arrow
Super Member
Let me preface this by stating I have only driven geared tractors and tried out hydrostatics when the dealer dropped a couple off for me to try at my place. This week I was in Kentucky helping my brother in law with this new horse farm.
I drove and used two geared tractors: A Kubota M5400 and a cabbed M6800 that I suspect were of some late 90's or early 2000 and something vintage. I had to spread 100 yds of surface fill within the riding arena. This entailed all loader work.
I've spread plenty of stuff with geared tractors and never thought much about it. I could never understand the rather strong inclination of those favoring hydros over geared. That is until this past week. The 5400 was an utter pain with its balky left side reverser shifter and the 6800 was much better with its steering column mounted shuttle shift. None the less, I longed for a hydro while perched on both of these machines. It has been the only instance where I thought a hydro was the tractor of choice.
It finally struck me why some are so insistent as to never want a geared tractor again and it has to do with two things: 1. the ergonomics and smoothness or lack thereof of the geared tractor and 2. what the operator will be doing mostly with his/her machine.
Does it make me want to convert? No. Both my JD 750 and 950 were rather a cinch to drive simply going with a straight forward-reverse shift with their floor mounted shifters and my current geared Mahindra is so smooth in its forward/reverse transitions as to not think about it at all.
The hydros I tried were exasperating to me for three reasons: 1. The kubota was a treadle operated unit and the Mahindra was screaming to make its power and just didn't have the pulling power of the geared at higher speeds.
The end of this story is that unless you have experience with comparisons, you'll never know what you're missing or not so in my case, ignorance was bliss.
I drove and used two geared tractors: A Kubota M5400 and a cabbed M6800 that I suspect were of some late 90's or early 2000 and something vintage. I had to spread 100 yds of surface fill within the riding arena. This entailed all loader work.
I've spread plenty of stuff with geared tractors and never thought much about it. I could never understand the rather strong inclination of those favoring hydros over geared. That is until this past week. The 5400 was an utter pain with its balky left side reverser shifter and the 6800 was much better with its steering column mounted shuttle shift. None the less, I longed for a hydro while perched on both of these machines. It has been the only instance where I thought a hydro was the tractor of choice.
It finally struck me why some are so insistent as to never want a geared tractor again and it has to do with two things: 1. the ergonomics and smoothness or lack thereof of the geared tractor and 2. what the operator will be doing mostly with his/her machine.
Does it make me want to convert? No. Both my JD 750 and 950 were rather a cinch to drive simply going with a straight forward-reverse shift with their floor mounted shifters and my current geared Mahindra is so smooth in its forward/reverse transitions as to not think about it at all.
The hydros I tried were exasperating to me for three reasons: 1. The kubota was a treadle operated unit and the Mahindra was screaming to make its power and just didn't have the pulling power of the geared at higher speeds.
The end of this story is that unless you have experience with comparisons, you'll never know what you're missing or not so in my case, ignorance was bliss.
