> as long as I trade in about yr 4 or 5. If you mean you buy brand new or almost brand new and sell at year 4 or 5, then you're spending a lot more than you ne

> as long as I trade in about yr 4 or 5. If you mean you buy brand new or almost brand new and sell at year 4 or 5, then you're spending a lot more than you need to, which is buying you the extra "reliability." But that reliability isn't even entirely real -- a lot of the repairs you'd expect after about 5 years or 50,000 miles are predictable and listed right there in the maintenance schedule in the manual, so as long as you do them proactively rather than roll the dice, a modern car should easily be very reliable for at least 100,000 / 10 yrs. Trading in for a new car is probably costing you a lot more than just sticking to the maintenance schedule and budgetting for the major repairs would. I think a lot of people mistakenly overestimate the pain of those major scheduled repairs because they just don't do them and wait till they need to be towed in to have it fixed (and by then a few other things need fixing too) Speaking in generalities of course Anyway, point is, farms are a business, they're not going to piss money away by trading in a tractor that can much more cheaply be maintained -- you trade it in when it costs more to maintain (and abstain from new features) than to replace