Tractor purchasing

[glasshouse]

Occasionally, yes. The +30% price tag, driver reluctance and fleet complication put me off somewhat though. We demoed a 720 before we bought the 63 reg 7620. Lovely tractor, but overly complicated and very expensive. As my driver said "you just have to think too much, nothing seems natural, like not having a neutral position on the shuttle" MF Exclusive spec DynaVT much easier to drive.

That shuttle with no neutral position is just fecking dangerous. New holland did the same about 5yrs ago , WHY?
Imagine if ford cars didnt come with a clutch , , just a button on the gearlever?

 

[glasshouse]

So was I

Always been like that, costly to import.

 

[multi power]

Always been like that, costly to import.

Shipping is very cheap

 

[glasshouse]

Shipping is very cheap

Thats only half the story.

 

[Farma Parma]

where do people come up with these figures of how much a machine has cost in repairs whilst in warranty? I have never been given a statement at the end of a warranty period telling what the machine would have cost to repair.

in my case i kept a carefull note of what was all claimed on its warranty & just asked the dealer for its costs everytime.
Its easy enough to gather this info

 

[Spud]

I was chatting to mate recently about tractors and hours, he is often cautious of buying anything high houred but said most problems on high hours machine can be fixed

To be honest we dont buy much with high hours, but if we've had them a while, I'm not at all worried about winding a few on. Between the five highest hour machines on the farm just now, there is about 72000hrs. The leader (and exception) in that pack is the Douglas tug shunter, bought 3 yrs ago with 28300hrs to its name. Two telehandlers and two tractors make up the rest, all over 10,000, two from new, the others bought with under 4000hrs.

 

[Farma Parma]

6-700 between two tractors? They'll last 20yrs, I wouldnt worry.

We have altered our methods to reduce tractor hours per acre - ie our farmed area has increased by a bigger proportion in the last 5yrs than our tractor hours. I still see what I'd term recreational cultivation going on, not sure how they justify it.

7499 just over 3000hrs should be good for another 10years then! unless i pack in before then.
i'll deffo buy another dyna-vt over a dyna-6 thats for sure. but a fendt na they wont make my crops yield anymore so its a no no.

 

[Vernon]

We buy our tractors here, but as infrequently as possible. Like a decent amount of work out of them before giving them away. Never really looked at leasing, but not new tractor buyers.

 

[Johnnyboxer]

My main drilling tractor and spraying tractor are contract hired. The sprayer tractor is best hired for the large number of hours it will do.

The 8370R pulling the drill has recently left the farm on a low loader and is down for 2 weeks in the middle of drilling with a major transmission fault - luckily it is owned by someone with a few JDs in his fleet so within 36 hours of it going JD UK delivered an identical machine to keep me going. Top marks to Colin Smart, Dryland Hire and John Deere! I doubt I'd have got the same service if I'd bought the tractor...

Hire is fine but unless they've bought lots of machines with a big discount you're paying a middleman a margin so I doubt it will be cheaper unless their calculator is faulty.

Great result that

 

[holywell farmer]

Do you ever work for him?

Somtimes,,,,

 

[Brisel]

That shuttle with no neutral position is just fecking dangerous. New holland did the same about 5yrs ago , WHY?
Imagine if ford cars didnt come with a clutch , , just a button on the gearlever?

What, like automatic cars do?

 

[glasshouse]

What, like automatic cars do?

If you specify an automatic, you get an automatic.
If you put a shuttle lever or gear lever to neutral, then neutral it should be, you shouldnt have to press a button too.
Its only a matter of time till someone is killed.

 

[Farma Parma]

Agree Masseys Power Control is ni on perfect.... even better with Park Lock combined.

 

[wrenchy]

We have a fleet of mf tractors from the 80s and 90s and 1 modern 50k tractor for road work delivering corn/straw and bring in muck we also swop the handler for an ex demo ever 5 years around the yard we have a load of 2000series Massey simple and reliable and there so cheap we can have a spare sat in the shed if we need it

 

[Sackofnuts]

We have a fleet of mf tractors from the 80s and 90s and 1 modern 50k tractor for road work delivering corn/straw and bring in muck we also swop the handler for an ex demo ever 5 years around the yard we have a load of 2000series Massey simple and reliable and there so cheap we can have a spare sat in the shed if we need it View attachment 581336

She looks very tidy.

 

[wrenchy]

She looks very tidy.

There all worked hard but well maintained and kept undercover more reliable than modern tractor and these go up in value not down

 

[phillipe]

A friend of mine in the construction industry said the uk is the cheapest place in Europe to buy new machines not sure if it's the same for agri but have another friend in France who buys in Wales and takes it back to France

Vat fiddle i belive

 

[cvx175]

If you specify an automatic, you get an automatic.
If you put a shuttle lever or gear lever to neutral, then neutral it should be, you shouldnt have to press a button too.
Its only a matter of time till someone is killed.

Why? Didn't realise that pressing a button to select neutral was so difficult. There's a display showing which direction is selected or not doesn't take much to look at it. If you had a neutral position on it then the shuttle on armrest wouldn't work which would be more dangerous

 

[Hampton]

My main drilling tractor and spraying tractor are contract hired. The sprayer tractor is best hired for the large number of hours it will do.

The 8370R pulling the drill has recently left the farm on a low loader and is down for 2 weeks in the middle of drilling with a major transmission fault - luckily it is owned by someone with a few JDs in his fleet so within 36 hours of it going JD UK delivered an identical machine to keep me going. Top marks to Colin Smart, Dryland Hire and John Deere! I doubt I'd have got the same service if I'd bought the tractor...

Hire is fine but unless they've bought lots of machines with a big discount you're paying a middleman a margin so I doubt it will be cheaper unless their calculator is faulty.

This may surprise you, but if you had bought a Claas, Deere, new Holland, Massey or Valtra from any of our local dealers you would receive the same service.
(Never dealt with other make dealerships so can't comment)

 

[D14]

We do around 700hrs per year on a main tractor, 1000hrs on a telescopic and then around 200hrs with contractors hauling straw and grain mainly. On paper we should do it allwith one tractor with a front end loader but in reality you can't because when we cart straw we want to blitz it running 4 bale trailer per day. When carting corn it's at least 2 if not 3 trailers. When drilling we want the rolls right behind not days behind. So we've come to the conclusion we should invest in a couple of 10 series deeres/ XL case's or 40 series Fords with front end loaders letting them do a 100 hrs per year each but to last forever. Then carry on hiring the mainline machine that's doing 700 per year.