No ordering to customers specifications on smaller tractors? And I read that dealers stock a lot of tractors, here almost all tractors and cars are factory ordered to customers wishes. Only the Japanese sticks to take it or leave it when it comes to equipment. On some more nice cars I think I counted to 20 choices of steering wheels
Valtra tractors even has it's own custom shop where you can tailor make your tractor, custom paint jobs, leather interiors and of course all kind of one of a kind technical equipment. Valtra has also a lot of colours to choose from when you are ordering your STD tractor so you don't have to look like your neighbor
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Hello Avgv,
As far as what we can order on the mules we buy, we can only order options provided by the manufacturer in long lists.
If we want something else like the front mount three point hitches with PTO shaft stubs we may buy them our selves but the manufacturer can get really nasty and void the warranty.
The market has not reached the point where a man or woman of the soil can have the mule customized to the point where it has leather seats and custom paint jobs through the manufacturer.
The consolidation of many tractor brands and loss of many other brands of tractors since 1990+ has reshaped the tractor market.
In many cases row crop tractors, sprayers, row crop planters, grain drills and tillage tools are traded in on new equipment and billions of dollars of used machine value just sits on dealers lots hoping to be sold.
Many older tractors could be scrapped and melted into new iron as they will sit on the lots for years until they are auctioned off, if they are auctioned off. Many row crop tractors need major repairs over time and the farmer decides to trade the old machines in for new machines.
The same can be said for construction machinery as it is sold at job completion auctions and or sold at nearby auctions as is where is with no warranty of fitness.
They market to the masses here and in most years they have excess sub compact tractor and compact tractor inventory that sits on the dealer lots and sits on the dealer lots and they are not protected by sheds of any kind like an open sided barn that has four open sides.
The sub compact market for the tractor builders is a very large source of gross revenues for the tractor manufacturers and they keep coming up with new models. They also export a lot of them to Europe.
Buying a good lawn tractor under 16 horsepower with a gear or strong hydrostatic transmission and horizontal crank shaft to operate single stage snowblowers and belly mowers is a thing of the past here. The manufacturers of these are using and vertical crank gas engines, belt driven hydrostatic transmissions of lower value and making a less expensive glorified lawn mower that may have 3 horsepower available to one axle shaft at a time.
I doubt we will ever see high quality lawn tractors like we saw from 1965 to 2006 with horizontal crank gas engines or single stage snow throwers on them either as most attachments are sub contracted to RAD in Canada and lawn mowers from MTD and others in the United States which purchased many brands and ruined them.
If you take my case for example I have a JDLA115 that is 9 years old and I bought it to replace my wheel horse lawn tractor that I still have and it was a mistake as I should have had the wheel horse repaired at the time and purchased a high horsepower Toro snow blower.
The 44 inch snowblower on the LA115 is belt driven and the V belts cannot be purchased from an automotive parts store and are special V belts made for john deere. The drive belt is over $45.00+ tax dollars now and the driven belt for the snow blower is over $160.00+ tax and finding out the bloody thing was shipped short on parts from the Canadian builder RAD and having to purchase the same parts it should have come with is a poor way to do business. To replace the both the driven and drive belt for the snow blower requires that the snow blower be removed and disassembled. It takes almost four hours to replace the driven belt and an hour replace the drive belt counting disassembly time. Doing it in cold weather is no fun even with a space heater running.
I would not hesitate to purchase a 1967 IHC cub cadet with a single stage snow blower and belly mower or a Wheel Horse garden tractor from 1990 to 2006?, as you could purchase single stage snow blowers with them; I think my dads last new wheel horse was a 2006 anyway and it had power to spare just like the wheel horse that had the Renault engine in it before that.
The old economy tractors were well built and I don't believe that they are made anymore.
The only ones that are both economical to buy and well built are the struk kit tracked tractors and they have been sold for many years.
They can build better lawn mowers again but the zero turn lawn mowers have taken over the majority of the market and wheel horse stopped making riding lawn mowers to get into that market after they were acquired by the Toro company.
I have had and a still have Toro snow pups to clear snow for 40 plus years and I will not buy a new one as they are four cycle machines and very heavy. I would have four of the old toro snow pups if they had not had damage that could not be fixed during snow storms
The environmental protection agency has had a huge effect on the 2 cycle product market and as result small push type snow blowers are equipped with 4 cycle engines.
Many equipment dealers will put a machine last in line for warranty repairs if the person that brought the tractor no matter the size from another dealer and that is just poor business. These dealers do that with wheel and track driven snow blowers every year as well if the consumer bought them from an internet seller or bought it out of the area and brought it home.
It just galls me when I hear "YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR" from a local john deere dealer.