In 2004 I finished up my home on 6 acres and I wanted a tractor to mow with. The only thing I "knew" was that I wanted a belly mower and a FEL. I really didn't know what else a tractor could do but I figured the FEL would be useful. I'm from farm country so my only experience was what friends and neighbors had which were mostly john deere , farmall, and massy, Etc. These were all bigger utility tractors but they did the jobs I wanted. I did know there were smaller ford tractors that a lot of landscapers used but I didn't know any farmers that used those. I looked for something used no luck there. Through the internet I discovered New Holland and Kubota and saw that CaseIH had a small utility model that would work. Neither the john deere or new holland dealers seemed very interested in selling me a tractor. They would have likely sold me what I wanted but the problem was I didn't really know what I wanted. I stopped by a kubota dealer one day and he took the time to find out what my needs were. From that, he made some recommendations so I could compare them. The final comparison involved actually driving the different models. It was still my final decision as to which model I bought but he sure helped me narrow my focus. It was really because of that dealer that I bought Kubota. I had great luck with that machine and just recently replaced it with a new (slightly bigger) Kubota. Unfortunately, my original dealer closed down quite a while ago but I did find a good one a little farther away so I look forward to many years of service from both tractor and dealer.
John
