Well,
John Deere may be the brand, because after looking around the area for service centers, and then asking about the ones I found, there is a John Deere dealer and service center just 15 minutes from my house and several locals say they have treated them right. Prices on their smaller stuff is lower than I expected, which was a pleasant surprise.
So. . . I've kind of narrowed my 'short list' down to their 2520 and 3032E.
The 3032 E weighs a bit more and is a bit larger (not all that much of either), but the extra size is affordable due to the bucket being NON-removable. The downsides of the bit of extra weight and power is that there is no ability to add a 'mid' PTO to it for under-body mower or front attachments, and much of our space where we'd use it is small, in between buildings or fence-lanes or whatever, where the ability of removing the loader would be NICE.
When we (rarely) need a 'big' tractor or backhoe or dozer, we can rent one - tractor/backhoe for $400/weekend or dozer for $1,000/weekend, and those needs happen maybe once every five years. So although I don't want something 'wimpy', either of the above seem to be able to meet our needs, except for I'm not sure what we're going to do about packed snow/ice.
The ONLY thing we've ever had on-hand that worked for our driveway was the JD-650 bulldozer. It's gravel, but due to the terrain and sun and shadows, tends quickly to get very hard-packed snow or ice to the point that you have to put on cleats just to walk 30 feet to the truck. Even the 4wd truck will slide around on the driveway, if we've had it 'scraped' but then the remaining snow thaws and remelts as ice, yet leaving deep snow stalls the cars out, and eventually packs to an ice-rink anyway.
The front-end loader on the 1800-lb John Deere of my nephew's we had wouldn't do much unless we picked the snow all up and carried it bucket-by-bucket somewhere, and the rear scraper-blade did move snow to the side reasonably well, but we could definitely NOT do anything when there was a half-inch or so of ice on top of the frozen gravel. When we had the bulldozer, of course the sheer weight of it plus having metal treads, caused the ice to break up, then a quick push with the blade would move gravel and ice to a pile, which we'd back-drag so at least we had gravel mixed in and on top of the ice for traction.
What do you 'northern' folks use for packed snow and ice...?
Here's other
snow/ice options I find when I look for attachments for small tractors:
- front-mount snow-blowers (only available for the 2520 and expensive)
rear-mount snow-blowers (either tractor, not as expensive)
angled snow-pushing blades to clamp to a front-end loader bucket
cleats to put on a front-end loader bucket (maybe they would break ice)
rear scraper (maybe there's better ones than what we used, but it was useless on iced gravel)
'sub-soiler' single-spike that goes on 3-point hitch (should be strong, but would need many passes)
various hefts of 'box scrapers' with tines.
Anyone with thoughts on these? For just the snow, I could see not having to have the blower on the front, since we only do our own driveways and wouldn't be getting a stiff-neck from using it 8 hours a day looking while backing up, but I've never seen/used either a front or rear snow blower. For the ice-busting I'm most 'hopeful' about the box-blade with tines, figuring if they can break up hard-pan clay like they say, they should help us out. I don't mind replacing tines every so often if the unit itself wouldn't be harmed by such use.
I could get up on the roof and shoot a few hundred rounds of .308 at the ice to bust it up, but that ammo is just getting too expensive...
)
There's also IH and Ford
you could end up with some trenches in your driveway you don't want...