Gravel Driveway Drag

Looking for recommendations on either store bough or DIY dirt driveway drags. Our new-to-us house has about a 250 ft. x 12 ft. dirt driveway that is fairly hard pack class 5 currently. The potholes have gotten really bad from lack of maintenance, and I’m having a family friend come in to regrade/crown with some new material, but going forward I’d like to be setup to grade/drag as necessary to prevent it from getting bad again. Currently looking at either a DIY I-beam setup or the DR power drag.

A section of chainlink fence might work with some cinder blocks on it.

The I beam is the ticket. But the fence with weight works as well or a ald box spring.

CaptainMusky wrote:

A section of chainlink fence might work with some cinder blocks on it.

^^^Can’t go wrong there.

Didnt think of an ibeam that would be great!

I-beam with chain hooks on each end. Then you can either pull it “square”, or angle it to move gravel across and keep it out of the grass. Just change chain length to each end from hitch

I used old tractor chains found in the shed at the farm. Then the neighbor gave me an old drag. Keep an eye out and you will find one cheap.

Just go buy a drag harrow meant for it. Not that expensive and you dont have an old crappy bed spring in your shed.

I wouldn’t spend a ton of money on whatever you use. A 250′ driveway isn’t very long nor will it need to be maintained that often. I Beam, chain link fence, a bed spring, etc will all work. Use whatever is readily available

I used a chunk of I-Beam exactly one time so far in 2 years on our driveway since we built. Our driveway is 1300′ long and has everything from vehicles, atvs, tractors, a combine, etc. and there’s not a pothole anywhere. The biggest key in my opinion is driving slow year round (especially when it’s wet) and plowing as little as possible. We run any snow down that’s not scraping the underside of vehicles and create a uniform packed/frozen base that keeps the rock in place. If/when I plow, it’s just mainly the drifts.

We use a W10 x 22 I beam for our crane yard. It works great. The place can get rutted up from crawler cranes cutting and the beam will level everything out perfect.
I prefer to drag after a rain. With things soft from the rain it cuts great.
Our beam is 20’ long but I would think a 4 to 6’ beam would be perfect for you.
We just welded on a couple lifting eyes and then used 1/2” wire rope with cable clamps to create eyes on each end.

You wanna hear something spooky and irritating? I’ve never searched for a drag on FB marketplace. Since this post my feed is flooded with them.

Musky that’s because when you agreed to the FB T’s and C’s it opened it up for them to look through everything and it will pop up in their algorithm.

CaptainMusky wrote:

You wanna hear something spooky and irritating? I’ve never searched for a drag on FB marketplace. Since this post my feed is flooded with them.

That’s why I don’t have Facebook

If you have siri on, just talk about things and then check your feeds… she is ALWAYS listening.

Pretty sure I turned off all that garbage I could. I know my phone had access to the microphone at one point. My wife’s dog came down and wanted to be petted and when you stop he gives you the left paw to pet more. I always say left paw left paw. My phone was locked beside me. Wouldnt you know it the next time I opened a google search it found me the breeder “left paw puppies”. I quickly disabled that.
I do not have Siri.

Ibeam wrapped in chain link fence.

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That looks like the way to go, and angle it so you push gravel towards the center each time to make a slight crown in your driveway so the water runs off a little

Johnny wrote:

Ibeam wrapped in chain link fence.

Brilliant!

Norsky wrote:

That looks like the way to go, and angle it so you push gravel towards the center each time to make a slight crown in your driveway so the water runs off a little

Yep. Not sure if you can tell from the pic but the lengths of chain are different so I get the angle effect. Works really slick. You can see how nice the gravel looks in the background of the pic and that was only after a couple passes

Don’t want to sound like the spoiler but the only way to get rid of a pot hole is to completly cut it to the bottom and replace it. If your lucky enough to fill it and no rain hits it before it’s compacted it will work. When you drag the driveway when it’s wet it drags easy but if it’s to wet you end up pushing all the large aggregate down and end up leaving the fines on top. I know this is not you want to hear but ask anyone who does road construction and this is what happens.

supercat wrote:

Don’t want to sound like the spoiler but the only way to get rid of a pot hole is to completly cut it to the bottom and replace it. If your lucky enough to fill it and no rain hits it before it’s compacted it will work. When you drag the driveway when it’s wet it drags easy but if it’s to wet you end up pushing all the large aggregate down and end up leaving the fines on top. I know this is not you want to hear but ask anyone who does road construction and this is what happens.

Right, and at this point admittedly the driveway is too far gone to be able to “fix” this just by dragging and/or adding some new material. I’m still going to have the guy come and do the work, will be about $1500 OOP depending on how many truck loads of Class 5 he needs, but moving forward I’ll have the Waldo Industries (TM) driveway “drag-o-matic” ready to go. I’m hoping that staying on top of the maintenance will keep from allowing these potholes to get so bad in the first place, because since my BIL redid the driveway 3 or 4 years ago, I can tell you it has been drug/graded exactly 0.0 times.