[AT] Too many tractors

Greg Hass ghass at m3isp.com
Sun Mar 26 10:35:05 PDT 2017


As I mentioned in a previous post, I have four tractors for my 110 
acres. Some guys at the coffee shop have told me I am crazy to have so 
many for so little. I have them for several reasons. First off, they are 
all over 28 years old so its not like I have hundreds of thousands 
invested in them. In fact if I sold them all I would only get around 50 
thousand for them all. Second; as others have mentioned, with my bad 
back and being older, I can no longer keep changing equipment all the 
time. I can put things on a tractor and leave them on for the season 
without changing them every day or so. Third and maybe the most 
important; due to our changing times, no one will help you out anymore. 
If a tractor breaks down you are ------- out of luck. First of all, it 
takes one to two weeks to get anything fixed where when I was younger, 
unless very serious, you had your tractor back in a couple of days. I 
had my IH 856 first for many years before I got the JD 4255. However, I 
still pull the same equipment so if the 4255 should break down the 856 
will still handle the equipment. Same with the IH 574 and the JD 3020; 
both are about the same and can basically be interchanged. You will get 
no help from the dealers, at least not around here. Years ago it was a 
lot different. For 3 generations we have used red equipment until IH 
went out of business. In the late 50's my dad had a IH Super C and 
pulled a IH 45 hay baler and also did custom work with it. One day the 
end of the drawbar broke so he just shortened it a little ( mine you I 
was under 10 at the time so I remember a little of it but was told some 
of it) . What he didn't realize  was that he also shortened the distance 
between the pto shaft. A couple of days later he went through a deep 
furrow and the pto bottomed out and bent the tractor pto shaft inside 
the tractor. Because this was a real odd thing to happen it was going to 
take at least a week to get parts. Without my dad even asking, the 
dealer pulled the complete pto unit out of a brand new tractor and 
installed in my dad's tractor so he could keep baling; at the time that 
was the only tractor my dad owned. Today the chances of this happening 
are several miles south of zero.
             Greg Hass



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