Rotary Ditcher Used To Clean Ditches

Rotary Ditcher Used To Clean Ditches 27-5-13 Last year John Miller, Catlin, Ill., used his 8-ft. Liebrecht rotary ditcher to clean out road ditches that had filled up with soil from nearby fields. He loaded the soil into tandem axle trucks. The Liebrecht rotary ditcher is designed to make ditches up to 10 ft. wide in a single pass (Vol. 19, No. 1). It shapes both sides of the ditch and throws dirt out up to 120 ft. away. To keep dirt from hurting anyone, Miller simply used a tarp to direct the dirt into trucks. The work was done as part of a 4-mile highway improvement project on state Route 36 near Tuscola, Ill. Miller was working for Howell Asphalt of Mattoon, Ill. "The state had been using paddle scrapers, but the Liebrecht ditcher is a lot bigger and faster and also more accurate," says Miller. "We did the work during the crop growing season so we had to haul away the soil that was removed. I can cut and move more soil during the farming off season because I can throw it into the field without having to load it into trucks. We were able to load an average of about 185 trucks per day. Each truck holds 7.6 yards of soil so that day we hauled 1,600 cubic yards. "The machine is equipped with a laser grade control system, which we used to give the bottom of the ditches a perfect grade." The pto-operated ditcher consists of an 8-ft. dia. steel wheel fitted with 8 bolt-on digger buckets and a replaceable steel wear band inside the wheel housing. Soil is scooped up, carried 180 degrees to the top of the wheel, then thrown out of a hood at the top. A hydraulic cylinder is used to direct the hood's deflector up or down as needed. Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, John Miller, 10917 Catlin Homer Rd., Catlin, Ill. 61817 (ph 217 427-9833 or 217 427-5322) or Liebrecht Mfg., 17771 Rd. H-13, Continental, Ohio 45831 (ph 419 596-3501; fax 419 596-4401).

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