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For tech-weary Midwest farmers, 40-year-old tractors now a hot commodity

701 points by sbuccini 7y ago

aazaa 7y ago
Flash player update scam. I'm outta there.
- SilasX 7y ago
  For tech-weary techies, Flash/JS-free sites are a hot commodity :-p
- lostgame 7y ago
  Firstly, I didn't get this (Chrome 79.0.3945.88 on MacOS 10.14.6), and secondly - I found this article to be extremely insightful. Thirdly - does anyone here actually still have Flash on their machine outside of a VM? I mean, I have Adobe Animate - but not Flash.
- Keverw 7y ago
  I’m on my phone and site won’t load... but I do know there’s some attack where ads served by a ad network can redirect a page... A popular blog about Apple news and rumors did that once for me, emailed their ad sales guy but never heard anything back. But all probably random, so the others who didn’t get that didn’t get the ad. Probably some sort of frame breaker.
- ct0 7y ago
  noscript is a great tool to stop this
  - metalliqaz 7y ago
    and a great way to break lots of websites
oilman 7y ago
People don't want DRM in their tractors?! I'm SHOCKED.
melling 7y ago
“ They cost a fraction of the price, and then the operating costs are much less because they’re so much easier to fix,” he said.” It’s not really so much a technology problem as the ability to repair, probably by the farmers themselves. Companies don’t make it easy. You need special equipment, tools, etc. We could insist on a right to repair, open standards, etc
- maxmalysh 7y ago
  Vote with your wallet.
  - xtian 7y ago
    Vote with your vote. As far as I know only two candidates in the presidential primary race support right-to-repair: Sanders and Warren.
    - pleasantpeasant 7y ago
      Yet, farmers will keep voting against their interests and vote for a Republican who is being lobbied by these same companies taking away their right-to-repair.
      - xtian 7y ago
        That remains to be seen, but if all that's on offer are corporate-backed candidates then the Republican strategy of focusing on cultural issues will definitely win in rural areas.
      - xupybd 7y ago
        Farmers have complex interests. Right to repair is not the only issue they will be voting on.
        vajrabum 7y ago
        No there's also how tarrifs affect export markets, among a few others, but that one hits pretty close to home for a lot of the really big ag operators.
RosanaAnaDana 7y ago
There is probably a sizable market for building out software and technology for 'upgrading' older farm equipment to modern principals, such as self driving, variable rate fertilization, variable rate planting, etc. When I was more involved in ag research I met several farmers who DIY built themselves variable rate fertilization drills. While its not ubiquitous, the farming community has a very long culture of DIY out of pure necessity. I think this is the source of the pushback against companies like JD.
- dbcurtis 7y ago
  Everything that you mention except the self-steering is a function of the attached implement, not the tractor. That makes incremental upgrades of that sort much easier.
  - RosanaAnaDana 7y ago
    Well, no. Precision agriculture is an integration of many components of the farming operation, all of them very much data driven. Lets just take the example of variable rate fertilization, because its the one I'm most familiar with. In the case of winter wheat (hard red and white), there are 3 primary components determining both yield (kg/m^2) and protein (g/kg). They are the available water, the available nitrogen and the 'site index' which is generally related to soil depth, but slope and aspect also play into this. So, if what you want to do is land on a very specific amount of protein, say 7.5% across all of your fields in a dryland cropping situation. You need to know how much much water is available at all points in your field; how much nitrogen is available at all points in your field; and what scalar to carry around for a given XY position in your field. Maybe think of the scalar as an 'X-factor' to multiply the result of Water*Nitrogen by to adjust for local conditions. Wheat, grown in high water low nitrogen gets very tall and has low protein and higher yield (to an extent). Wheat grown in high nitrogen stays short, but has higher protein and lower yield (to an extent). So it becomes a trade off between protein % and yield, and the theoretical maximum is described by the site index. Wrapping it all together. First, find a cooperative old kook of a farmer. Second, convince him to let you drill a hole in his up auger to mount a hyper spectral sensor. Third, duct tape/ bungee mount a LiDAR puck to the front of the combine. 4th, solder some leads into the on harvest yield monitor. 5th, mount a high quality GPS unit to the top of the harvester if you don't have one already (or can't access the NMEA stream). Add car batteries, some old notebook computers to get the data, and a few days to harvest. Boom. Now your combine is a fully integrated data collection platform. You now have a measurement of grain height at all locations in your field. You also have a measurement of protein content at all locations in your field (with a little PCA wizardry and some protein sampling). Combine the two and you now have a 'site-index' that is nitrogen/ available water independent that you can use in your variable rate drill to adjust the fertilization rate to match the site index (since you can control the fertilization rate and not the available water). This will give you fairly precise control and allow you to more or less homogenize the overall protein content of the field. Alternatively, you could also optimize for yield (allowing protein to fluctuate).
deleted 7y ago
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brenden2 7y ago
The technology itself is not the issue, the problem is that companies are at war with their customers. These companies will go to any length to extract as much revenue as possible. Milking your customers is not good for business, especially if you drive them into insolvency. I hope in the future there are more companies that try to align incentives with their customers, such that their business practices help customers be more successful (although many of them preach this, very few actually do). Many businesses these days seem to be geared toward making a quick buck, rather than really providing any value.
- sneak 7y ago
  If customers don’t want this stuff, why isn’t there a competing company offering non-DRM tractors?
  - wvenable 7y ago
    Why was this downvoted? I just made the same comment before noticing this one already done. Competition is what solves these kind of things.
    - skywhopper 7y ago
      Sure, but how do you propose to introduce competition into this market?
      - Yizahi 7y ago
        It will trickle down of course. /s
      - rootusrootus 7y ago
        Declare John Deere a monopoly and break them up?
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - 7y ago
lostgame 7y ago
This is one of the single best examples of the ludicrous nature of the recent pattern of loss of right-to-repair with regards to software and hardware control. John Deere is literally bottom-barrel scum of, well, I guess, now - the tech industry - and it's their own fault that farmers are turning to purchasing older models. '“There’s an affinity factor if you grew up around these tractors, but it goes way beyond that,” Peterson said. “These things, they’re basically bulletproof. You can put 15,000 hours on it and if something breaks you can just replace it. It's not even just the price difference - the newer machines, any time something breaks, you’ve got to have a computer to fix it.”' The article then goes on to mention they're SOL, with the tractor stuck in the field for potentially days while they wait for a technician to come and charge $150/hr to fix it. First off, farmers are not, for the most part, computer or software technicians. While there are certainly exceptions (I was only a farmer for 4-5 years of my life, total, I don't think I count), I've spent years on and off living on farms, and a lot of farmers in the rural US and Canada are lucky to even just have access to Satellite internet. I imagine doing a case study of farmers who would have an identical tractor with and without the software, and seeing how many would actually even use or miss it. I'm guessing not a lot. The idea of relying on software technology is profoundly alien - and high-risk - to even just the culture of most farmers. To then put arbitrary restrictions on repair is far more than enough reason to ignore the newer products, especially with the familiarity and known reliability of older models. It's a 2011 vs. 2017 MacBook Pro kinda deal - pretty much the same insides, but with out the ability for the user to go in and upgrade the RAM or the SSD to add any value afterwards, and the removal of familiar and useful ports. And if one part breaks, you're screwed and stuck travelling to an Apple store, if you're fortunate enough to have one in your area. Right to Repair is one of the most critical things we as tech users need to be defending in the upcoming years. I've been buying Apple computers exclusively for 15+ years, and I will be buying a Lenovo next, as Apple has taken away my right to repair and upgrade the device myself, while simultaneously removing features, and raising the price. If I was still a farmer, you wouldn't catch me dead buying a new John Deere - I could never bring myself to support such obvious greed and stranglehold control. At least with a Tesla, you'd get the benefit of it being an EV. Maybe that's a fair enough trade to lose your RtR. But with John Deere and Apple, by buying a new product of theirs, you are literally removing the rights and abilities you had several years ago. That is just pure greed - and we need to vote with our money.
