Yes, they sure do.
As a group, I think they are the worst for maintaining equipment considering they are the owners of it. We tend to expect that someone
who doesn't own the equipment has a "don't give a s**t" attitude about maintenance so it's a bit amazing (and not in a
good way) when owners exhibit the same attitude. Likewise on the amazing part when it comes to lubes in general. They'll scrimp to save pennies on a tube of grease or liter of oil that will be used on equipment worth a hundred thousand dollars and up. Go figure.
True story: About 4 years ago, the farmer who rented a 60 acre field from my buddy stopped in with his
IH tractor because he was having charging problems and my buddy is a Journeyman Mechanic with mucho experience working on auto and industrial equipment. It was showing 40 amps charge rate on the meter all the time! My buddy did a bit of looking at it and it became obvious that sometime in the past, somebody had done a bunch of Mickey Mouse wiring on it, really butchered it in fact and there was a bit of loose wiring here and there, some of which would spark whenever it contacted the chassis. My buddy told him he thought the high charging rate was because of battery condition and that he needed to do some repairs to the wiring, especially with the bare wiring that was shorting out occasionally. Farmer's response was more or less that it had been like that for a long time without giving any problems and that was about all he said of it. Once he realized my buddy wasn't about to spend hours working on his equipment for free, he left. My buddy has work of his own he needed to get done and no time to work on his tractor. Fast forward a couple of years...the renter stopped in and was complaining his tractor just burned to the ground! We couldn't be sure but it certainly appeared that his wiring finally caught up to him and caused a spark that did ignite some chaff and got a fire going. His tractor also had quite a bit of spilled diesel on it and some hydraulic leaks that had never been washed off, so it was quite the torch waiting for a match!