Easily Smooth And Level Gravel Driveways With Wood Pallets

From their affordable cost to their rustic aesthetic, gravel driveways are popular for plenty of reasons. While they tend to be lower-maintenance than other materials, they do require some upkeep to look their best — including regular smoothing and leveling, ideally every few weeks, or at least every year or so. It's not a particularly complicated task, but if you have a long driveway, raking by hand can be time-consuming and hard on your body. By dragging a wood pallet equipped with a metal bar behind an ATV or lawn mower, this project becomes much simpler and faster. "It's the easiest thing I could figure out," said one online creator The Every Day Man, who demonstrated his results on YouTube, "All I do is drag it with my ATV, and it naturally flattens out the stone as it goes along because it's going to push [gravel] in the front and fill in the rough spots or the potholes and all the rest of it."

If you're looking for a quicker way to maintain your gravel driveway, this method might be worth a shot, but to try it, you'll need a few supplies. Pick up a wood pallet, a tow chain or sturdy rope, and an metal angle bar, like this Steelworks 2-inch by 2-inch by 4-foot Solid Angle bar from Lowe's.
If you already have these materials lying around your property, that's ideal. Otherwise, you can look for a place that offers free pallets near you, like pet supply stores, distribution centers, and construction sites. Aside from those items, you'll also need a motorized machine with a trailer hitch — like an ATV or riding lawn mower — to pull the pallet.

Before getting started, put on a pair of heavy-duty work gloves to protect your hands from any splinters or protruding nails in the pallet. Secure the chain or rope to the pallet by looping it around one of the end boards. On the same side, screw your metal angle bar into the underside of the pallet. As you drag it, the metal bracket will scrape up loose rocks and redistribute them like a rake. However, if you don't want to go out and buy angle bars, you can try using a different piece of scrap metal or a wood board. Even the pallet by itself could still work nicely.

If you're using a riding lawn mower, remember to remove the blades first. After connecting the pallet to the hitch of your ATV or riding lawn mower, slowly drive it up and down your driveway to level out the gravel. If the pallet starts bouncing around behind you, it's a sign that you're driving too fast and should slow down. To cover the full width of your driveway, you'll likely need to make several passes.

Overall, this is a pretty simple trick you can use to keep your gravel driveway neat and tidy. But if you want to take it a step further, there are ways to do that, too. For example, you could add a cinder block to the pallet if you need extra weight. Compacting the driveway after leveling is also a wise idea to keep the gravel fixed in place for even longer.