Comparing hours to miles on a car

[Opti-Mist]

It would be more accurate to compare tractor usage to heavy truck usage, given rated engine speeds vs typical engine operating speeds. That produces an equivalent of 40 miles per operating hour - at least based on the study that I'm familiar with from the early 80's. The design life of a tractors engine is around 10,000 hours which, at 40 miles per hour, equates to 400,000 miles (not unlike heavy trucks). So, given some basic design assumptions, a tractors useful life is a lot more than most of us will ever inflict on a tractor in our lifetime.

 

[GIJOE]

My 2000 Chevrolet Silverado 2500 4x4 has an hour meter built in from the factory.

 

[Dargo]

Our 04 GM 1500 has one. 134,000 kms (83263 miles) + 1800 hours.

That is really close to what I am seeing. Again, agreeing with most everyone here, I'm not sure what relevance it has, but at least someone else has about the same hours at about the same miles as what mine shows. It is interesting to hear that gas powered pickups also have hour meters. This hour meter stuff on pickup trucks is all new to me. I wonder if it will be normal in the future to want to check not only the miles but also the hours on a used pickup when you are looking at buying one?

 

[irwin]

If we're going to use the word average, then 35-45 miles per hour, is as good an answer as we can get.. The variables can change that quite a bit..as in an abused truck with 50k could be junk.

 

[Gizmo2]

I believe the truck companies started putting hour meters on trucks because a lot of trucks spend a lot of time just sitting idling. Like trucks use in road work that have the flashers on them just to block traffic. Trucks like that have very low miles on the odometer but the equivalent of a very large amount of miles on the engine and probably hard hours.
Protection for the used truck buyer.

Also I read someplace a long time ago that the small diesel engines in the compact tractors would need to be rebuilt at approximately 2000 (RPM) hours.