Tractor your best money ever spent?

[kenmbz]

I was around boats a lot as a kid and got to see/do maintenance-salt water and engines don;t mix well is all I'll say. Never bought a boat myself, not enough spare time.
The tractor is a great purchase- removed enough stumps to cover 1/3 cost already.
Moving 10 tons of gravel, moving tree parts, holding tree parts for cutting. clearing brush. All would be costly to bring in people to do.
I would say that by next year it will be in the positive with cost.
my best bang for the $ is my 4 wheel gorilla cart, was $170 and use it everyday, trash to garbage cans, hauling tools with tractor or lawn tractor. Moving outdoor furniture. Best helper I could ask for and takes a lot of abuse. Had it for at least 8 years now and still going strong.

 

[Carl_NH]

Fried,

Your boat example is unique as most here in the NE like to say, a boat is a hole in the water, and a pool is a hole in the ground you put money into to use 5 months of the year. I am referring to 20-30' seasonal boats with dockage fees, winterizing and such.

Getting into the 40' plus, live aboard diesel cabin cruisers its different paradigm, if you buy it right, and use it 10-12 months a year, and take care of it, it can be a good investment.

 

[PILOON]

For convenience a tractor --yes.
For investment gain , small aircraft.
For $ down the drain, boats and cars.
Houses always go up in value and land.

 

[Bullwinkle123]

My tractor will likely never pay for itself unless I'm able to sell it when I can no longer use it, in which case hopefully I have made money on the deal. Sure, I do lots of things that help pay for the tractor, but using the tractor isn't my day job.

That said, if the grapple and loader save me even one more back surgery, it's worth every penny. No longer using my back for the heavy work is life changing.

Personally what's saving money these days is firing my lawn service, buying an expensive ZT mower and doing the work myself. It's like printing money. Whether it's deep in the woods of Vermont or in suburban Boston, apparently the going rate for people to wield a string trimmer is $50/hour. Crazy. At that rate my mower will pay for itself in short order.

 

[dadiehl]

For the sake of my back the tractor is money well spent. Besides doing our own landscaping and snow removal I pick pellets up by the ton, unload with the tractor and into the garage they go. I took care of me and two neighbors today. Pallet jacks once inside the garage to jockey pellets around.

 

[Rock Crawler]

Yep, 2.5 years and 500 hours on my B2650 and adding literally thousands of loads of material to my driveway that now you can do U-turns with triaxles in... It is pretty life changing.

My driveway was initially 2 garage doors wide at the house and went out 275 feet to the street. You could park tight along the side and still get past.

Then an addition, added 2 more garages and widened the driveway at the house to around 85' wide and funneled down to around 35' wide going out to the road.

Bought the tractor, took that 35' wide out to 85' wide and added 50' out past the road entrance that extends inwards 110'. All new flat space out there.

Also went behind the house where we added 3 garages and had a VERY tight driveway down and pushed that out around 90' from the garage doors, and made that VERY tight split driveway down back into a 40' wide super highway. At this point, triaxles drive straight down back, curve left towards the garages, back straight up to the woods and dump, turn left and drive straight out.

To have seen it all 2.5 years back and then see it now is mind blowing. All free fill material from a single craigslist add. I couldn't begin to guess how many thousands of trucks have been here, or how many millions of tons of material. We still average 8-10 trucks a day, some days easily getting 20+. Monday and Tuesday are always the biggest days, I think most guys set up the job for the week on Mon/Tues and do the pours or whatever on Wed-Friday.


So next year I should be finished, then maybe I sell the tractor with 700-800 hours on it and get back half of the $31,000 I spent. Then I think I'll take that as a down payment and go get a new cab version with heat and AC.

But.... Yea, pretty life changing. We have made our home/driveway/parking area massively larger, safer and I am sure we significantly effected the resale value of the house. Even more so once I asphalt my private "Walmart parking lot" as some of my friends call it