Mowing Life of a tractor

[tmc_31]

Hey guys,

Is there a "industry standard" service life for and Ag tractor? Something like 5000 hrs or 10k hrs?

Trying to do some life cycle costing for my mowing business.

Thanks,

Tim

 

[20 20]

there are tractors out there with well over 20,000hrs. IMO what makes the difference is the care given to the machine.
Abuse it, loose it, treat it like a sweety, it'll give ya many happy hours in the seaty.

 

[blueriver]

Service, maintaince and repairs for thousands of hrs of use.

 

[Reg]

Hey guys,

Is there a "industry standard" service life for and Ag tractor? Something like 5000 hrs or 10k hrs?

Trying to do some life cycle costing for my mowing business.

Thanks,

Tim

Oh Ohh,
This will almost certainly lead to "They don't build 'em like they used to"
and in many cases that is VERY FORTUNATE (-:

You might as well figure the deterioration will match the depreciation curves that your tax adviser provides you.
i.e. your book keeping may provide one of the limits to the range.

 

[Verticaltrx]

I'd say for most compact tractors the 'average' life would be about 5,000hrs, with reasonably good care. Utility tractors 40hp+ I'd put at 10,000hrs and row crop tractors over 100hp I'd put at 15,000hrs. All of these are from personal experience, any of those could easily double with excellent maintenance and minor mechanical work along the way (the opposite is also true). In my family there are some tractors with upwards of 30,000hrs on them but they have had a couple overhauls. You can basically keep a tractor going as long as you have parts for it.

 

[DKCDKC]

Got a friend with an early 60s John Deere still used on the farm. The engine has been maintained, but the rest looks terrible. But it works well and consistently with 14,000 hours plus - and minimal maintenance. Some machines just keep going.

 

[moored4]

What do you mean by life of a tractor? Time before a wrench has to touch the machine, or first motor rebuild, ??.

We have older tractors and newer tractors and their worthiness has nothing to do with the hrs on them but how hard we work that particular machine. Two identical machines bought same time with same driver, one plows only and the other works around the dairy pushing poop, moving silage, and so on. The one plowing looks great but the motor is shot, the one at the dairy has a good motor but the running gear is trashed! Same hours.

I guess if you are in a mowing business then depreciate it over 7 or so years and get rid of it!

 

[varmint]

This is slightly off topic, but I remember my brother telling me, back when he worked for Caterpillar, building their big 12 cylinder diesels, that most of those engines went to oil rig platforms for generating power. They ran them for about 12,000 hours, with careful maintenance, of course, and them pushed them over the side. Hopefully, they drained the oil first. I have no idea if constant speed running is better or worse than variable for service life.

 

[D7E]

I've owned and operated many that have gone way over 10'000 with little more than injectors ,clutches,fuel pumps etc I have a ford TW20 at 11'000 and a versatile with almost 9'000 that have never had the engines opened and run beatuifully clean , still main tractors and not babied at all .

this is high hours
http://www.classictractormagazine.co.uk/?feature=another-cunning-dig

 

[bigbull338]

a tractor really dont have a set hour lifespan.alot depends on how it was used an maintained.when an old tractor blows up bad enough you have to decide if its worth fixing on junking out.