When I was shopping for a 30-35 HP tractor I found just one used that I was interested in... a clean 10 year old Kubota with 1000 hours on it. Everything else had bukos hours on it, or was priced at new. I did have to take out a loan but was pre approved at the CU at 2 1/4% plus had a good down payment.
My fallback was a new geared 3301 for 20.5K, but I ended up with 2 YO 3301 HST for about 3K less. It also came with a canopy, tire chains and grapple setup.
Back when we were looking for our first tractor, we figured it would have to be a used 20 to 40 hp tractor - either compact or utility.
We wanted a loader & a 3pt for sure. Hopefully power steering & 4wd.
They all seemed to fall into the following categories:
1. New
2. Used, not needing much or any maintenance
3. Used, could use lots of maintenance & even some repairs but with all the important systems working - i.e leaks, seals, sloppy steering, flat tires, won't charge.
4. Used, definitely needing mechanical repairs on a major system to get it to work, but able to be repaired. i.e. no hydraulics, front axle/driveshaft broken
5. Junk
To my surprise it was easy to tell which slot that a particular tractor fit into. I think cars & trucks are more difficult.
It didn't take long to figure out that some machines - particularly some older ones - were designed to be repaired & others were not.
Repairability and parts availability made some old machines move up into repairable categories 3 & 4 while newer tractors with the same problem did not.
