Some of the best video ideas come from the stories of other people who are out running their equipment and seeing the kinds of situations they get themselves into. Nothing that I obviously would ever do myself. Today, I'm going to show you how to get your tractor unstuck from the mud using your load or there's a little technique that you can do to help get that tractor out on your own, without needing another machine in order to tow you out 

The first thing we need to do is get ourselves stuck, which is remarkably easy to do because I know it's as mushy as-- I'll get out down here. At least you could see a little bit of standing water. Of course, once I want to get stuck, I'm not going to be able to, right? There we go. Once you've gotten yourself stuck intentionally, of course, the very first thing you're going to want to do is to make sure that you just can't simply back out by checking the couple of obvious controls on your tractor. For instance, are you in four-wheel drive? [chuckles] Very easily, a lot of guys do a lot of their operating in two-wheel drive, which generally, I would encourage. If you're stuck in the mud, try four-wheel first. 

After that, the next thing you're going to want to check is your differential lock. That's on the back heel of your left-hand foot. All tractors have open differentials, meaning, if you've got one wheel sitting and spinning, the other wheel is going to sit still and do nothing at all. To try your dip lock, you first want to take the tractor, stop the wheels from spinning, step down on the diff with your heel, and then, back up. 

In this case, that's not enough to get me out. I'm still not going to do it. The next step is to be able to use your load in order to push the tractor backwards, and you can do that using the roll of your bucket. If you take your bucket, curl it back under, push it down into the ground, and lift the front tires of your tractor. Then, while you're backing up, just roll your loader bucket backwards. You're able to inch the tractor backwards, little by little, using that roll. Just a couple of inches here at a time. You're able to push yourself back until you can actually get traction again and you'd be surprised what a significant rut you can get yourself out of using that simple technique. Do you want me to do it again? 

Yes. That's a little bit on getting the tractor unstuck using the loader. If you happen to have a backhoe on your tractor, you can do a very similar technique. I did that in a video here a little while ago about making a French drain. If you have the backhoe behind you, you can reach out with a dipper and pull the dipper in while backing your tractor up in order to get that extra force that you need to get yourself out of the mud. Little way that you can save yourself a lot of effort of going and getting another piece of equipment or a vehicle, and trying to pull the machine out. This works much, much better. 

If you're going through the buying process of a piece of equipment or you have parts or service needs that we can help with, give us a call at Messick's. We're available at (800) 222-3373 or online at messicks.com.