SNIP...WoolyAcres SNIP There's a lot pushing me away from used though, mainly I don't know enough to make a wise purchase and want something reliable. As motivating as saving money is, I think I would regret this decision.
I think that in your position I would be looking at new tractors too. The big advantage I see for you to be ooking at new is because doing that will give you a chance to compare the greatest number of comperable machines. In fact, I would advise you to look at Kubota too. Not because you are going to buy that more expensive brand of tractor - but because looking at the high end pricewise will give you an idea of where the top of the market is right now.... and to find out if the higher price buys anything of value to you.
Look, what I'm about to say about used tractors is mportant.... I don't know that I - or any of us on TBN - would agree with you that a new tractor is any more reliable than a used one. We might even go the other way. And here's why:
Based on 50 years experience and what I've followed on forums over the last 25 years it seems to me that new tractors and used tractors experience about the same amount of failures. True, they fail in differnt manners, but they seem to fail in roughly the same numbers.
Any tractors can break of course, but they don't tend to break simply because they are used. From a engineering viewpoint, one of the oddities of tractor design is that unlike almost everything else in the manufactured world, weight is an advantage in tractors. Take a moment and think of how rare that is.... for something to be designed where weight is an advantage. I think that whatever you come up with, you'll find that it is something that tends to last.
Because tractors are designed and built under the philosophy that "weight is good", tractors tend to be massively overbuilt relative to their speed and load. The whole rest of the manufactured world is oriented the other way round, and that is why in today's manufacturing world it is easy to overbuild tractors to where wear just isn't much of a factor.
Add to that the fact that tractor features change exceedingly slowly. Very little is new or novel in the tractor world. Not in the last 20 years for sure.
Unless abused, they just don't tend to wear much at all ....much less wear out.
In my opinion, used tractors wear or break because of abuse or lack of maintenance.... not from wear or age. By contrast, new tractors tend to break because of new model design errors, or human assembly mistakes, or parts that were substandard.
So with these things considered, I'd say the most reliable tractor out there is a well maintained used machine with a few hundred to a few thousand hours of average use on it. Not new, definitely not abused, properly maintained, and perhaps less than 20 years old.
In fact, I think that if you look at us on TBN you'll find that most of us currently own tractors that meet that description. Chalk me up with WoolyAcres on the advantages of used.
And it explains why used ones are so expensive and don't come on the market all that often. So I'd still advise you to look at new, but keep your mind and eyes open for something used but good. Dealers often have trade-ins with a few hundred hours that are a good compromise.
luck, rScotty