JMTQp8lwXL 7y ago
My understanding is that farming equipment is quite specialized, but I fail to see how no entrepreneur has capitalized on making "old school" tractors today. The immediate retort is that John Deere's approach is maximally profitable-- but is it? Sketchy websites host hacked firmware giving farmers the freedom to work on their own tractors anyways. The equipment manufacturers have lost their goodwill with farmers. From the ashes could rise a new firm that doesn't try to act so, well, crony. Even if they didn't end up as big as the incumbents, there's no doubt a profitable business exists with ephemeral sales of farming equipment that don't mandate expensive maintenance from your company's people.
- sailfast 7y ago
  This occurred to me as well. At a minimum it would seem like a good idea for a larger Ag business to work with a competitor to bring Deere back to that line of thinking. The farmer in the article that hooked up their own Satellite steering has got the right idea. I don't rely on my Auto manufacturer's entertainment console - I use a software company's version because it's better, and gets regular updates. Can you imagine your entire net worth that year being determined by a single badly timed software push from a tractor company? (Granted, they may have "pivoted" to be quite good at software, but it doesn't sound like that's the case here) That would be frightening to me.
- paulmd 7y ago
  nobody wants an "old school" tractor that needs someone in the cab driving it. Modern highly-integrated farm equipment is a massive boost for productivity and a massive reduction in costs. There's a different discussion to be had as to why there hasn't arisen a company that shears the sheep a bit more gently, but generally on the whole the market doesn't want the old-school tractors. This article is not the overall shape of the market. Farmers generally want to farm, not be software/hardware engineers developing their own tractor guidance systems. As for that topic, generally markets are not as efficient, modern businesses operate at such high scales that it's extremely difficult for competitors to enter the market. It took Elon Musk to do it for the auto industry, that's the scale of funding and production that you need to compete. It's an oligopoly, not an efficient market. techpeople like ourselves are the last ones that should be pointing fingers, we are the ones who created the whole "as a service" model, and created the basis for closed firmware that users have no right to access. It's our business models applied to a different market, and it's just as noxious when we do it. It’s not like I can go take a look at the firmware of the processor I’m typing this on, now is it? Why doesn’t someone just start up a new CPU company that lets me see everything? (and yeah some people like RAPTOR are trying but that’s the shape of the problem, it’s a niche desire and there’s enormous startup costs, and established players can easily drop prices for a few years and crush you, so realistically it’s not a market that can be efficient.) Markets aren't going to do this stuff on their own. If you don't regulate them via something like right to repair, they'll skin you as roughly as they please and crush any upstart who tries to do things "the right way". Welcome to the Free Market - a truly free market is rarely "fair" to competitors or pleasant to customers.
pleasantpeasant 7y ago
Right to repair laws need to be put in place. American corporations are trying to reach a point where you don't own products. You are merely long-term renting or leasing products from them. And any alterations or repairs will come with a heavy price. It's already hard enough to repair your own vehicle without taking it to a dealership. How long until small car shops can't even fix any cars if they don't have the tools or software.
- onetimemanytime 7y ago
  >>You are merely long-term renting or leasing products from them. Correction: You lease after buying them once. I doubt the govt will help, USA is kinda hands off
- asdff 7y ago
  That reality is already here. Good luck getting your Tesla serviced at the local garage.
  - artursapek 7y ago
    While that's true, at least electric cars have a low maintenance burden compared to ICE cars.
- duxup 7y ago
  Right to repair had some traction in Minnesota, but the same politicians that farmers vote (MNGOP) for opposed it. There's a lot of strange ideological nose cutting off in rural america.
- xnyan 7y ago
  It's already here. The only reason I can do my own work on my N20 engine BMW is because they implemented really bad and vulnerable car DRM that can be trivially defeated, but they have improved on that in latter models.
  - BoorishBears 7y ago
    You can't work on them, or you can't flash them with emissions control defeating tunes?
vearwhershuh 7y ago
"These things, they’re basically bulletproof. You can put 15,000 hours on it and if something breaks you can just replace it.” Amen. It is true that there is always someone saying "Things were better back then." But that doesn't always mean that they are wrong.
- dejv 7y ago
  As a person operating decades old equipment I see trade offs here. Old machines are reliable and cheap to operate, but they are also NOISY, steering require quite some muscle strength and cabin without ac and filters is not pleasant and most importantly good for your health.
  - romwell 7y ago
    >steering require quite some muscle strength and cabin without ac and filters is not pleasant and most importantly good for your health. Yeah, AC and filters don't require a computer. Neither does power steering, to my knowledge.
    - lucb1e 7y ago
      That it's possible doesn't meant they built them. Maybe the units that came with AC also started coming with DRM.
    - dejv 7y ago
      Once you want to add AC you need to add more support systems making whole machine more complex and more expensive to operate. There are actually tractors like that, but those brands are failing unable to compete with high tech tractors like JD or New Holland on one side and with simple old tractors on another.
- svachalek 7y ago
  Yup. I also put large household appliances in this category. They've been getting more expensive and more fragile for decades, without much real progress other than energy efficiency which is unrelated to the fragility afaik.
dejv 7y ago
Somebody posted about open source tractor, but deleted the post before I managed to reply, so here we go: Growing up in communist country it was really hard to buy tractor for your personal use as private enterprise ls was prohibited and all land was confiscated except of 1000m2 for personal use. Owning tractors even for land this large (and to share with family and friends) was still something desirable so people come with their own designs build on top of ready-made or repurposed materials. I can still see those machines from 70s or even 50s still working as there is nothing in them to break down. I personally own 30 years old tractor which first life was spent on rice field of Japan. Again very simple build and outside of structural damage there is almost nothing that can fail. I am sure it will live for another 40 or 50 years without much problems.
weinzierl 7y ago
I have an IHC (International Harvester Company) 433 that is about 60 years old and it is still in use occasionally for forest work. It is amazing how robust and reliable these old machines are. Fun facts: - It has 8 reverse gears and 16 forward ones. With a maximum speed of about 25 km/h this is very granular. On the other hand: the diesel engine is very forgiving and not easily stalled. - It does have an operating hours counter instead of an odometer.
- pmiller2 7y ago
  I always felt as though an odometer reading was only a proxy for what really matters when it comes to most maintenance schedules (operating hours). Tires and brakes would be an exception, but for most parts, operating hours is the better proxy. There's a reason airplane maintenance schedules go by hours flown rather than distance traveled.
markvdb 7y ago
The Karhkiv tractor plant models from the USSR are one step easier still to maintain, and hence very popular outside the west: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kharkiv_Tractor_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kharkiv_Tractor_Plant The XTZ 150K: http://xtz.ua/en/kolisni-tractory/xtz-150k-09-172.html http://xtz.ua/en/kolisni-tractory/xtz-150k-09-172.html
- jotm 7y ago
  MTZ, too. I drive past a John Deere dealership/showroom, and a New Holland one and wonder who is even buying those in Eastern Europe. Doesn't seem like a good investment.
- golem14 7y ago
  Tons of equipment on Alibaba https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/large-wheel-tractor-with-240hp-Deutz_60836182100.html?spm=a2700.7724838.0.0.10b651cbDgwiNd https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/large-wheel-tractor-w... Not the faintest idea if any of it is decent. However, China probably uses their own tractors. They have a huge farms also, so maybe these are serviceable...
