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Build and Maintain Your Own Trails, Roads and Driveways

by Neil Shelton    

When you’ve finally got a usable road that doesn’t turn to soup every time it rains.  You’ll have a few soft spots that may start to improve during the dry months, but never really go away.   You can drive your road every day in all weather and, if you don’t have any really steep hills, you can get most delivery people to bring whatever you need right to the house (especially if they're selling you something). 

But you want to go at bit further than that.  You want a smooth trouble-free road that you can travel in second or third gear all the time.  You want something UPS and Fedex aren't afraid of and if you have garbage pick-up in your area, something the garbage truck can navigate without spending the afternoon. 

How you get to this point is by applying crushed rock.  If this sounds expensive, it can be.  If you have a brand-new road, the road-bed will be very soft and you may need a LOT of rock, maybe ten or twelve truckloads per quarter-mile.   On the other hand, if you’ve been driving your road for more that a year or two then you may be able to get by with as little as a truckload per five hundred feet or so. 

The purpose of the rock is to stabilize the surface.  If you have soft spots that turn into a bog after each rain, this is cured by rock.  For the rest of the road, a thin layer of rock will smooth out the inconsistencies, harden the surface, and create the smoothest road you’ll find short of paving.

Rock doesn’t have to cost so much, but it can.  In our area, you can get a large tandem-axle dump truck full of rock for about $175.  You may have someone suggest that you can save money by using creek gravel as it comes out of the stream-bed, which is called “creek-run” or screened creek gravel of whatever size you want (typically 1-inch).  This tends to cost about half or three-quarters as much, as quarried, crushed rock but it has some drawbacks.  For filling that giant mud-hole that swallowed the mail-man last week, it will work pretty well, and is probably the most cost-effective way to go, but for long, thin applications it doesn’t work too well because where the angular, broken edges of the crushed rock dig in and hold themselves in place, the rounded creek rock tends to roll off into the ditch over time.

When ordering crushed rock, there are two types you need to be familiar with.  The first, “clean rock”, sometimes called “road rock” is simply rock of a given size only.  This provides a uniform surface that can be graded and re-graded many times.  It’s a good way to dry up wet areas. 

The second type is called “base rock”.  This is the most useful for all around applications.  Base rock is rock of a given size and everything else smaller than that down to dust-size particles.  Base rock is about as close as most mortal beings will ever get to having concrete.  Once applied and packed down, it tends to hold it’s shape and sheds water.  This last property is invaluable to your purposes. 

1-/12 to 2-inch rock makes good material to fill deep mud-holes and does a better job than creek run; a nice improvement, but 1-inch base rock will bring your road surface to a wonderfully smooth condition that will be very, very apparent the first time you drive over it.  You’ll love it to pieces.

 Road-building Rule Number 3 is there is NO substitute for crushed rock. 

 I can’t say enough good about this wonderful stuff.  Put down two or three inches on your roadway and you’ll think you’re driving on a cloud.  If your cloud gets a little rough after a year or two, you can use a farm tractor with a box-blade to drag it once or twice and it’ll be just like it was when you first put it down.

The box-blade is the very best implement to use for private road maintenance because it picks up the surface rock, smoothes the surface and puts the rock back down evenly.  Lots of people try to accomplish the same thing with a straight blade, but those move the material from one side to another which tends to cause small windrows of rock along the edge of the ditches instead of spreading it out on the wearing surface where you want it.

My 3/4 mile driveway has become more than just an access route to me, it's become a source of pride.   Maintaining it has become one of my hobbies.    Sometimes I just sit and look at it with a moronic grin on my face.  If you're not getting this kind of warm, fuzzy feeling over your access road, maybe it's time you did.

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