We used to do that aswell. And so do those guys. But after the amount of rain in February this year it has really turned it nasty hence why all the pulling, I know they wouldn’t choose to do it and it certainly isn’t the norm.We often go straight in with the vaddy after a max till in the autumn. On plough we have been twice with a12m set of vaderstad nz followed by rapide, all done in 36hrs if poss. Not sure what your neighbours are playing at. We are probably using 7 -12 l/ha fuel depending.
We have drilled thousands of acres in the spring after an autumn topdown and never had to pull it but this year it does appear to be especially grim, thankfully our direct drilling appears to be going really well and getting crops established including rolling with about 10l/ha fuel.
we ran max till vs direct with a tine drill two years in a row against each other and both times the yield was pretty even or even slightly in favour of DD, so we sacked the cultivating off and went to the pub.