hinkley 7y ago
I belonged to a club up until last year where probably half of the members were currently or formerly professional landscapers or related careers. The number of them who were not into computers was quite high. I want to say it's 'surprising' but that statement doesn't even survive a giggle test. Not everyone is enamored of IT the way we are, and some have perfectly good reasons for that. Not every step we take is a step forward. I kinda think that the only reason we don't hear more complaints is that people are preoccupied with other professions that don't quite deliver on their promises, especially the medical profession. If Western Medicine somehow got sorted out tomorrow, I would not be surprised if by next week many of those pitchforks were pointed at us.
fifthace 7y ago
If tractors with closed software are such a problem, why doesn't a company build old-school tractors? Heck, you could use a 1980 design, currently selling second-hand for $40-60k, based on expired patents.
- mattgrice 7y ago
  Farmers need same-day access to replacement parts, which means a dealer with a full stock of parts within driving range. Belarus/MTZ tractors are low tech designs but have about one dealer in every state.
macinjosh 7y ago
My grandfather, rest his soul, was a 3rd generation rancher and farmer. He bought 2 John Deere tractors in the '80s and used them for 35 years. They are still being used to this day on the ranch. Growing up, I visited the ranch regularly. Farming and ranching is very hard on equipment so the tractors often needed repair. My father and grandfather could seemingly fix anything on the tractor without even needing to go to the parts store. (The closest one was a 1 hour drive). Without this capability my family never would have been able to make a living of any kind with their land. In 2020 farmland is being gobbled up by corporations. The family farmer is going extinct. That means tractor companies are getting a whole new customer who is nothing like the previous. Corporations want tractors as a service, they want them to be self-driving, and they want to manage them in bulk. They don't really care if they can repair them because they pay someone else to do it. Personally, it is sad to see this change since so much of my family history and memories are tied up in the way things used to be. I sometimes feel out of place in my family because I couldn't fix a single thing on a tractor. On the other hand my grandfather didn't touch a computer in his entire life. The world changes and sometimes it sucks but that is how progress is made.
- earlINmeyerkeg 7y ago
  The greatest innovation in the history of mankind was a land consolidation. It took what 100 peasants all making enough food for subsistence living to 100 peasants be able to make enough food for thousands of people. It's not sad, it's progress.
  - zorpner 7y ago
    It's not sad, it's progress. These are not mutually exclusive concepts.
    - kristiandupont 7y ago
      Indeed. Also, many things that are good in moderation are bad in excess.
    - temporalparts 7y ago
colechristensen 7y ago
I am a silicon valley DevOps engineer with roots in an Iowa family farm which 20 years ago was trolling farm auctions to find pre-electronics-dominated equipment so it could be repaired on site, if anybody has any questions.
duxup 7y ago
The frustrating issues with this are the surrounding politics. New tractors require service contracts / subscription type deals for new tractors. They require authorized service only. Right to repair had some traction in Minnesota, but MN GOP opposed it... and guess who the farmers vote for?
pmiller2 7y ago
So, what are the real advantages to the newer tractors over older tractors for farmers? Why should a farmer spend 4-10x as much for a newer tractor as they would for a 1980s model?
- mminer237 7y ago
  I'm not an expert, but I think generally tractors have become much bigger and more powerful over time. This works well for the large farms they're marketed to as they have to prepare and plant huge areas quickly. Smaller farmers probably couldn't work the fields fast enough with their older equipment that can't pull super wide discs. Transmissions have definitely become super advanced, but I'm not sure all the advantages of that. The main thing I would think of is that it can compensate so you can maintain your speed better even when you hit a rough spot. In addition, newer tractors have a lot of nice, kind of gimmicky features in the cab. Things like satellite radio, working air conditioning, anti-theft systems, and GPS-controlled planting are nice even if they're not necessary.
  - jccalhoun 7y ago
    >In addition, newer tractors have a lot of nice, kind of gimmicky features in the cab. Things like satellite radio, working air conditioning, anti-theft systems, and GPS-controlled planting are nice even if they're not necessary. From what I understand, this is really the main advantage.
aj7 7y ago
It appears that tractors in general are dramatically overpriced. Who else makes big tractors? Brazil?
- marcosdumay 7y ago
  > Brazil? Up to a point. Larger than that point there are different specializations that you will only get from a single manufacturer. For a few of those that manufacturer is Brazilian, but most of the time it's from the US.
red-indian 7y ago
My own tractor is 67 years old. The parts catalog brags that not only do they carry every part new, but they have a photo of a copy they built entirely from contemporary made parts. It's a fine tractor and not hard to work on.
bondolo 7y ago
I learned to drive tractor on a John Deere 4240! It is good to know that my skills stacking and loading round bales, plowing, discing and harrowing are still viable.
gen220 7y ago
We recently had to bin a beloved TV, and were looking for a "simple" 4k TV (i.e. not a smart TV) to replace it, and were surprised to find that they simply don't exist! We ended up uncovering a 6 year old 1080p TV that was still in the box at Best Buy. All in all, this problem might present an opportunity -- there might be new markets for these types of devices (dumb TVs, tractors, refrigerators, air conditioners, thermostats). Given them a modern UX, but eschew all of the creepy features of modern tech (always-on monitoring, open tcp/ip ports, impossible to repair). In theory these high-quality, low-recurring-revenue products should be easier to build, and similarly easy to market ("we don't spy on you, we break in ways that are fixable"). And you can charge a premium, because you're offering the freedom of ownership (ironic, I know).
- Someone1234 7y ago
  Just don't hook the "smart TV" up to the internet. Then you have a dumb TV.
  - stjohnswarts 7y ago
    Exactly, it can't phone home so you essentially have lobotomized the smart part.
    - lucb1e 7y ago
      You still get the software crap. An old TV, power on was instant, you can switch to a different input at will. My current TV has a reasonably short boot time (but still a boot time) but then switching to HDMI input it says "smart features will be available shortly" until it fully booted. The remote is also awful, you get this crappy cursor (operated like a Wii) that isn't actually any easier than using the UI with arrow buttons, you can't turn it off, and it switches from buttons to this mouse type input when you move it too much. I hate it.
  - thekyle 7y ago
    What happens when smart TVs start coming equipped with their own cellular connections for phoning home. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21900246 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21900246
knolan 7y ago
My father is an agricultural mechanic here in Ireland. Lots of farmers here use very old tractors. It’s not unusual to see David Brownes, Case Internationals, Massey Fergusons, John Deeres and Zetors going back 20 – 30 years or more. There’s a strong industry of companies selling spares too. Many farmers simply can not afford they new stuff and in many cases they are huge in size making them unsuited to small out buildings on family farms. That’s before all this new wave of shitty behaviour towards repairing rights and software.
briantakita 7y ago
The broken tractor is a big reason why the Open Source Ecology project was started. https://www.opensourceecology.org https://www.opensourceecology.org Btw, Open Source Ecology does have a DIY tractor as well. https://opensourceecology.dozuki.com/c/LifeTrac https://opensourceecology.dozuki.com/c/LifeTrac https://www.opensourceecology.org/portfolio/tractor/ https://www.opensourceecology.org/portfolio/tractor/ They regularly have courses, workshops, internships at their Missouri farm. There's a full machine fabrication shop, permaculture farm, & sustainable living community. Their courses are a great deal & they even do work exchange. Highly recommend checking it out.
apotatopot 7y ago
"tech weary" and “An expensive repair would be $15,000 to $20,000, but you’re still well below the cost of buying a new tractor that’s $150,000 to $250,000." wtf come on. This has nothing to do with technology.
- pmiller2 7y ago
