Is there a Yuppie tractor?

[Roy]

I saw a Craftsman GT Restoration web site today that stated:
"Get a chuckle as Yuppies talk about the cupholders in their Deere and Scotts tractors."

There is a Kubota dealer who has this on their webpage:
""If your wife drives a Volvo, you drive a BMW, your golf clubs are Pings and you're ashamed of your garden tractor.............maybe its time to step up to the BX"

I once read a post on some forum (couldn't find it to quote it) that the poster stated (or strongly implied) that the NH Boomer line was named explicitly to attract the Baby Boomers / Yuppies

Now, from my observations, there is no "Yuppie" tractor. I'll take the family a few properties down from me as an example. They belong to a golfing club, health club, etc. and have never seen them work in their yard. I don't think they own a single piece of power turf equipment, they pay a lawn service or contractors to do it all for them.

So, do people feel that there really are "Yuppie" turf equipment?

 

[RobS]

Roy, I guess in a lot of ways my wife and I are considered yuppies. We've got the sport ute, minivan, in our early 40s, 2.0 kids, suburban home, manager for large multi-national corporation, condo, health club and all that. We think of ourselves as contrarians though in a lot of ways: Our version of a sport ute is an F-250 crew cab (high on utility!), our suburban home will soon be on 10 acres, our condo is on wheels (fifth wheel camper), health club is at work and I actually sweat when I'm there etc. Much to my wife's chagrin, the minivan is nothing more than a minivan (it'll be a Jeep Liberty when the little one can crawl in by himself). When I was tractor shopping, I was actually put off by the name "boomer" that NH was using, though that's not why I got a Deere. Oh yeah, we do all our own lawn work and I chuckle at the golfers everytime I ride my bicycle by the course. So go ahead, try to call us yuppies... just don't use yuppie marketing hype to get us to buy your product!

 

[ERNIEB]

Once upon a time someone on this very site remarked that this site was good for keeping yuppies occupied, and off the real tractor boards.
Well lets look at it, yuppie stands for young, urban , professional. I'm 50, middle age to a 100 year old guy, so young is out. Even the Mayor of our community says it's rural, so I guess urban is out too. Like the carpenter in Moby Dick, I do what I do. I don't do it wearing a tie, but I think I'm pretty professional in it. Humm, one out of three.
I guess I am a baby boomer, and I do have a boomer tractor. I never made that connection. I guess I just thought of it as, one who is celebrated.
I think anytime you try to stick people into neat little boxes, your bound to run into trouble. But companies do try to target certain markets.

Ernie
"I shall never surrender or retreat" William Barret Travis

 

[Thomas]

Roy,
Marketing is big busniess now a day,and companies will do about anything to get your $$$.
Looks at the cell phones & pager in which they have target young kids.
To be cool you need a pager & cell phone.../w3tcompact/icons/frown.gif

Thomas..NH /w3tcompact/icons/wink.gif

 

[Roy]

So, I guess in reality, we all own Yuppie tractors. As Rob and Ernie point out, most of us are probably are Yuppies, in marketing eyes, and most of us are probably Baby Boomers (I myself am 46). I always thought that the 'U' in 'Yuppie' stood for 'urban' though, not for 'sUburban' or 'rUral'. Couldn't image a homeowner using a compact in the city. Heck, in Washington, DC (closest urban area to me), you couldn't find a place to park the thing. And if you did, I guarantee it would be booted or stolen before dawn!

As Ernie stated, they need boxes. Doesn't matter if the box is so loosely defined that it serves no purpose.

Thomas… My 12 year old keeps asking for a cell phone. Two years ago it was for a pager. I am holding out. He'll never see either, until he can pay for it himself. (And since we are the only family that we know of without cable or satellite TV, he knows it's a loosing battle).

 

[Thomas]

Roy,
I hear you and understand. /w3tcompact/icons/wink.gif

Thomas..NH /w3tcompact/icons/wink.gif

 

[Pks]

Roy,

Wait until your boy wants the new and expensive Air Jordan shoes. Those sell for over $300 on E-bay. Man, $300 for a pair of tennis shoes. That would insulate my basement.

We can't get cable... They stopped the line 1/4 mile north of us.

But I want a satellite internet connection! The phone lines in my neighborhood have too many mice eating them. It's a rare day when we connect at 24000 bps. Usually we connect at 21600 bph. ...that's bits per second not Bytes per second.

Peter

 

[Roy]

Peter;

I usually get 28.8 connections at home, occasionally get a clean line to get up to 33, but never higher than that. No ISDN, no DSL service available. But, for me, hope may be on the way. The local cable company is laying new cables, and they will be offering 2-way data service in a about a month (just called them).

A co-worker of mine just went to a 2-way satellite from starband.com. This is not a one-way satellite system, like HomePC's where your uplink by phone. They actually install a transmitter dish. He loves it, but at $70/mo + equipment cost + installation cost /w3tcompact/icons/frown.gif, I'll pass. If I want that fast of access, I can come in to the office. (The bandwith test at http://msn.zdnet.com/partners/msn/bandwidth/speedtest50.htm just reported 927.3 Kbps).

 

[RobS]

Cool site Roy! I can't wait to try that at home. Here at work I'm zipping along at a snappy 3675.7 Kbps which is off thier chart! Now if I could just get my TBN to always route through the fastest servers along the way...

Thanks /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

 

[Roy]

Rob; There was a thread about that site a while back, here on Tractorbynet. I just bookmarked it, and occasionally test the throughput. A lot of people reported their speeds back then. You may want to search for that thread... you may have the fastest time any of us have experienced.