NCL4701
Member
We had two older tractors without hour meters, a Farmall H and Ford 9N, both of which have no telling how many hours on them. Both are on their second engine rebuild. They were semi-adequate for the property I grew up on but inadequate for the steep, hilly 70 acres of trees, meadows, 1/2 mile private road with three short driveways, etc. where my parents and I live. My father had somehow managed to mostly maintain the property until he aged out of heavy manual labor and wouldn’t let me do anything in the way of maintenance outside of the couple of acres deeded in my name. The road got to being near impassable with his car so he just drove his truck all the time. The trails were impassable. A couple of the meadow areas were being taken over by saplings. It was just getting out of control.
So just out of curiosity, had a landscaper with a CTL and all the equipment needed plus some quote getting the place back in shape: about $15,000 and that didn’t account for ongoing chores such as brush hogging, ditch cleaning, trail and road maintenance, etc.
Renting gets really expensive and time consuming for jobs that are ongoing, even if intermittent.
So I have a Mule, a Kubota L4701 with third function and top/tail, a ZTR for the lawns, and a few implements in addition to the 3 point stuff my father already had. Dad gave me his flatbed equipment trailer in exchange for putting $750 and some sweat into getting it roadworthy again. About $50K in equipment. Between 190 ton of rock and materials to replace a failing retaining wall, about $6k in materials to get the place in reasonable shape.
When I first got the tractor, my father said it would probably have 5 hours on it in the first year. More like 150 hours in the first year. Second year, after the push to work down the deferred maintenance more like 40 hours.
That’s not a lot but part of that is because the Kubota is a good fit for the work. Recently had to clean out a ditch and touch up a gravel path. Manually would have been most of a day. Older tractors, a couple of hours. Rental: probably would have left it until there were more jobs to bundle with it and spent a whole day as just hauling back and forth would have taken half a day or better. Kubota with the hydraulic tilt and toplink: 15 minutes. Actually noticed it while moving beehives with the forks (boxblade already on it for counterweight) and spent 15 minutes after moving the bees before putting the tractor away. There’s just no substitute for that.
So just out of curiosity, had a landscaper with a CTL and all the equipment needed plus some quote getting the place back in shape: about $15,000 and that didn’t account for ongoing chores such as brush hogging, ditch cleaning, trail and road maintenance, etc.
Renting gets really expensive and time consuming for jobs that are ongoing, even if intermittent.
So I have a Mule, a Kubota L4701 with third function and top/tail, a ZTR for the lawns, and a few implements in addition to the 3 point stuff my father already had. Dad gave me his flatbed equipment trailer in exchange for putting $750 and some sweat into getting it roadworthy again. About $50K in equipment. Between 190 ton of rock and materials to replace a failing retaining wall, about $6k in materials to get the place in reasonable shape.
When I first got the tractor, my father said it would probably have 5 hours on it in the first year. More like 150 hours in the first year. Second year, after the push to work down the deferred maintenance more like 40 hours.
That’s not a lot but part of that is because the Kubota is a good fit for the work. Recently had to clean out a ditch and touch up a gravel path. Manually would have been most of a day. Older tractors, a couple of hours. Rental: probably would have left it until there were more jobs to bundle with it and spent a whole day as just hauling back and forth would have taken half a day or better. Kubota with the hydraulic tilt and toplink: 15 minutes. Actually noticed it while moving beehives with the forks (boxblade already on it for counterweight) and spent 15 minutes after moving the bees before putting the tractor away. There’s just no substitute for that.
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