Hey all -
I just wanted to again - ahem - say how much I love this little Jeep. This is the first time I'm posting photos, so bear with me.
Last September, some of you may have heard about the flooding here in northern CO. Our family property near Estes Park was OK, but the fire road was completely washed out. Part of it had about 3' wide and 4' deep gouged out for about 8'. Half the dirt road was just ... gone. The rest had about a two foot rut until the road flattened out. After getting my Aunts to finally pony up some cash to get it fixed, we found out that it couldn't be done this year. So I went out and bought a $300 Ford truck bed trailer.
The recycled concrete cost $12.50/ton. First load was $16. About a mile and a half away, mostly paved. On the dirt road, I was worried about getting up the hill, especially since it had just rained and - of course - I would be driving over sagebrush, sticks, ground squirrel holes, whatever. At one point I tried to back up and almost jackknifed it, and was stuck in a steep grade, slippery grass and mud at a full stop. Jeep CRD in 4WD part time made it just fine.
Next time through the scale, after I had said "keep going man" to the loader, the total came to $23. My first thought was: Holy F'n Sh*t! That's *heavy*!
You can see how much the trailer sagged. Yikes! But the Jeep powered. Here with the last load, on site. Yes, that's about 1/2 ton of recycled concrete you can see on the left:
I really should have taken some before/after pictures after the job was (partly) done. In all, about 7 1/2 tons. I still have to get gravel and recycled asphalt up there to make it prettier, but at least a fire truck could get up it if the need arose. Also, the tailgate is shut, so that was a lot of shoveling. I'm hoping to fix that this weekend.
I took the Switzerland Trail back and through Boulder because Lyons rte 36 is still traffic. EVIC said 25.4 MPG on the trip! On B99! What a great little truck!
