The self propelled single stage snow blower is old school.
Anyone ever play with an old simplicity Snow A Way?
There are other old snow blowers with that similar single stage.
It is nice to see a modern version of an old school concept.

Yep. Back in the late 80's we had a Toro Snow-Hound, Jacobsen had some as did Moto-Mower, Sears, Sno-Flyr, Sno-hawk, Hahn Snow-Giant, almost every manufacturer in the 60's and 70's, They started falling out of favor as the 2-stagers dropped in price I guess.


The advances in technology with higher torque engines, new belt materials (the old ones had a chain drive auger) and probably computer designed auger and intake/chute make for higher efficiencies and improved performance vs. the old ones.


There are a number of YouTube videos of the old single stagers, would be cool to have one though.

Hadn't heard of it, but thanks for sharing. One interesting machine! Not sure what they were thinking with the shape of that chute deflector, though. Maybe someone was looking to put on a real demonstration of throwing snow all over the place? At any rate, found this little gem of a video:

close but that's actually a 2-stage...similar concept to a bobcat where the impeller rotates towards the auger.

here's pandaguy's simplicity SS:

Here's a single-stage allis-chalmers sno-bee

and my own 1972 Sears 3520 ("Lil Red")

i was gong to pick up a sears 3520 a few years ago but didn't have room for it

yup, its an old concept that went away. It works wonderful today. Single stagers throw the snow far and work fast due to the speed the auger turns. Great concept and the drive wheels helping to push it along? Thats a huge plus too.

Yeah, my neighbor has a Toro 724 SnowMaster. Kind of a "hybrid" machine. Cross between single stage snow blower and a two stage snow blower


Nice blend of single stage snow clearing performance with a 2-stage self propelled drive systems. Very neat machine that handles 90% of the snow storms we get.


Although I will say this, there's no question his machine absolutely cannot handle wet dense hard-pack snow at the end of the driveway. The paddles make a god awful clacking noise when he tries to "power" through it. That's when you wish you had a two stage machine with steel auger rakes to break-up the hard-pack berm.

I too have the 724 and it absolutely can handle that snow, you just have to take it a little slow. It is an adjustment, because it handles everything else in record time. EOD is the one place the 824 would be useful, but I have no regrets.

Sorry, but I'm gonna have to argue your last comment.

I have the 824, only 1hp more then the 724, and I can assure you it handles wet dense packed snow. I did 4 of them last weekend, and I could tell that the harder I pushed the machine, the more the motor would roar. I slowed down my pace a bit, but not once did it give me any signs of bogging down.

The only difference between the qxe model, and the 2stage models are the serrated augers, and what this machine lacks, makes up for in auger speed. It might not have serated augers, but the speed of the augers tears up those eod's!!

Here's really old school. Pre dating auger machines? Still beats shoveling: https://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=_FkG67DbifE