.
Should be good for the next year or two before they have to come back and clean it up again.
This property in particular has a bunch of very interesting mounds that sort of spring up out
of nowhere. I think they're kind of collected around the poles, so it might have something to
do with when the installation happened. I'm not sure but this tractor is perfect for it because
of the fact that the flex frame hugs the terrain so well. And it articulates and oscillates. You're
able to crawl up and over and around those mounds with no problems at all. And it's something that
is really easy to do even for you know I have a lot of time on the tractor, but operators who
don't have a lot of time on equipment could even do this pretty easily without any real challenges.
Thank you for watching this video featuring The Ventrac 4520 and tough cut. I think we helped out
the utility company a lot today by getting out and getting this job done quickly.
Ease the load on them and they can work on other priorities. It's always nice to get out and use
the equipment get some time on it. Especially on jobs like this. They're just a lot of fun to get
done especially when you get finished and you can see the progress that you made. So anyway, I
enjoyed myself. If you have any questions about the tractor or the equipment that we used today
be sure to visit our website at ventrac.com. And if you want to see it in action in other applications
make sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel and follow us on all the rest of our social media.