redlevel
Gold Member
More \"Seat Time\"
I had never heard this term until I found this site. When I was flying we talked about how many hours we had, and professional pilots refer to "right-seat time" and "left-seat time", but I had never thought about it in terms of "tractor seat time". I got to thinking about it a couple of weeks ago (while getting in some seat time on my old 600 Ford), and I figured I have somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000 hours in a tractor seat.
Most is probably on the 5 MF 135's me or my father have owned, but it has been on various other tractors: several 8Ns, several 600's, two Super Dexta's, a 1105 Ferguson, some kind of old JD we owned for a few years when I was about 15, a Farmall Cub, a 285 Ferguson, a couple of Ford 6610's, a Kubota 6800, a 3910 Ford, a 235 Ferguson, an Allis Chalmers 190XT, a 175 Ferguson, and currently, a NH 6640.
I am 56 years old, and I figure I have (conservatively) at least 250 hours per year since I was 16. The 6640 I bale with now had 200 hours on it when I bought it 5 years ago, and it now has 1988 hours, at least 95% of which I have put on it. That figures to a little more than 300 hours per year, and I don't even farm for a living now.
Various jobs I have done during all this tractoring; plowing, planting, cultivating, spraying peaches, spraying peanuts, picking peanuts, herbicide application, cutting hay, baling hay, hauling hay, stacking hay, pulling a vegetable transplanter, subsoiling, and (really) chasing cows.
Lest you think I am bragging: I'm sure there are people on here my age from the real farm country (mid-west) who will have double the time I do, especially if they count time in a grain combine. I have a neighbor who is 86 years old, and I figure he has spent close to one-fourth of his adult life in the seat of a Ford Tractor. He would plow for two solid months, at least 12 hours a day, getting his land ready. He would probably average 6 hours a day, 6 days a week, from March through October. This was on 600's, 8N's, a 3600, and finally, a 3930, all Fords.
And that doesn't count the time he spent looking at the south end of a north bound mule when he was a kid!
I had never heard this term until I found this site. When I was flying we talked about how many hours we had, and professional pilots refer to "right-seat time" and "left-seat time", but I had never thought about it in terms of "tractor seat time". I got to thinking about it a couple of weeks ago (while getting in some seat time on my old 600 Ford), and I figured I have somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000 hours in a tractor seat.
Most is probably on the 5 MF 135's me or my father have owned, but it has been on various other tractors: several 8Ns, several 600's, two Super Dexta's, a 1105 Ferguson, some kind of old JD we owned for a few years when I was about 15, a Farmall Cub, a 285 Ferguson, a couple of Ford 6610's, a Kubota 6800, a 3910 Ford, a 235 Ferguson, an Allis Chalmers 190XT, a 175 Ferguson, and currently, a NH 6640.
I am 56 years old, and I figure I have (conservatively) at least 250 hours per year since I was 16. The 6640 I bale with now had 200 hours on it when I bought it 5 years ago, and it now has 1988 hours, at least 95% of which I have put on it. That figures to a little more than 300 hours per year, and I don't even farm for a living now.
Various jobs I have done during all this tractoring; plowing, planting, cultivating, spraying peaches, spraying peanuts, picking peanuts, herbicide application, cutting hay, baling hay, hauling hay, stacking hay, pulling a vegetable transplanter, subsoiling, and (really) chasing cows.
Lest you think I am bragging: I'm sure there are people on here my age from the real farm country (mid-west) who will have double the time I do, especially if they count time in a grain combine. I have a neighbor who is 86 years old, and I figure he has spent close to one-fourth of his adult life in the seat of a Ford Tractor. He would plow for two solid months, at least 12 hours a day, getting his land ready. He would probably average 6 hours a day, 6 days a week, from March through October. This was on 600's, 8N's, a 3600, and finally, a 3930, all Fords.
And that doesn't count the time he spent looking at the south end of a north bound mule when he was a kid!
