Which make will do most hours JD or Valtra?

kiwi pom

Member
Location
canterbury NZ
I run old and new valtras contracting , the tractor on triple mowers is 12 year old, tedding is 17 , raking is 25 , wagons are pulled by 17, 16 and 2 year olds , last summer we did 2800 acres of grass without any break downs, that is great service from older high hour tractors, most silage outfits I see are running all new tractors , how they pay for them I don’t know.

Monthly finance payments is how they pay for them.
2800 acres of grass would be first cut for many silage crews, add in 2 or 3 more cuts plus whole crop and then a month of maize and you start to see why the hours creep up.
How many hours on your tractors?
They'll last for years if you only do 4/500 but if you're doing 2/3000 per year, replacement dates arrive quickly.
 

daveydiesel1

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Co antrim
Monthly finance payments is how they pay for them.
2800 acres of grass would be first cut for many silage crews, add in 2 or 3 more cuts plus whole crop and then a month of maize and you start to see why the hours creep up.
How many hours on your tractors?
They'll last for years if you only do 4/500 but if you're doing 2/3000 per year, replacement dates arrive quickly.
Yes contractor near here would be doin around 16-20k acres a year. No offence to james but 2800 acres isnt anythin to be shoutin about. That crowd has a fleet out practically every day of the year doin long hours. They used yo be nh/case but are all jd bar 1 blue now and maintain jd is the only 1 thatl stick them and they never buy new and still have some 30 series deeres with around 20k hours still doin front line jobs of pullin 4000 odd gallon tankers and silage trailers
 

kiwi pom

Member
Location
canterbury NZ
Yes contractor near here would be doin around 16-20k acres a year. No offence to james but 2800 acres isnt anythin to be shoutin about. That crowd has a fleet out practically every day of the year doin long hours. They used yo be nh/case but are all jd bar 1 blue now and maintain jd is the only 1 thatl stick them and they never buy new and still have some 30 series deeres with around 20k hours still doin front line jobs of pullin 4000 odd gallon tankers and silage trailers

Not knocking James either, he runs a smaller, lower cost business (probably makes more money than the new fleet every year mega acre guys) but yearly hours vary a lot between contactors, large farms with complex rotations and smaller farms.
The question of what's an economical repair is not limited to tractors, lots of industries struggle with it. From trucks to mining shovels to planes and aircraft carriers.
When do you stop repairing and buy new?
 

daveydiesel1

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Co antrim
Not knocking James either, he runs a smaller, lower cost business (probably makes more money than the new fleet every year mega acre guys) but yearly hours vary a lot between contactors, large farms with complex rotations and smaller farms.
The question of what's an economical repair is not limited to tractors, lots of industries struggle with it. From trucks to mining shovels to planes and aircraft carriers.
When do you stop repairing and buy new?
While a tractor is stil fresh enough and not rusted out or completely worn out it has to be worth fixin as new price is so high. If u can work with a good inde mechanic a few grand still does quite a bit of fixin yet. If ur wantin to run to big hours its probably better to buy a popular brand and model as aftermarket parts will be more plentiful which could help with cost of fixin
 

deere 6600

Member
Mixed Farmer
I had jd 6600 surprisingly enough 16500 hrs when I changed for a newer model JD obviously that tractor did everything had brakes and head gasket obviously about 10000 hrs . I reckon a fair bit of life left in it without a doubt the best tractor I've ever owned .mate has valtra s I quite like them too
 
Yes contractor near here would be doin around 16-20k acres a year. No offence to james but 2800 acres isnt anythin to be shoutin about. That crowd has a fleet out practically every day of the year doin long hours. They used yo be nh/case but are all jd bar 1 blue now and maintain jd is the only 1 thatl stick them and they never buy new and still have some 30 series deeres with around 20k hours still doin front line jobs of pullin 4000 odd gallon tankers and silage trailers
Who's that?
 

daveydiesel1

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Co antrim
That leyland would be more like 80,000 hours on a modern tractor with a digital clock, those old analogue clock would only clock up an hour when revving at certain rpm, probably 1700-1800. Doubt a modern tractor would even think about working that amount of hours.
Our mf4370 is like that. It has 14300 hours on it but if i do 10 hours work itl never have 10 hours clocked be more like 5-7 hours. Years ago i was rollin with it for 13 hours 1 day and it only clocked 3 hours as it was little more than tickin over
 
Not knocking James either, he runs a smaller, lower cost business (probably makes more money than the new fleet every year mega acre guys) but yearly hours vary a lot between contactors, large farms with complex rotations and smaller farms.
The question of what's an economical repair is not limited to tractors, lots of industries struggle with it. From trucks to mining shovels to planes and aircraft carriers.
When do you stop repairing and buy new?
I would say economical repair is repairs adding up to well less than the value of the vehicle.
Beyond economical repair is when a number of repairs in a certain time are adding up to well over half the value of the vehicle
It becomes more sense then to sell the vehicle and renew as you end up throwing good money after bad
Sometimes if you sell an old unreliable tractor it will pay the deposit on a new one and the finance can be less than the repairs on the old one
 

J 1177

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Durham, UK
Our mf4370 is like that. It has 14300 hours on it but if i do 10 hours work itl never have 10 hours clocked be more like 5-7 hours. Years ago i was rollin with it for 13 hours 1 day and it only clocked 3 hours as it was little more than tickin over
Yep like our old 1210 running the mill or dryer or old simplex bin fan for hours on end on 1100 revs. Doesn't clock them till 1400rpm. Still managed to rack a few hours on it 15000+
 

sexy lexy

Member
Brand engineering, John deere are the masters at it, engines which have unresolved well known weak points aka cylinder head gaskets, cross shafts and castings at the top of the linkage which wear too quickly and excessively, yet they sell by the bucket load, put a landini badge on the same product, I'm not so sure it would sell so well.
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

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Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

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As reported in Independent


quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

read the TFF thread here: https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/gfc-was-to-go-ahead-now-not-going-ahead.405234/
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