Hahaha, nice! :laughing:
Only way to find out is count the rings....
I love working in my woods. When we bought the place, it's kind of kite shaped. There was a 4 acre field on one side, a 6 acre field on the other, and about 10 acres of existing woods down the middle. The forester estimated 10-12,000 trees on the place. We had the 4 acre field planted with 2100 trees, alternating rows of pines and mixed hardwoods, with the intention of the pines growing cone shaped fast, stressing the hardwoods in between the pine rows to grow tall and straight. So far so good. That was in 1990. The pines are in excess of 45' and 12-14" in diameter. The hardwoods are 50-60' tall and 10-12" now.
The existing woods had a ton of black locust througout, with the front half having a bunch of sugar maples and oaks mixed in, and the back half a ton of large gnarly cherry, oak, and others. And there's sassafrass along any open edges.
So when it was planted, we were reimbursed 75% of the cost as long as we mowed or sprayed the trees for weeds for 5 years. After that, we were free to do as we choose with them.
I bought the IH2500b tractor loader to cut in a road, and brush cut between the rows of trees. The IH worked fine for cutting into about an 8' bank at the highway where the gubermint said we had to put the driveway. We were fortunate in that the land is entirely sandy loam and adrian muck, with the exception of about 1/2 acre of fox soil, which has gravel under it, and, that pocket of fox happened to be exactly where the state said we had to put the drive. So I cut a trench 8' wide X 12" deep about 450' long through the sand and set that aside. Then excavated the gravel and made a nice 6" deep bed of gravel, then brought in truckloads of slag from the steel mills and laid 6" of that on top of the gravel.
The IH2500b worked great for that, and for mowing, until the trees got to bushy to drive between. And I could pull logs out of the woods pretty well, but it was 2WD, had industrial R4s on it, and would get stuck in the sand quit often. It was just too big for the needs after the excavation.
That's when we downsized to the little PT425 for trail mowing and hauling firewood out of the woods. In all reality, the little bitty machine is more productive than the big one ever was due to the places it can go that the big one couldn't. It also shuttles loose material from point A to point B a lot faster. I can only imagine what a larger Power Trac with a bigger bucket could do. And the brush cutter works great being out in front VS the brush cutter that was behind the IH. I frequently had to stop the IH and clean out the radiator and hydraulic cooler of seeds and chaff because it had to go through the weeds first. The PT chops everything down before you drive over it, so it's all down on the ground, and not that much gets sucked up into the cooler mounted in the top of the hood.
So, the little machine handles all the chores at the woods, plus it mows our lawn at home, does snow removal, etc...
Since I only wanted one machine, this one fits our bill to a T.
I'd like to get my hands on one of their 1460's and see what kind of damage I could do with that.
T24 Class
