Wanting smaller tractor with loader. Mitsubishi or Yanmar worthy of consideration?

[Fishugly]

I'm building a house on an acre...a wild acre with trees, stumps, rocks, and plenty of dirt to move around. A loader would be a huge asset around the place but also during construction with lifting beams, posts, etc.

That said, there's a chance I'd sell after I got my house built and property to my liking. So, resale value might be something of consideration.

I wanted a skid steer, but...decent looking ones seem out of my price range. So, I've been looking at tractors...and I'm seeing a lot of really clean looking rebuilt 16 - 40 HP Mitsubishis and Yanmars in the $7500-$12,000 range ...and they look pretty good.

Are these things robust and reliable? Are parts easy to get? Difficult to find people to work on them?

Thanks!

 

[droptop]

Everything I've ever seen made by Yanmar was top notch quality. No reason to expect otherwise on a skid steer.

 

[droptop]

After re-reading your post are you talking about a Gray market tractors? If so, I'd avoid any gray market tractor.

 

[Fishugly]

After re-reading your post are you talking about a Gray market tractors? If so, I'd avoid any gray market tractor.

Yes, I'm talking about tractors....and some of them I've noticed were said to be "gray market". But I don't know that means, really.

 

[JCoastie]

I had a gray market 1983 Kubota L295DT for 10 years, I sold it last year. The only issue is the Kubota dealership would not work on it. They would sell me parts (as they are all the same) and any other local tractor shop would work on it, just Kubota would not. Since it was 37 years old, I'm pretty certain it wasn't under warranty, so there really wasn't any issue.

Gray market tractors, or grey market if you prefer, are older tractors manufactured for sale in Japan and shipped back to the U.S. for resale. ... Since old tractors were now useless in Japan, thousands were exported to be reconditioned for sale cheap in the U.S. and Canada

So basically a tractor imported by someone other then the dealer so they don't get their cut and they obviously don't like that. They also might not meet all US safety regulations i.e. mine didn't have a ROPS but it had a 3 speed PTO that wasn't available on US models at the time that I know of.

 

[droptop]

Since the gray market units were never sold in the US, dealers don't have any documentationon them and parts are hit or miss depending on the brand and model. I had a gray market Kubota rototiller. I went with the model # to the dealer to buy tines. They said that model didn't exist, fortunately they let me look thru their old parts books and I was able to find ONE model that used the style of tines that mine used. I only paid a few hundred for it but if I spent thousands and couldn't get the part I needed, any savings would have been lost.

 

[Williy]

I'm building a house on an acre...a wild acre with trees, stumps, rocks, and plenty of dirt to move around. A loader would be a huge asset around the place but also during construction with lifting beams, posts, etc.

That said, there's a chance I'd sell after I got my house built and property to my liking. So, resale value might be something of consideration.

I wanted a skid steer, but...decent looking ones seem out of my price range. So, I've been looking at tractors...and I'm seeing a lot of really clean looking rebuilt 16 - 40 HP Mitsubishis and Yanmars in the $7500-$12,000 range ...and they look pretty good.

Are these things robust and reliable? Are parts easy to get? Difficult to find people to work on them?

Thanks!

Yanmar made made small tractors for John Deere for over 20 years and now just make diesel engines for John Deere. A lot of companies use Yanmar diesel engines been in business over 100 years and a few years ago Yanmar quit making tractors for John Deere and now sell Yanmar tractors and they make all parts for the
tractor in fact I just purchased a Yanmar YT235C with attachments

willy