The maintenance cost isn’t that bad. It’s probably $5 an hour in track wear. Otherwise the maintenance isn’t much different from other equipment. $5 an hour hardly counts as insane in my book. And these machines will work circles around a compact tractor. Not only will they work circles they’re much tougher. How far do you have to look to find story’s of tractors with drained fluids because a limb ripped a filter off, busted front axels because they’re wimpy, tweaked loaders because they’re wimpy, bent cylinders because they’re not dozers, the 3 point hitch ripped off because they can’t run a backhoe? A CTL doesn’t break every time you mistreat it. Bottom line if you want to do actual work get a CTL, if you want to play around your house get a tractor.