  Here's where "tech weary" (side note: maybe "tech wary") comes in: > There are some good things about the software in newer machines, said Peterson. The dealer will get a warning if something is about to break and can contact the farmer ahead of time to nip the problem in the bud. But if something does break, the farmer is powerless, stuck in the field waiting for a service truck from the dealership to come out to their farm and charge up to $150 per hour for labor.
dsalzman 7y ago
Opportunity for a company like $TESLA or other startup to provide additional competition in the farm equipment space. It's a duopoly between John Deere (Green) and Case IH (Red). A modular electric system would work well since the required speeds are low and torque is important. Extra points for a small wind turbine based charging station that can mount to a barn.
- dejv 7y ago
  There is Solectrac electric tractor which seems like something that fits your description. It is definitely in very early stage, but I can't wait to see this type of vehicles to take off.
- bluGill 7y ago
  A tesla uses about 20 horsepower to push itself down the freeway (it is capable of much more, that is what it is using after about 5-10 seconds to get up to speed). A tractor rated at 100 horsepower is expected run at 100 horsepower output continuously. 100 horsepower tractors are considered small (or maybe mid size) tractors these days. In short, a battery operated tractor will need to stop to recharge every 5 minutes - if you can find batteries that will allow you to discharge that fast, most will not.
- aguyfromnb 7y ago
  >Opportunity for a company like $TESLA or other startup to provide additional competition in the farm equipment space. Wait, what? Tesla is just as bad (or worse) when it comes to right-to-repair.
- Tossrock 7y ago
  Tesla is notorious for exactly the kind of DRM, in-house only servicing that the farmers are trying to avoid.
nas 7y ago
As someone who grew up on a farm and spent 7 years running one (few thousand acres so fairly good size), I can provide some background on why this is happening. The large farms are driving new equipment sales. They are the ones buying the brand new John Deere $700k combine harvesters will all the bells and whistles. The problem is, those bells and whistles add a lot of extra complexity to the machine, making it harder and more expensive to fix. Deere doesn't make it easier since they don't provide details needed for 3rd party repair people (e.g. schematics, software tools for managing embedded controllers, etc). The people buying new equipment don't care about that. Their equipment is covered by warranty and Deere fixes it for them (or replaces it). They sell the machine after it is a year or two. So, they never deal with the crap repair-ability of new equipment. The 2nd stage used market cares a little but not so much either. They can still get Deere to fix it for them, maybe not under warranty. By the time the equipment gets to the 3rd tier used market, it is already heavily deprecated. The loss in value due to poor repair-ability is not getting fed back up the chain in any significant way which would make the primary buyers change their decision making. They want the bells and whistles and they will pay a little extra in deprecation to get them. The problem for society is that you have a $700k machine that is basically a paperweight after a decade or two. You might was well drive it in the junk pile because no one is going to be able to make it run. At least, not without tearing out heaps of electronics that are no longer working. New machines are utterly dependent on onboard electronic control systems (e.g. ECMs). They won't run without them. New machines are disposable and that is what the buyers are deciding to choose. You can't put all the blame on companies like Deere. The contrast to old farm equipment is dramatic though. We have an old Ferguson tractor, might be from the 1950s. Everything on that tractor can be fixed. If we wanted, we could make it run like it just came out of the factory. For jobs on the farm that don't need a big tractor, it does them just fine. Probably in 100 years you will still be able to keep it running if you want.
- lotsofpulp 7y ago
  > By the time the equipment gets to the 3rd tier used market, it is already heavily deprecated. The loss in value due to poor repair-ability is not getting fed back up the chain in any significant way which would make the primary buyers change their decision making. If the value is heavily depreciated by the time it reaches the “3rd tier” used market, why would the buyers in the “2nd stage” used market not factor this depreciation into the price they pay for it when they buy it used from the first owner? Surely people spending $700k on capital purchases know a thing or two about factoring in resell and depreciation into the prices they are willing to pay.
dekhn 7y ago
I work with CNC and 3D printing, but I still enjoy my chisels and plane. There's something satisfying knowing the tool you're using is one people have used for thousands of years (with minor incremental updates to the technology) and it's still the best tool for the job.
ngneer 7y ago
This may be the single most important information security problem worth solving on our planet. This is not about who gets to see the latest movie at what resolution, it is about vendors and farmers fighting for control of the plant, in this case the tractor, and indirectly its yields. I think the world needs an open source tractor, or else am hoping the right to repair movement addresses these difficulties.
- jay_kyburz 7y ago
  It's more than that. I'm in Australia, hiding inside away from the smoke haze, thinking about where global warming is going. Seems clear to me that in the next 20-30 years most farming will need to move indoors into climate controlled environments. We'll need to have closed systems where the air, water, soils, and our biodiversity is carefully managed.
  - titzer 7y ago
    > We'll need to have closed systems where the air, water, soils, and our biodiversity is carefully managed. Let that sink it. We screwed Earth badly enough we need to build spaceships on Earth.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
jeffrallen 7y ago
A farmer in my village in Switzerland imported a 1980's Ford tractor from Texas. He had to repair the front axle, which had been cut. He told me the axle was cut to render the tractor unusable after it was traded in for some kind of emissions credit. Anyone hear of such a system?
- jdhn 7y ago
  Sounds like the farming equivalent of Cash for Clunkers. IIRC, Cash for Clunkers rendered the vehicle inoperable by destroying the engine block, and in this case it seems that they cut the axle.
  - jeffrallen 7y ago
    This is the CA one: https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/our-work/programs/farmer-program https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/our-work/programs/farmer-program And this is an example Certificate of Destruction: http://valleyair.org/grants/documents/FARMER/Certificate-of-Destruction-Form.pdf http://valleyair.org/grants/documents/FARMER/Certificate-of-... "I hereby certify that the equipment and engine described above has been received by this facility and will be permanently destroyed for recycling purposes only in accordance with the Heavy-Duty Off-Road Agricultural Equipment Replacement Program Guidelines" So, at least in CA, it is not legal to export the tractor.
ketzo 7y ago
Disclaimer: I have been on a tractor exactly once in my life, no idea what any of the realities of this would be. But... Doesn't it seem like there's a huge opening for Cheap Solid DIY Tractors Inc.? All I read about is how farmers hate tractors available now for their lock-in, their shitty software, their insane costs -- I wonder what's preventing someone from selling tractors that match the description listed in this article.
- randomdata 7y ago
  As a farmer, I don’t think I’ve ever met another farmer who hates modern equipment. I’m not sure where that narrative has come from. We drool over the latest tech. I know many who choose older equipment for financial reasons, as the article suggests. Modern equipment is insanely expensive to purchase and is simply out of reach of the smaller farmer. If older equipment was actually a hot commodity, more than newer equipment, economics tells us that older equipment would be worth more than newer equipment and that is simply not the case. Price falls consistently with age for a comparable machine. They are paying more for a 1980 model because someone else is paying even more for the 2000 model. There are plenty of basic tractors on the market with little in the way of electronics. But building a new tractor is expensive. While they come in well below the cost of a decked out John Deere, they are still a lot more expensive than a 40 year old tractor.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
zelon88 7y ago
When I worked in manufacturing with heavy machinery I was taught that the best type of machine is one that functions regardless of it's condition. If you ever walk around any old tractor shows you can see that style of engineering throughout all those old pieces of equipment.
everyone 7y ago
So what happens when someone tries to make tractors like the ones the farmers want? Does big-tractor put a hit out on you? (srsly I wouldnt be suprised)
tareqak 7y ago
I'm surprised that John Deere isn't going around buying their old tractors, and then scrapping them or learning how to make one again.
