You "Road" Your Tractor?

[IndyIan]

I do a little bit down the side roads, but never on the highway. Too many city people, or big trucks in a hurry. Even with a seat belt and a roll bar, a tractor my size will be broken in pieces if hit by a texter in an average size vehicle hits it going highway speed. We lost a good community guy that way a few years ago and he was on a 8-9000lb tractor.

 

[C79]

I have only roaded mine a limited amount but I felt like there was no better way to travel. My longest run was only 13 miles out to our gun club to move stone and regrade the driveways and the 13 miles back. Had a blast!

 

[Hay Dude]

A little “tractor roading” on Christmas Eve

 

[aircommuter]

It all depends on how far. Typically when I was in business moving was from my construction yard to a jobsite which usually needed at minimum 3 pieces of equipment. One likely was a steel track machine and a pad foot compactor. So the answer would be no.

 

[FixAll]

Some do and some don't.

I have to admit that roading my tractors to a place up to 40 miles away is probably easier, less time consuming, and safer than driving a big tractor and shredder up on a deckover gooseneck trailer and trailering it to the place.

By the time I hook up the trailer, chain it all down, drive to the destination, take the chains off, and back it off the trailer, and get going, I find it easier to just drive it down the road.

Tractors today can run faster than you want to run one. I know both mine will run about 30mph, but I seldom exceed 22 mph or so.

So I can be at a destination 40 miles away in less than 2 hours drive time. Might get there a tad quicker with trailering it, but trailering is much more work. Besides, a casual drive down a farm road is good for the soul.. Turn the A/C and stereo on and enjoy the ride.

How do you get your tractor from one place to the next?

40 miles on pavement is a lot of wear to put on costly tractor tires.
Where I am (Massachusetts) I will put it on a trailer and haul it if I am going more than 1/2 a mile, at that I am risking a traffic ticket for operating an unregistered motor vehicle on a public way. During a "snow emergency" I can probably get away with driving it 10 or 20 miles if needed, but I still don't think I would try going more than 1 mile.

 

[rockinbbar]

40 miles on pavement is a lot of wear to put on costly tractor tires.
Where I am (Massachusetts) I will put it on a trailer and haul it if I am going more than 1/2 a mile, at that I am risking a traffic ticket for operating an unregistered motor vehicle on a public way. During a "snow emergency" I can probably get away with driving it 10 or 20 miles if needed, but I still don't think I would try going more than 1 mile.

Yeah, like I said in the Op, some do and some don't.

You have to take in account what type tractor you have, how far to move it, what's going with it? You also have to consider your local roads, laws, and how many times a year you move it...

For me, I move bigger tractors and cutters that require a 40ft deckover gooseneck and at least a 1 ton pickup to pull it.

For my decision to drive a tractor from project to project has to do with all the above, and not really seeing a need to trailer my equipment from project to project when I may have 40-50 projects in a summer's time frame that I plan in advance for, and go from one to the next closest one...and so on.

Here's my old "small tractor" and cutter sitting on that 40' gooseneck. As you can see, even my smaller tractor isn't a 30hp sub compact with a 5' cutter you can load on about any 16' utility trailer.

For those of you warning me about tire wear... Yeah, I know. In the past 10 years I spent about $800 on two fronts that needed replacing on one of 3 tractors that accumulated over 5000 hours combined.

Now, my CTL gets trailered everywhere, but I use a 20' trailer for that. But it doesn't run 25mph down the highway either..

 

[Tpondel]

Have a Deere 3033R that I occasionally need to drive 3 miles away to cut a field. I actually enjoy the feeling of driving a tractor on country roads. Turn on the A/C, crank up the Sirius radio and away I go.

 

[Alan46]

I can’t stand trailers and I don’t like running tractors on the road for more than a mile or two. This is what I do if I need to go further than that: View attachment 838478

Can you show a picture of your ramps
And how you hook them to the bed please?

 

[Sawyer Rob]

I can’t stand trailers and I don’t like running tractors on the road for more than a mile or two. This is what I do if I need to go further than that: View attachment 838478

Cubs don't weigh much, biggest I've put in the back of my truck is an A Farmall, they are quite a bit heavier than a Cub.

SR

 

[SwingOak]

I've made hay at properties up to 15 miles away, and with my 50 hp tractor which runs at best 12mph, that takes a long time. So I would drop my truck off in advance, drive the tractor there pulling the haybine to mow, then haul the rest of the equipment back & forth with my truck and leave the tractor there, swapping out equipment each trip. Final trip home was with the tractor and the baler.

Next farthest field was 9 miles away. That meant over 8 hours of road time to make hay over a 3 day period. And yeah, asphalt eats up front tires fast.

The 75 hp tractor has a road speed of 23-24 mph, so I'm more willing to haul equipment with just the tractor and have done contract tedding up to 8 miles away.

For my land in the UP, I load up and trailer everything there and back because I'm not driving my tractor on the road 200 miles each way.