Blu82, You can analyze this thing to death but a lot of what you will be comparing can be contradictory and confusing. Everyone has opinions and their own set of biases. A good analyst qualifies his sources. Remember, years of experience doing the same things wrong time after time doesn't make an expert.
I have no meaningful hands on experience with other tractors than my Kubota Grand L4610HSTC. I have observed lots of friends and neighbors trying to make tractors do what they were never designed to do. Two wheel drive row croppers with spindly front ends carrying a big FEL that if filled with heavy material would (and did) break the front end and such. Lots of people will want to tell you they did such and such with a so and so. OK whoopee, they performed a miracle and didn't get caught walking across the street not looking either way first.
I notice a lot of recommendations for a lot more HP than I have. If you need it then you need it and would not be satisfied with way less but I wonder what the big difference is between what I have done with my tractor for the last 5 years and what you will want to do?
None of this is to say only what I did is right and no other way is smart. I'm just telling you what I have done with what I have. These are honest true data points, not conjecture, not estimation or guess, or what I think might be. I do not handle two 1200 lb round bales at the same time. I could if I put one on the back and avoided more than gentle slopes. As it is I need a counter weight on the back to safely handle big round bales with the hay spike. I started handling hay with the pallet forks against good advice. It was nearly a disaster. I went and bought a bale spike. Please don't use palet forks on your FEL to handle heavy bales. You can be injured or killed so fast you won't have time to finish that instinctive quick intake of breath.
If I need to move a quantity of hay a trailer is a better bet. take the tractor, on the trailer, to where the hay is. Load a bunch of hay and take it where you want it. You don't have to have a tractor to unload a trailer. Empty the trailer and go back for the tractor. Bring it to the hay and use it to stack it as required. This whole evolution will move more hay faster with my little CUT than a 120 HP tractor hauling 2 bales at a time if you are going very far with the hay. If you aren't going very far then making the extra trips with only one bale on the tractor won't take very long will it?
When it comes to disking I can't pull as big a disk as a much larger tractor so I make two passes to equal the big guys one. I don't disk very much very often. Just a little fire break action every couple years. Do you anticipate tilling the soil a lot or are you more into mowing pasture?
I pull a very HD 6 ft brush hog rated for 85 HP with no difficulty whatsoever. I can't really hurt the gear box very easily with my 40 HP and I can cut thick grass as tall as our native grass will grow in a wet year (taller than me sometimes) Brush and trees. Well I have gotten a litte Xtreme there. I raise the BH up at a high angle (I have hydraulic TNT) and back into a tree up to 4 inches or more in diameter and slowly lower the BH down, eating the tree down to a couple inch high stump. Makes noise and shakes the tractor and sounds like the world is about to cave in and sometimes I have to raise it a tad to let RPM build again but I have never hurt the equipment doing this. I can brush hog brush that is so heavy I have to back through it, not wanting to expose the underside of the tractor to the abuse. (Note to Kubota: why not accessory skid pans?) I tend to cut heavy brush like that at about 1 ft high. You can drive a tractor over the stubble and it will bend over and not poke a hole in your tires. (Been there done that, it is $50 to repair a rear and you have to take it to them which is a job as rears are not light. (I did it twice in 5 years but learned how to avoid it.)
The stubble may rot off at ground level and break off when driven on by truck or tractor if the plant dies. Otherwise you get to keep cutting it.
Why keep cutting the same brush? A left over habit from lawn mowing the same plants of grass? Burn it or spary it or both. I have a combinatiion spray rig, central single nozzle or twin articulated booms. Longer booms would just hit the ground too much due to their length multiplying the rolling motion so a larger sprayer would be a disadvantage so don't need larger tractor to haul it. I use the fire nozzle on a hose (accessory to spray rig) for fire suppression when doing controlled burns on my place and when assisting neighbors. If I were going to do controlled burns as a professioin I'd get a larger tractor to haul a way larger water tank but I could do like my buddy with the BIG tractor and use a pull behind tank trailer with its own engine driven pump so I don't need a larger tractor for spraying brush, or fire suppression during controlled burns.
I could go on and on item by item but it would be the same story. What I have works really well for my purposes. How different are your purposes?
I have a PHD and it is the BIG unit the big tractors use. I have NEVER lacked for PTO power to spin it, even with roots and rocks. Don't need a bigger tractor for that and I can manuver into places the big tractors can't.
I have a 3PH cement mixer run by PTO. I only saw one size and my tractor handles it just fine and again I have manuvering advantages.
