The fall and winter was really wet and we’ve torn up the grass driving in and out of the property, so we need to install a driveway so our vehicles can easily get in and out of the property. We’ve already had a few instances of vehicles getting stuck and we had to pull them up the hill with the tractor. 

Prep Work

The first thing we had to do was remove topsoil and vegetation. I used the box blade mostly to dig up the top soil, but the box blade would get full pretty quickly. I’d then drop the soil out of the box blade and pick it up with the front end loader.

Surface Grading

After all the digging work was done, I raised the teeth on the box blade so I could do the finish grading work. With the teeth raised, and just the blade dragging on the ground, I was able to leave behind a smooth, groomed surface.

Once the topsoil was removed and the compacted clay soil underneath was exposed and graded, I felt the area was ready for gravel.

Installing Gravel

I would have rather had the stone delivery guy dump spread the stone, but the driver was not comfortable driving his truck down the hill on the bare clay. That meant I had to spread all the gravel with the tractor which took some time. All in all, it was a pretty easy job and the box blade did a great job getting a consistent amount of stone spread over the entire surface. 

A few observations about our driveway installation job:

  1. The area was not graded to have a crown in the road. The entire area slopes from one side to the other, so we maintained that same slow to allow water to run off the road that way. So far this has worked fine, and we haven’t had any issues with the road washing out.
  2. We did not have the money to install a thick base before installing gravel. So all you see here is about 3-4 inches of stone. After using the road for a while, I’m sure we’ll have to add more stone. This is not a high-traffic driveway, and so far the driveway has proven durable without the need for more stone (after about 11 months of use at the time of this post).