spreading gravel

The one driver we have unlocks the tail gate and put the chains on, starts driving when the gravel or sand starts coming. If too much is coming out he speeds up, not enough he slows down. It just takes time to get used to the truck. Good luck.

 

No...I don't think the pump is the problem. The control lever in the cab should shut off flow without the bed lowering on you. Have you played around with it in various positions?

We have a older truck where the control valve and hydraulics are tricky. It wants to raise or lower, and has no center detent for a neutral position. I use the clutch when I back up to a spreader box to engage or disengage the PTO. We do a lot of CTA for a large road building company. It gets tricky...but doable......but still a PITA.

I your case, I would either get a new dump bed control and see whats going on with the hydraulics. You can still spread Stone/21-A/21-B......but it will take good timing and a sense of how much is coming off the truck while you are doing it.

 

There's a few goofy styles of dump body controls out there. I saw one where every time you stopped raising the hoist it would automatically shift the pto into neutral. Looked like it was a PITA for spreading.

My hoist control as of now has no detent to keep it raising, so if I've gotta grab some gears to make the blade hand happy it looks like I'm in the cab driving a 5 and a 4!

Spreading's fun when you're good at it! Nothing like the smile on a blade hand's face when all he's gotta do is hit it with the roller!