- nas 7y ago
  They know how to make the old equipment. Buyers with enough cash to buy new equipment don't want it. They get warranty and they want all the fancy electronic features on the modern stuff. Deere know what they are doing.
DaniFong 7y ago
Pay attention Hacker News! In this, finally open source software/hardware has a giant market opportunity and a population with demands: onwards; go and solve this need! make something people want: good, reliable, sustainable (in every sense) farm equipments and systems (fertilizer, pest control, seed)
economyballoon 7y ago
Also here we can see: a machine, in this case a tractor, has to be more complicated in the future to ensure economic growth and to rise added value.
rkagerer 7y ago
That's it, I'm holding onto my 20 year old mobile phone in case it makes a resurgence in another 20 years. Replaceable battery, no tracking, and components you can see and re-solder!
donatj 7y ago
I've commented this on HN before, but the small farmer is criminally underserved. You can get so much more bang for your buck buying an old tractor than anything new, and there are whole cottage industries that have sprung up making replacement parts. If you go to a tractor show you can get just about any part you need apart from perhaps major body components. I think a startup making cheap reliable tractors could make bank.
rebeccaskinner 7y ago
As a former founder of an Ag-Tech startup, I feel like this article is vastly minimizing the on-the-ground reality that are facing a lot of farmers. Sure, for smaller farmers cost might be a factor, and I'm sure nostalgia plays in a bit, but the biggest issue by far that we found when we were talking with farmers working on building our products was a profound frustration with the use of DRM, draconian licensing terms, and vendor lock-in. John Deere is basically the Oracle of the tractor world. These farmers are not a bunch of ignorant backwater hicks- the ones that we worked with are shrewd, generally educated, and not at all afraid of technology. In fact, the reason I founded a company in the first place was that there's clearly a lot of demand for better technology among farmers. The problem is that the licensing terms and lock-in from their vendors have squeezed Farmers into a corner. None of their equipment is interoperable, they are bound by expensive recurring fees for software, locked into support contracts, can't repair their own equipment; the same situation those of us in tech have been shouting about for decades. Maybe if we paid more attention to the farmers we could find some good allies in some of our movements.
graycat 7y ago
How 'bout we have some cars made that way, that is, as rugged, reliable, long lasting, easy to repair, mechanically simple, as those 1980 -- 1990 farm tractors!
soapboxrocket 7y ago
Reminds me a bit of my great-grandfather. He bought his first tractor from my grandfather when my grandfather retired and auctioned off all of the farm and equipment. There's a lost Minnesota PBS documentary from the 50s/60s about farmers still using horses and he is interviewed in it, and in the middle of the interview he just starts going off about someone shooting his horse, "those sons of bitches shot my horse!"
diogenescynic 7y ago
Reminds me of the 4x4ers who prefer 80s and early 90s Toyota, made before there were any computers involved, Which let’s them do all their own repairs and modifications.
a-dub 7y ago
A few years ago a bartender friend of mine shared a joke/investment tip with me. He said "if I had money, I'd rent a warehouse and fill it with appliances that aren't internet connected. In 20 years, people will be desperate for them." I think he may be right.
allovernow 7y ago
Every time I see an article like this, I can't help but imagine some penny pinching MBA laughing all the way to the bank. Textbook example of running a company purely for profit, with no regard for ethics, social good, legacy, or their customers.
noisy_boy 7y ago
I don't know anything about tractors but I would assume that those used in developing countries are less "digitized" and probably easier to repair so does this open up a market for them to export? Or are they too "inferior" in terms of features that this is not feasible? For example, I would assume that, India being a largely agricultural economy, has a pretty strong base of farming equipment. Is this an opportunity for them?
annapowellsmith 7y ago
Comment from a tractor-owning friend: That's a very good piece capturing a lot of the issues (esp GPS retrofitting which is easy and make a huge difference). The one thing it doesn't quite draw out is that the market has segmented. If you are a small to mid farmer you have fairly low demands for horsepower and can tolerate small breakdowns you can fix in the field. So buying an older machine makes sense. If you are a big farmer or a contractor (person with a big tractor/combine/machine who hires out) you need high horsepower and 18 hour a day operation without breakdowns. as in fleet purchasing for trucks they have rolling finance for high capital value kit to replace it every couple of years having run up high hours. The modern electronic high power kit is quite amazing, it's not gratuitous use of electronics. Electronics also important for meeting modern emissions regs. Tractors, as the piece points out have to be ultra rugged for field work and that means that the older stuff does last well and 100hp or over will get you a long way.
ptah 7y ago
> tractors from the 1970s and 1980s aren’t so dramatically different from tractors produced in the 2000s I think we are coming to a point where "progress" stops and technology stays stable
- bluGill 7y ago
  Really it is tractors from the 1950s that are not dramatically different. More hydraulics and more horsepower are the only important things. AC and more comfortable cab/seats are secondary that might or might not matter to you.
Markoff 7y ago
would not importing tractor from abroad like Europe make more sense financially? you can buy them for peanuts here and my understanding is you can drive whatever you want on your private property in US, so you don't need to care about some complicance with norms I just checked classifieds and tractor here in Czechia with 20yo replaced engine will cost you 5000EUR, newer up to 10000EUR, still way cheaper than prices they quote or why is no brand taking this market by hit with some cheap basic tractors like did Dacia in car industry in Europe? seem it should be hit judging by article, just sell tractor without electronics with old design from 80/90s
joncrane 7y ago
Aren't there brands of tractors made in India and/or China that are less computerized and perhaps easier to run and repair than the bad green ones from the USA?
daveheq 7y ago
I don't know why John Deere and other manufacturers aren't making parts for these old tractors, if they're not already, seems like a huge market opportunity.
- bluGill 7y ago
  John Deere is. There are policies for when a part can go out of production. I can't talk about them, but it amounts to if it is replaced often it remains in production. (My local dealer has the oil filter for my 1939 tractor in stock). Electronics are tricky - chips from 20 years ago are not made anymore, so if that electronic system breaks you are done. We try to predict how many replacement parts will be needed and make a large final order but sometimes we are wrong. The fact that we make replacement parts longer than our competitors is one of our big selling points. #deereemployee, but not speaking for my company of course.
calewis 7y ago
Interesting relationship between another front-page article: https://www.foodandwine.com/news/borden-dairy-bankruptcy https://www.foodandwine.com/news/borden-dairy-bankruptcy
woodpanel 7y ago
Being a city-dweller for all my life it was a relevation to be finally exposed to farmer life. In many regards, not just the snobbish urban-myths (super conservative, unintelligent, smelly, unindustious government-dependend anti-environmental inbreds) that I held. The farmers I know, have a huge range of skills, from metalworking, construction, woodwork, mechanical engineering, biology, geology and are putting that knowledge into practice every day. All of that while planning years ahead (for instance how to plow your field this year, so that in 5-10 years you don't get a massive slope on your field's edge). So when farmers talk about fixing a tractor themselves, it's not just about being able to buy some screws or replacement joints, it's about welding that piece you need, sanding its steelframe to remove rust, knowing whether to bend or clinch instead of welding. It's even about building the tools to build those parts.
savingGrace 7y ago
What happens when we are so far away from the past, that there are no older tractors? Will our current 'new' tractors still work without dialing home or requiring computers when they're old? I keep wondering that about our automotives as well. I want vehicles that are safe for my family, but ones that I can work on with a general understanding of automotive repair and physics. Will there come a point where you can no longer work on any new automotives?
theFeller00 7y ago
I'm in the midwest and have friends that are farmers with old tractor collections. While I can't say I share their interest, it is certainly better than my coworkers plastic figurines.

