Best Loaders and Attachments for Snow Removal

Buyer's Guide · 2026-08-19

Snow doesn't wait. When the lot needs to be open by 7 AM, the right machine clears it fast and keeps working when it's cold, wet and slick. Here's how we'd pick one.

What matters for snow

• Traction. Packed snow and ice are slippery. A compact track loader puts more rubber on the ground for grip and pushes harder without spinning. Skid steers on good tires work great on paved lots.
• Hydraulic flow. Snow blowers, angle brooms and snow pushers with hydraulics need strong auxiliary flow. Match the machine's flow to the attachment.
• Capacity and breakout. Pushing heavy, wet snow takes real operating capacity and breakout force - underpower it and you'll be making two passes.
• A warm cab. Long cold shifts go better in an enclosed, heated cab with good visibility.

Machines we'd start with

• The Gehl R165 and R190 Gen:2 skid loaders bring the hydraulics and capacity for pushers, blades and blowers on most commercial lots.
• The Gehl VT320 track loader trades wheels for tracks - the traction edge on ice and packed snow, with less scrubbing on the surface underneath.
• The Gehl V330 Gen:2 is the big-capacity skid loader for the heaviest pushes and the largest lots.

Wheels or tracks in Missouri snow

Mid-Missouri doesn't get a clean, cold, three-month freeze. It gets freeze-thaw. You'll plow six inches of wet snow on Monday, watch it melt Tuesday afternoon, and come back Wednesday morning to a lot glazed with refrozen meltwater. That cycle is the thing that should drive the tires-or-tracks call, more than snowfall totals do.

Wheels are the better answer on paved commercial lots. A skid loader on good winter tires steers predictably on plowed asphalt, moves between sites on its own, and doesn't chew up the surface when it turns. Tires also cost less to replace than tracks, and on a lot you're clearing repeatedly all season that matters.

Tracks are the better answer on ice, on packed snow that never quite comes up, and on gravel or turf you don't want torn. The larger contact patch means you can lean into a pusher and keep pushing instead of spinning. If your route includes farm lanes, unpaved yards, or a lot that ices over and stays iced, a track loader earns the difference.

The honest tradeoff: tracks wear faster on bare pavement, and a lot of winter work is bare pavement between storms. If most of your route is paved and plowed, wheels. If most of it stays frozen, unpaved, or slick, tracks. If it's genuinely split, most operations put wheels on the primary machine because it moves between sites easier.

Where a telehandler beats a loader on snow

Most snow work is pushing, and a loader pushes better. But there's one job a telehandler does that a loader can't, and it shows up every winter on lots that run out of room.

Once the perimeter piles get tall, a loader can only stack as high as its arms reach. A telehandler's boom extends, so it can keep building the pile upward instead of eating into parking spaces. On a lot where you're clearing the same acreage storm after storm, running out of somewhere to put the snow is a real operational problem, and reach is what solves it.

The second one is loading out. When the pile has to leave the property, a telehandler can reach over the side of a truck box and place the load rather than driving up on a ramp of packed snow to get the height.

Where the telehandler loses: it's not the machine for the plowing pass itself. It's longer, it's slower to shuttle, and it doesn't put the same weight behind a pusher. Operations that run one tend to run it alongside a loader, not instead of one - the loader clears, the telehandler stacks and loads out.

Browse the telehandler lineup if reach is the constraint on your site.

Sizing the machine to your lot

Match the machine to the ground you actually clear, not the worst storm you can imagine.

A small lot, a driveway apron, a shop entrance. A compact skid loader with a bucket and a blade will do it, and it'll do the other eleven months of work too. Don't buy a big machine for four hours of snow a year.

A commercial lot, a church, a strip of storefronts. This is the sweet spot for a mid-size skid or track loader with a proper snow pusher. The pusher does the volume, the machine needs enough capacity and breakout not to bog in the wet stuff, and you want the enclosed heated cab because you'll be in it before dawn.

Multiple acres, a route with several stops, or a plow contract. Now capacity and hydraulic flow are the whole game. Go bigger than feels necessary. A machine that clears the route in one pass instead of two pays for itself in a single heavy season, and you want the hydraulics to run a blower when the piles get too big to push.

A farm lane, a feedlot, a gravel yard. Traction over capacity. Tracks, or a wheeled machine with real winter tires, and a blade you can angle rather than a pusher box built for flat pavement.

Not sure where you land? Tell us your lots and your typical snowfall and we'll spec it - find your machine walks through the same questions.

The attachments do the work

A loader is only as good as what's on the front of it for snow. Three choices cover almost everything, and picking between them comes down to what you're clearing and where the snow has to end up.

Snow pusher boxes move the most volume, full stop. The box holds the snow in front of the machine instead of letting it roll off the sides, so one pass down a lot moves what three passes with a bucket would. They're the right call on open pavement with somewhere to push to. They're the wrong call on tight sites, gravel, or anywhere you need to windrow rather than pile.

Angle blades trade volume for control. You can throw snow to one side as you drive, so you clear a lane in a single pass and keep the pile off the middle of the lot. Better than a pusher on driveways, drive aisles, and anywhere you're working around parked vehicles or curbs.

Snow blowers are the answer when there's nowhere to put it. Piles too tall to add to, a lot hemmed in by buildings, a sidewalk system where the snow has to go over a fence instead of into a corner. They need real auxiliary hydraulic flow, so check the machine before you buy the attachment, not after.

Browse the snow removal attachments and we'll match them to your machine and your hydraulics.

Buy it from a dealer you can actually reach

When it snows, you don't want your dealer three states away. We're a local Manitou and Gehl dealer in Laddonia, MO, with current finance programs to spread the cost across the season. Tell us your lots and your snowfall and we'll spec the right setup.

Already running a machine and just want it to start on a cold morning? Read running a loader in cold weather for the operating side.

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