I’ve talked about my driveway on this show several times. It’s not as bad as it used to be, because we finally got it mostly fixed. It still gets to be a problem when we get a lot of rain or especially snow, but we don’t get five-foot deep ponds in the middle of it anymore. Now the deepest the low spots get is only a couple of feet.
It still gives me the chance to test and tweak the system I use to keep from getting stuck, though. I call it the Hillsdale Traction System. It works great on my driveway and around the place, but I’m not so sure it’s practical for the backroads up where I go hunting.
It starts with good tires. I try to change them out when they start losing their tread, so I end up replacing them more often than most folks do. But the extra money I spend on tires is worth not spending an entire day trying to get my truck out of a mudhole.
When it starts looking like the tread alone isn’t going to be enough, I chain up all four and drop it into four-wheel-low. That’s all part of just the standard traction system everybody uses. Where it becomes the Hillsdale Traction System is when you add the secret ingredient.
A little explanation first. The town closest to where I live is Hillsdale, which is sort of a suburb of Burns, and what I often see this time of year is large square hay bales in the beds of ranch trucks. Those hay bales weigh between 1,000 and 1,500 pounds, which is the perfect amount of weight to put extra traction on the rear wheels.
It might still need some modification, though. It’s not very practical for hunting, because the hay bale takes up all the cargo space in the bed. But it works. As long as you don’t have to put anything else in the bed.