701 points by sbuccini 7y ago

aazaa 7y ago

Flash player update scam. I'm outta there.

SilasX 7y ago
For tech-weary techies, Flash/JS-free sites are a hot commodity :-p
lostgame 7y ago
Firstly, I didn't get this (Chrome 79.0.3945.88 on MacOS 10.14.6), and secondly - I found this article to be extremely insightful. Thirdly - does anyone here actually still have Flash on their machine outside of a VM? I mean, I have Adobe Animate - but not Flash.
Keverw 7y ago
I’m on my phone and site won’t load... but I do know there’s some attack where ads served by a ad network can redirect a page... A popular blog about Apple news and rumors did that once for me, emailed their ad sales guy but never heard anything back. But all probably random, so the others who didn’t get that didn’t get the ad. Probably some sort of frame breaker.
ct0 7y ago
noscript is a great tool to stop this
- metalliqaz 7y ago
  and a great way to break lots of websites

oilman 7y ago

People don't want DRM in their tractors?! I'm SHOCKED.

melling 7y ago

“ They cost a fraction of the price, and then the operating costs are much less because they’re so much easier to fix,” he said.” It’s not really so much a technology problem as the ability to repair, probably by the farmers themselves. Companies don’t make it easy. You need special equipment, tools, etc. We could insist on a right to repair, open standards, etc

maxmalysh 7y ago
Vote with your wallet.
- xtian 7y ago
  Vote with your vote. As far as I know only two candidates in the presidential primary race support right-to-repair: Sanders and Warren.
  - pleasantpeasant 7y ago
    Yet, farmers will keep voting against their interests and vote for a Republican who is being lobbied by these same companies taking away their right-to-repair.
    - xtian 7y ago
      That remains to be seen, but if all that's on offer are corporate-backed candidates then the Republican strategy of focusing on cultural issues will definitely win in rural areas.
    - xupybd 7y ago
      Farmers have complex interests. Right to repair is not the only issue they will be voting on.
      - vajrabum 7y ago
        No there's also how tarrifs affect export markets, among a few others, but that one hits pretty close to home for a lot of the really big ag operators.

RosanaAnaDana 7y ago

There is probably a sizable market for building out software and technology for 'upgrading' older farm equipment to modern principals, such as self driving, variable rate fertilization, variable rate planting, etc. When I was more involved in ag research I met several farmers who DIY built themselves variable rate fertilization drills. While its not ubiquitous, the farming community has a very long culture of DIY out of pure necessity. I think this is the source of the pushback against companies like JD.

dbcurtis 7y ago
Everything that you mention except the self-steering is a function of the attached implement, not the tractor. That makes incremental upgrades of that sort much easier.
- RosanaAnaDana 7y ago
  Well, no. Precision agriculture is an integration of many components of the farming operation, all of them very much data driven. Lets just take the example of variable rate fertilization, because its the one I'm most familiar with. In the case of winter wheat (hard red and white), there are 3 primary components determining both yield (kg/m^2) and protein (g/kg). They are the available water, the available nitrogen and the 'site index' which is generally related to soil depth, but slope and aspect also play into this. So, if what you want to do is land on a very specific amount of protein, say 7.5% across all of your fields in a dryland cropping situation. You need to know how much much water is available at all points in your field; how much nitrogen is available at all points in your field; and what scalar to carry around for a given XY position in your field. Maybe think of the scalar as an 'X-factor' to multiply the result of Water*Nitrogen by to adjust for local conditions. Wheat, grown in high water low nitrogen gets very tall and has low protein and higher yield (to an extent). Wheat grown in high nitrogen stays short, but has higher protein and lower yield (to an extent). So it becomes a trade off between protein % and yield, and the theoretical maximum is described by the site index. Wrapping it all together. First, find a cooperative old kook of a farmer. Second, convince him to let you drill a hole in his up auger to mount a hyper spectral sensor. Third, duct tape/ bungee mount a LiDAR puck to the front of the combine. 4th, solder some leads into the on harvest yield monitor. 5th, mount a high quality GPS unit to the top of the harvester if you don't have one already (or can't access the NMEA stream). Add car batteries, some old notebook computers to get the data, and a few days to harvest. Boom. Now your combine is a fully integrated data collection platform. You now have a measurement of grain height at all locations in your field. You also have a measurement of protein content at all locations in your field (with a little PCA wizardry and some protein sampling). Combine the two and you now have a 'site-index' that is nitrogen/ available water independent that you can use in your variable rate drill to adjust the fertilization rate to match the site index (since you can control the fertilization rate and not the available water). This will give you fairly precise control and allow you to more or less homogenize the overall protein content of the field. Alternatively, you could also optimize for yield (allowing protein to fluctuate).

