more for a dirt driveway. if you are not going off the payment then don't need shoes.

 

Yup for surfaces you're likely to dig down when you plow. The shoes will help to keep the plow from digging down. If the ground hasn't frozen the plow may still dig down in soft ground.

 

I recommend you keep them on the plow no matter what surface you're on. My driveway is concrete and will grind the wear bar down too quick if I don't have the skids on there. They get ground down too but the more metal there is making contact the longer it takes to wear down.

 

Ditto Big Frank ... I use my Sportsman 500 with a 48" plow to maintain my businesses' asphalt parking lot and keep the shoes on to prevent wearing the 'replaceable' wear bar on the cutting edge. I set the shoes to leave about a 1/4" gap between the surface and blade. Usually get about a dozen or more uses out of a pair of $20 shoes plowing about 20,000 sqft parking lot. As far as the cost of replaceable parts, shoes are cheaper than cutting edges. Additionally, if you're counting on only the wear bar to keep your blade off the surface, then you're subjecting the blade to wear if you're not paying close enough attention to the wearing on the cutting edge. Next accessory to consider is a set of heated grips with a thumb throttle heater. That was the best add on I've ever considered!!!

 

Having plowed numerous types of drives in the past 20 yrs, I would highly recommend leaving the skids on your plow blade. If your drive is nice and smooth then a slight space of 1/8" below your blade will do, if your drive is rough then move up to a 1/4" or more to keep the blade from digging into your expensive drive. Another good thing is to add a rubber wipeing blade to the bottom of your blade. Just sandwich a piece of rubber between wear plate and plow blade, leaving it hang down 1/4" below your blade bottom. Adjust the feet so the rubber just wipes the pavement. This saves your pavement and prevents wear to the plow blade and wear plate.

 

I have never worn out the wear plate on my 72" Cycle Country plow on my 700 Cat Diesel. Never used the shoes. My drive is huge, 500 yards long, gravel. Maybe asphalt would be different. Also, if drive is not perfectly flat, they aren't doing much.

 

Like I said in another thread, I set it so the skids are just off the concrete when I have a new blade, new wear bar, or flip the wear bar over to use the other edge. It soon grinds the wear bar to be perfectly even with the skids. It also chews up the skids and I've had to replace them once or twice, but at least they're taking some of the abuse instead of having all of the weight on the edge of the bar. Every little bit helps.

P.S. My shoes are flattened out a bit and have roughly 1/4 of the contact area the wear bar does. That should be 20% less wear on the bar, right? 1/5 of the weight and wear on the shoes and 4/5 on the bar.

 

The manufacturer doesn't put those skids or feet or whatever you want to call them, on there just for decorations!

 

Exactly. They're there, so use them. Even if you don't think you need to, what harm could it be?