My tiller is only a 5 ft as my wife bought it and the larger ones were way more expensive and we don't need the 20% extra width per swath as we don't do 20 acre gardens. The tractor wasn't limiting it could easily handle a much larger tiller. Grader blades are not a high HP requirement.
My box blade is just about bomb proof. Very strong and a bit over 1300 lbs. I abuse it mightily and it shows no sign of it. It is a HP user. Once in a while I can be in low range at PTO RPM with a full box with ripper teeth retracted (hydraulic scarifier raise and lower) and not be able to climb a fairly steep grade unless I quit scraping to reduce friction. Otherwise I spin 3 wheels (front has no diff lock) and don't go. Maybe a way bigger heavier tractor with more HP could scrape on up the hill. Well, smart guys know you can scrape way more with a full box going downhill with gravity so if you can't make it up the hill then modify your work method just a bit. I have never felt that I needed a bigger tractor with more HP because I coiuldn't scrape up a steep hill with a full box. I just needed to use my head a tad. Do yo see yourself needing to spend a high percentage of your seat time doing Xtreme uphill scraping with a full box? You are allowed to dump your box and scrape going up hill to fill it. This I can do.
It isn't that I have learned a bunch of weird workaround methods because I am way under powered. I have watched others with larger more powerful tractors (mostly 2 WD) that can't do as much as I do. Truthfully, the tractor still amazes me in what it can do. I am more the limiting factor, not the tractor or its ONLY 40HP.
It matters what it is that you are going to do. If there is some tractor activity that you need to do fairly regularly that is particularly demanding you need to buy enough tractor to do it well. If it is a two hour job once a year, trade some work with a neighbor with a big tractor and have him do it. If you are going to own a hammer and mostly drive regular size nails, does it make sense to buy a sledge hammer instead of a carpenter hammer because every once in a while you might need the BIG HAMMER?
I hire a dozer or trackhoe when it is the right thing to do, even if it is something I could do with my tractor. A track hoe with a 30 ft reach and 4 ft wide bucket will do in a day what it would take me a month to do with my FEL and box blade. Buying a larger tractor might reduce that to two weeks of work. For me, the track hoe is the right decision. I'm not trying to make tractor work just to have tractor work. There is more to managing my 160 acres than running around on a tractor.
The first and most important step of an analysts task in designing a solution is to define the requirements. If yoiu don't know what you are going to do it is hard to decide how to do it. There is no Swiss Army tractor that will do everything. I own the closest I have seen so far (for the mix of activities in which I engage.) If I were a row cropper a different answer would be needed.
I do a pretty eclectic mix of tasks from logging trees that run up to about 3 ft in diameter, to gardening, fencing, home building (4 years and counting) and am super pleased.
Analyze your requirements. What will you be doing. what are the hardest challenges? How often will you do the tough jobs? Should you carry a sledge hammer when doing carpentry because once a year you need it for 10 minutes?
People with a FEL but not a hydrostat are limited in their ease of operation whether they realize or admit it or not. If yo are going to have a FEL and use it. a set of pallet forks, and maybe a bale spike and see yourself doing much manuvering then you will really appreciate a hydrostat. The shuttle shift is way better than a plain tranny but it is inferior to the hydrostat for manuvering a lot which somehow seems to frequently be a part of a job.
Get a tractor that does the most the best and then over time decide if a second tractor for just certain jobs makes sense (you were given good advice there, sometimes you might need to divide tasks between different tractors and just use the old used sledge hammer when needed not every day when adjusting a watch or hanging a picture.
Who knows maybe sopme day I will buy a used tractor, hitch up the brush hog and leave it till one or the other breaks. This is a common thing.
Listing accurate requirements is not always easy but really needs to be done. If you make a list and post it you will get valuable feedback in improving your list and advice as to what is required to perform the items on your list. This avoids the unanswerable question of how high is up.
IF you can't quantify your needs how do you decide what is required to meet them. Often when there is uncertainty for any of a number of reasons you don't know what is required so you over respond to make sure you get enough. Usually an inferior approach. Easier but grossly flawed. Funny to watch when it is someones first time blasting a stump and they don't want to underestimate the powder required. Not so funny if you bought a super stretch Hummer because you wanted to take your daughter's club on a wilderness picnic and the rest of its gas guzzling life it went to the store for two bags of groceries once a week.
Post a draft requirements list and let the folks here help you improve it till you are happy with it. Then you won't have much trouble deciding how much tractor you need.
I'd be curiouis to see how many tasks you will expect to do that I wouldn't be happy to do with my tractor. I'd tell you straight out if you have a job I wouldn't be comfortable with.
Pat