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

brenden2 7y ago

The technology itself is not the issue, the problem is that companies are at war with their customers. These companies will go to any length to extract as much revenue as possible. Milking your customers is not good for business, especially if you drive them into insolvency. I hope in the future there are more companies that try to align incentives with their customers, such that their business practices help customers be more successful (although many of them preach this, very few actually do). Many businesses these days seem to be geared toward making a quick buck, rather than really providing any value.

sneak 7y ago
If customers don’t want this stuff, why isn’t there a competing company offering non-DRM tractors?
- wvenable 7y ago
  Why was this downvoted? I just made the same comment before noticing this one already done. Competition is what solves these kind of things.
  - skywhopper 7y ago
    Sure, but how do you propose to introduce competition into this market?
    - Yizahi 7y ago
      It will trickle down of course. /s
    - rootusrootus 7y ago
      Declare John Deere a monopoly and break them up?
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - 7y ago

lostgame 7y ago

This is one of the single best examples of the ludicrous nature of the recent pattern of loss of right-to-repair with regards to software and hardware control. John Deere is literally bottom-barrel scum of, well, I guess, now - the tech industry - and it's their own fault that farmers are turning to purchasing older models. '“There’s an affinity factor if you grew up around these tractors, but it goes way beyond that,” Peterson said. “These things, they’re basically bulletproof. You can put 15,000 hours on it and if something breaks you can just replace it. It's not even just the price difference - the newer machines, any time something breaks, you’ve got to have a computer to fix it.”' The article then goes on to mention they're SOL, with the tractor stuck in the field for potentially days while they wait for a technician to come and charge $150/hr to fix it. First off, farmers are not, for the most part, computer or software technicians. While there are certainly exceptions (I was only a farmer for 4-5 years of my life, total, I don't think I count), I've spent years on and off living on farms, and a lot of farmers in the rural US and Canada are lucky to even just have access to Satellite internet. I imagine doing a case study of farmers who would have an identical tractor with and without the software, and seeing how many would actually even use or miss it. I'm guessing not a lot. The idea of relying on software technology is profoundly alien - and high-risk - to even just the culture of most farmers. To then put arbitrary restrictions on repair is far more than enough reason to ignore the newer products, especially with the familiarity and known reliability of older models. It's a 2011 vs. 2017 MacBook Pro kinda deal - pretty much the same insides, but with out the ability for the user to go in and upgrade the RAM or the SSD to add any value afterwards, and the removal of familiar and useful ports. And if one part breaks, you're screwed and stuck travelling to an Apple store, if you're fortunate enough to have one in your area. Right to Repair is one of the most critical things we as tech users need to be defending in the upcoming years. I've been buying Apple computers exclusively for 15+ years, and I will be buying a Lenovo next, as Apple has taken away my right to repair and upgrade the device myself, while simultaneously removing features, and raising the price. If I was still a farmer, you wouldn't catch me dead buying a new John Deere - I could never bring myself to support such obvious greed and stranglehold control. At least with a Tesla, you'd get the benefit of it being an EV. Maybe that's a fair enough trade to lose your RtR. But with John Deere and Apple, by buying a new product of theirs, you are literally removing the rights and abilities you had several years ago. That is just pure greed - and we need to vote with our money.

JMTQp8lwXL 7y ago

My understanding is that farming equipment is quite specialized, but I fail to see how no entrepreneur has capitalized on making "old school" tractors today. The immediate retort is that John Deere's approach is maximally profitable-- but is it? Sketchy websites host hacked firmware giving farmers the freedom to work on their own tractors anyways. The equipment manufacturers have lost their goodwill with farmers. From the ashes could rise a new firm that doesn't try to act so, well, crony. Even if they didn't end up as big as the incumbents, there's no doubt a profitable business exists with ephemeral sales of farming equipment that don't mandate expensive maintenance from your company's people.

sailfast 7y ago
This occurred to me as well. At a minimum it would seem like a good idea for a larger Ag business to work with a competitor to bring Deere back to that line of thinking. The farmer in the article that hooked up their own Satellite steering has got the right idea. I don't rely on my Auto manufacturer's entertainment console - I use a software company's version because it's better, and gets regular updates. Can you imagine your entire net worth that year being determined by a single badly timed software push from a tractor company? (Granted, they may have "pivoted" to be quite good at software, but it doesn't sound like that's the case here) That would be frightening to me.
paulmd 7y ago
nobody wants an "old school" tractor that needs someone in the cab driving it. Modern highly-integrated farm equipment is a massive boost for productivity and a massive reduction in costs. There's a different discussion to be had as to why there hasn't arisen a company that shears the sheep a bit more gently, but generally on the whole the market doesn't want the old-school tractors. This article is not the overall shape of the market. Farmers generally want to farm, not be software/hardware engineers developing their own tractor guidance systems. As for that topic, generally markets are not as efficient, modern businesses operate at such high scales that it's extremely difficult for competitors to enter the market. It took Elon Musk to do it for the auto industry, that's the scale of funding and production that you need to compete. It's an oligopoly, not an efficient market. techpeople like ourselves are the last ones that should be pointing fingers, we are the ones who created the whole "as a service" model, and created the basis for closed firmware that users have no right to access. It's our business models applied to a different market, and it's just as noxious when we do it. It’s not like I can go take a look at the firmware of the processor I’m typing this on, now is it? Why doesn’t someone just start up a new CPU company that lets me see everything? (and yeah some people like RAPTOR are trying but that’s the shape of the problem, it’s a niche desire and there’s enormous startup costs, and established players can easily drop prices for a few years and crush you, so realistically it’s not a market that can be efficient.) Markets aren't going to do this stuff on their own. If you don't regulate them via something like right to repair, they'll skin you as roughly as they please and crush any upstart who tries to do things "the right way". Welcome to the Free Market - a truly free market is rarely "fair" to competitors or pleasant to customers.

pleasantpeasant 7y ago

Right to repair laws need to be put in place. American corporations are trying to reach a point where you don't own products. You are merely long-term renting or leasing products from them. And any alterations or repairs will come with a heavy price. It's already hard enough to repair your own vehicle without taking it to a dealership. How long until small car shops can't even fix any cars if they don't have the tools or software.

onetimemanytime 7y ago
>>You are merely long-term renting or leasing products from them. Correction: You lease after buying them once. I doubt the govt will help, USA is kinda hands off
asdff 7y ago
That reality is already here. Good luck getting your Tesla serviced at the local garage.
- artursapek 7y ago
  While that's true, at least electric cars have a low maintenance burden compared to ICE cars.
duxup 7y ago
Right to repair had some traction in Minnesota, but the same politicians that farmers vote (MNGOP) for opposed it. There's a lot of strange ideological nose cutting off in rural america.
xnyan 7y ago
It's already here. The only reason I can do my own work on my N20 engine BMW is because they implemented really bad and vulnerable car DRM that can be trivially defeated, but they have improved on that in latter models.
- BoorishBears 7y ago
  You can't work on them, or you can't flash them with emissions control defeating tunes?

vearwhershuh 7y ago

"These things, they’re basically bulletproof. You can put 15,000 hours on it and if something breaks you can just replace it.” Amen. It is true that there is always someone saying "Things were better back then." But that doesn't always mean that they are wrong.

