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DGDevin

wrote:

Thanks for the replies. Yep, i'm in the princeton area and we did get
quite a bit of rain recently. I have several 16" wide plywood boards,
taht I think are actually OSB, 1/2" thick. I have enough to lay out
probably 50 feet at a time in parallel tracks for each tire, so might
need to move them once during the dump. Do you think they would be
sturdy enough to distribute the weight and avoid ruts? The big
problem is that they would need to cross my neighbor's lawn too - and
while they've said it would be okay, I don't want to be fixing their
lawn for the next 2 months as that might annoy them just a bit.
thanks again.

They covered this on This Old House recently where someone had to bring in a
rig to drill a new well. Yes, you should expect ruts. The soil will be
compacted enough that just shoveling dirt into the ruts and raking in grass
seed might not work as the grass roots will be fighting to get through the
compacted soil, plus the new grass might be visibly different from the old
grass so you'll end up with a striped lawn. Roger on TOH used a walk-behind
cutter to lift the sod, they roto-tilled the soil in the ruts and topped-off
with more soil, and then replaced the original sod.

I wouldn't expect 1/2" OSB to survive a loaded dump-truck's weight, but if
it prevents the tires from making ruts it's a cheap sacrifice. Paying a
day-labor crew to bring in the stone from the street with a couple of
wheelbarrows seems like a reasonable alternative if you want to avoid fixing
your neighbor's lawn, it would probably be cheaper than fixing ruts.