Earliest age to learn to run a tractor ???

[Indydirtfarmer]

</font><font color="blue" class="small">( On a lighter side....this guy is toooo young to operate equipment alone.

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But he did make the right choice as far as brand/color!

 

[Jagmandave]

This is true, even for adults. One of my younger brothers was visiting, (he's in his late forties)and I asked him if he'd like to go out to my property and do some "manly things in a manly and manful way" (for all of you old Sat Night Live fans) I put him on my ZTR after a bit of coaching - took him off again 1 minute later. He seemed to think it was a rowing machine, one handle forward and the other back, then the other way. Tore the **** out of my lawn!
Gave him the weedwacker, 2 minutes later I see him standing forlornly holding the entire length of line off the spool.......
We went to lunch.................

 

[crashz]

Thats really dependent on the child. I started running machinery when I was 11, loading trucks with a pit loader. By 13 I was plowing snow with a Ford 555 TLB, and Hough 65, bull dozing with a Dresser TD8, and doing some light excavating.

I was better operator back when I was a teenager than I am now!

 

[kensfarm]

"But this guy can work all day independently... "

I think he's old enougth to put an FEL on that tractor! /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

 

[Iplayfarmer]

Not only does a kid's maturity, physical strength, and intellect/wisdom matter, but the people and working environment around them matter a lot too.

The summer I was 17, I worked on a ranch out on the dessert. The rancher had a 7-year-old kid and a 14-year-old nephew that both helped me out. The nephew was some city-slicker kid that was sent to his uncle's farm to "straighten him out".

I'd trust the 7-year-old kid better than the 14-year-old nephew on any of the tractors with any of the implements that we used, but never when the nephew was around. The nephew had a way of coming up with "bright ideas", and he was a bad influence on the kid as far as wisdom and maturity went.

The boss told me to give the kid as much experience as I could when the nephew wasn't around. In fact, the boss's wife insisted that the kid drive any time we were out working. In her mind that was the safest place for the kid to be.

That brings up the other point I'd make...It's important that the kid is ready, but when is the mother ready?

 

[TractorLegend]

</font><font color="blueclass=small">( The nephew was some city-slicker kid that was sent to his uncle's farm to "straighten him out". )</font>

Hey, Im a city slicker with country recreational propery that is also a 41 year old nephew of bad influence. And hey, I turned out ok... (twitch, shrug, twitch, twitch, rapid blink, Turette outbreak....) /forums/images/graemlins/shocked.gif

 

[Iplayfarmer]

TractorLegend,

I looked at your bio, and I have a sneaking suspicion that you are a little more "there" than this kid was. I'm sure he's turned out fine now, but he had a long way to come.

We had a lengthy conversation one day when he insisted that there was no difference between hay and straw. Another time I was popping the end plug out of a 4-inch sprinkler line backed by about 90 psi of water, and he decided he was going to catch the end-plug so he wouldn't have to go looking for it. Luckily for all of us he missed.

This is the kind of lack of experience and common sense that would keep me from letting my kid drive a tractor or any large machinery no matter what age he/she is.

 

[Boog]

I began at age 9 on a D14 Allis Chalmers raking hay. Like another poster said, I was also a better operator as a teenager than I am now. I got to where I could back up hay racks (tractor going backwards) into the shed with the best of em - even on the hand clutch 720, 730, A, 70.