My neighbor has had the same tractor for over 25 years. He has 4.5 acres. He keeps it cut with a rotary cutter, plows/tills a garden, does other things like that. He even had a little combine once (I think that is what you call it), to harvest a couple acres of wheat he planted. He makes square bales of hay sometimes. So he does use his tractor.
Last summer we were talking across the tractors (parked facing opposite, like Bird used to when wearing his badge, and talking to that officer from the next town) and he looks at his hour meter and says “won’t be long 'till I have a thousand hours on ‘er.”
He bought it new, uses it when he wants to. It’s a 38 pto hp tractor, gasoline engine. For all I know he may run it at 25% rpm all the time.
Point being, it might be hard to use expected hours of use to meaningfully justify a tractor purchase. It all boils down to our own needs and wants. The hours someone else puts on their tractor is just that, I think. Someone else's hours.
Still, if using hour-use estimates would help turn a tractor dream into reality, I certainly would use them to my benefit! I think I average about 150 hours per year on my larger tractor. Won’t know for sure until July rolls around.
Now a question.
Do hours when the tractor is not running count as "use hours?" I can spend a whole day working with the tractor, some of the time it may be turned off, while I am throwing stuff in the loader bucket after cutting a downed tree into manageable pieces, etc.
I say most certainly this is tractor use, and so to get the real number to use for “Tractor Purchase Justification," one needs to do the following calculations:
Estimate annual tractor hour-meter hours
Multiply this number by two, to account for tachometer-driven hour meters. This new number represents “seat time” hours.
Multiply seat-time hours by at minimum 2 (use a larger number if greater justification is needed). This represents time the tractor is away from its normal parking place, therefore in use.
Conclusion: True tractor "use time" at minimum is four times what the tractor hour meter accumulates! /forums/images/graemlins/cool.gif
Hope this helps (anyone who needs to) justify that tractor purchase! /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif
