Is there a Yuppie tractor?

Roy · Mar 6, 2001

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 · Mar 6, 2001

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 · Mar 6, 2001

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 · Mar 7, 2001

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 · Mar 7, 2001

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 · Mar 8, 2001

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

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

Pks · Mar 8, 2001

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 · Mar 8, 2001

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 · Mar 8, 2001

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 · Mar 8, 2001

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.

Roy · Mar 8, 2001

Now this is sad /w3tcompact/icons/frown.gif. I am now working from home. Connected at 28.8 Kbps to the local UUNET server in MD. Tunneling through the Internet to an Orlando, FL extranet server to create a secure connection. Routed from there via company WAN to Philadelphia, PA to an Internet proxy. Then back out onto the Internet to the msn bandwidth test site. Back through the same route, through routers, firewalls, proxy server and extranet server. Taking this route shows bandwidth of 19 Kbps. Security sure has it's price.

markcg2000 · Mar 8, 2001

There's your problem, Roy! You're sending twice the data you need to!/w3tcompact/icons/wink.gif

mark

Hey, what's up with that? You're making me look silly, Roy. When I'd checked a minute ago there were two posts from you, but you went and deleted the second one, didn't you /w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1>Edited by markcg2000 on 03/08/01 04:21 PM (server time).</FONT></P>

Roy · Mar 8, 2001

Caught it Mark. With the snail-speed, I was able leisurely review the post while sending, and caught a typo. Thought I aborted it in time. (Don't know what state the transfer is in... the proxy responded, but didn't get the information to me yet). Deleted the extra copy.

RobertN · Mar 8, 2001

Jimmy Buffet preached about that on one of his live albums. He talked about apair of tennis shoes for $100+. He then proceeded to praise his first pickup truck that cost $100.

One of my first vehicles was a free pickup, that required about $100 to get it going. AWESOME truck! It was faded, and scratched, and took me all over the place!

As Jimmy said, "Can I get a Amen for a $100 pickup truck!"

RobertN in Shingle Springs Calif

RobS · Mar 8, 2001

Well now I have zero confidence in that speed checker. Here's my latest result from my 56K modem here at home:

Your line speed:

4080 Kbps

500 K bytes/sec

That's off the chart! When I first checked this evening it was something like 28Kbps, much more believable for this setup. These numbers must be like table saw horsepower numbers... flakey /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

markcg2000 · Mar 8, 2001

hmmmm... I bet you've got something in your browser's cache. The first time it looked legit, right? Wouldn't have had anything in your cache then.
On the other hand, your ISP may be the one with the cache. I looked at what they said they were doing, sending a large file in the page's header, so I didn't think a cache would help, but I'm not really clear on how that actually works.

mark

Roy · Mar 9, 2001

It is cached. First time, you may notice it chugs. Follow-ups are almost instantaneous. To get truer results, I flush the memory and disk cache first.

Mark… You are correct about that it may be the ISP. I would really suspect flaky results if using AOL. They do things their own way.

Or maybe it is the test provider, msn. Good old Bill Gates… The marketing hype and promise is that it works great… the reality is that it does nothing /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif.

Or maybe, once again being ms, it detects that I am running Netscape, and purposely reports a low number. For IE users, it wants them to 'feel good for making the ms decision' and randomly reports a high number /w3tcompact/icons/wink.gif. Guess a Mac user with Netscape would get a '.0001 kbps' report. /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

Connected to UUNET at 28.8 Kbps, but going directly out to the internet (not going through the security layers), I get a reading of 23.4 Kbps.

RobS · Mar 9, 2001

A coworker also suspected the cache thing, so that must be it. I'll just push that bucket roll lever and dump that thing /w3tcompact/icons/wink.gif I'm also on AOL at home, so who knows what's going on. Truth is, I can't wait for some decent weather so I can pass the time on my tractor, not doing innane things like this /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

alan40 · Mar 9, 2001

You want yuppie?? I live in the Dairy capital of Vt. Did 20 years in the Navy. Came back home and we built our house. First function we went to was a dance to raise money for a neighbor who's house had burnt. Well I can't weld, milk a cow or any of that farm stuff, yet. So I was pretty much out in the cold. My wife on the other hand has 2 college degrees and a true work force professional. She got talking with all the other ladies and soon as she said she was raised on a farm. She was in!!/w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif Even though it was over 20 years ago!!!!! They told my wife I was about useless and they were glad she was a farm girl. You ought to see the farmers look when I plant trees, flowers, garden or just out with my 1720 working. Still not accepted yet although my neighbor will be seen with me. Must be because when his well went dry I let them come over and dig one near the property line untill they drill a well. So we're, correction, I'm useless in Fairfield have a yuppie home, 2 dogs, my wife works and I stay home with my son. Not only that I have a shiney clean New Holland tractor/w3tcompact/icons/shocked.gif in a predominently John Deere town. My toy as they call it can't do a thing on a farm but you can dig out there driveways, move snow or work on getting boat motors on and off.(FEL)
Life is good!!!!!/w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif
Al

bpence · Mar 9, 2001

Yep, there is. It's a Kuboomeere. We've all got 'em. Who cares what other people think. If I work hard, take care of my family, mind my own business......I don't care.

I know, the peole who don't have compact tractors are just jealous.

Bob Pence