dejv 7y ago
As a person operating decades old equipment I see trade offs here. Old machines are reliable and cheap to operate, but they are also NOISY, steering require quite some muscle strength and cabin without ac and filters is not pleasant and most importantly good for your health.
- romwell 7y ago
  >steering require quite some muscle strength and cabin without ac and filters is not pleasant and most importantly good for your health. Yeah, AC and filters don't require a computer. Neither does power steering, to my knowledge.
  - lucb1e 7y ago
    That it's possible doesn't meant they built them. Maybe the units that came with AC also started coming with DRM.
  - dejv 7y ago
    Once you want to add AC you need to add more support systems making whole machine more complex and more expensive to operate. There are actually tractors like that, but those brands are failing unable to compete with high tech tractors like JD or New Holland on one side and with simple old tractors on another.
svachalek 7y ago
Yup. I also put large household appliances in this category. They've been getting more expensive and more fragile for decades, without much real progress other than energy efficiency which is unrelated to the fragility afaik.

dejv 7y ago

Somebody posted about open source tractor, but deleted the post before I managed to reply, so here we go: Growing up in communist country it was really hard to buy tractor for your personal use as private enterprise ls was prohibited and all land was confiscated except of 1000m2 for personal use. Owning tractors even for land this large (and to share with family and friends) was still something desirable so people come with their own designs build on top of ready-made or repurposed materials. I can still see those machines from 70s or even 50s still working as there is nothing in them to break down. I personally own 30 years old tractor which first life was spent on rice field of Japan. Again very simple build and outside of structural damage there is almost nothing that can fail. I am sure it will live for another 40 or 50 years without much problems.

weinzierl 7y ago

I have an IHC (International Harvester Company) 433 that is about 60 years old and it is still in use occasionally for forest work. It is amazing how robust and reliable these old machines are. Fun facts: - It has 8 reverse gears and 16 forward ones. With a maximum speed of about 25 km/h this is very granular. On the other hand: the diesel engine is very forgiving and not easily stalled. - It does have an operating hours counter instead of an odometer.

pmiller2 7y ago
I always felt as though an odometer reading was only a proxy for what really matters when it comes to most maintenance schedules (operating hours). Tires and brakes would be an exception, but for most parts, operating hours is the better proxy. There's a reason airplane maintenance schedules go by hours flown rather than distance traveled.

markvdb 7y ago

The Karhkiv tractor plant models from the USSR are one step easier still to maintain, and hence very popular outside the west: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kharkiv_Tractor_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kharkiv_Tractor_Plant The XTZ 150K: http://xtz.ua/en/kolisni-tractory/xtz-150k-09-172.html http://xtz.ua/en/kolisni-tractory/xtz-150k-09-172.html

jotm 7y ago
MTZ, too. I drive past a John Deere dealership/showroom, and a New Holland one and wonder who is even buying those in Eastern Europe. Doesn't seem like a good investment.
golem14 7y ago
Tons of equipment on Alibaba https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/large-wheel-tractor-with-240hp-Deutz_60836182100.html?spm=a2700.7724838.0.0.10b651cbDgwiNd https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/large-wheel-tractor-w... Not the faintest idea if any of it is decent. However, China probably uses their own tractors. They have a huge farms also, so maybe these are serviceable...

hinkley 7y ago

I belonged to a club up until last year where probably half of the members were currently or formerly professional landscapers or related careers. The number of them who were not into computers was quite high. I want to say it's 'surprising' but that statement doesn't even survive a giggle test. Not everyone is enamored of IT the way we are, and some have perfectly good reasons for that. Not every step we take is a step forward. I kinda think that the only reason we don't hear more complaints is that people are preoccupied with other professions that don't quite deliver on their promises, especially the medical profession. If Western Medicine somehow got sorted out tomorrow, I would not be surprised if by next week many of those pitchforks were pointed at us.

fifthace 7y ago

If tractors with closed software are such a problem, why doesn't a company build old-school tractors? Heck, you could use a 1980 design, currently selling second-hand for $40-60k, based on expired patents.

mattgrice 7y ago
Farmers need same-day access to replacement parts, which means a dealer with a full stock of parts within driving range. Belarus/MTZ tractors are low tech designs but have about one dealer in every state.

macinjosh 7y ago

My grandfather, rest his soul, was a 3rd generation rancher and farmer. He bought 2 John Deere tractors in the '80s and used them for 35 years. They are still being used to this day on the ranch. Growing up, I visited the ranch regularly. Farming and ranching is very hard on equipment so the tractors often needed repair. My father and grandfather could seemingly fix anything on the tractor without even needing to go to the parts store. (The closest one was a 1 hour drive). Without this capability my family never would have been able to make a living of any kind with their land. In 2020 farmland is being gobbled up by corporations. The family farmer is going extinct. That means tractor companies are getting a whole new customer who is nothing like the previous. Corporations want tractors as a service, they want them to be self-driving, and they want to manage them in bulk. They don't really care if they can repair them because they pay someone else to do it. Personally, it is sad to see this change since so much of my family history and memories are tied up in the way things used to be. I sometimes feel out of place in my family because I couldn't fix a single thing on a tractor. On the other hand my grandfather didn't touch a computer in his entire life. The world changes and sometimes it sucks but that is how progress is made.

earlINmeyerkeg 7y ago
The greatest innovation in the history of mankind was a land consolidation. It took what 100 peasants all making enough food for subsistence living to 100 peasants be able to make enough food for thousands of people. It's not sad, it's progress.
- zorpner 7y ago
  It's not sad, it's progress. These are not mutually exclusive concepts.
  - kristiandupont 7y ago
    Indeed. Also, many things that are good in moderation are bad in excess.
  - temporalparts 7y ago

colechristensen 7y ago

I am a silicon valley DevOps engineer with roots in an Iowa family farm which 20 years ago was trolling farm auctions to find pre-electronics-dominated equipment so it could be repaired on site, if anybody has any questions.

duxup 7y ago

The frustrating issues with this are the surrounding politics. New tractors require service contracts / subscription type deals for new tractors. They require authorized service only. Right to repair had some traction in Minnesota, but MN GOP opposed it... and guess who the farmers vote for?

pmiller2 7y ago

So, what are the real advantages to the newer tractors over older tractors for farmers? Why should a farmer spend 4-10x as much for a newer tractor as they would for a 1980s model?

mminer237 7y ago
I'm not an expert, but I think generally tractors have become much bigger and more powerful over time. This works well for the large farms they're marketed to as they have to prepare and plant huge areas quickly. Smaller farmers probably couldn't work the fields fast enough with their older equipment that can't pull super wide discs. Transmissions have definitely become super advanced, but I'm not sure all the advantages of that. The main thing I would think of is that it can compensate so you can maintain your speed better even when you hit a rough spot. In addition, newer tractors have a lot of nice, kind of gimmicky features in the cab. Things like satellite radio, working air conditioning, anti-theft systems, and GPS-controlled planting are nice even if they're not necessary.
- jccalhoun 7y ago
  >In addition, newer tractors have a lot of nice, kind of gimmicky features in the cab. Things like satellite radio, working air conditioning, anti-theft systems, and GPS-controlled planting are nice even if they're not necessary. From what I understand, this is really the main advantage.

aj7 7y ago

It appears that tractors in general are dramatically overpriced. Who else makes big tractors? Brazil?

marcosdumay 7y ago
> Brazil? Up to a point. Larger than that point there are different specializations that you will only get from a single manufacturer. For a few of those that manufacturer is Brazilian, but most of the time it's from the US.

red-indian 7y ago

My own tractor is 67 years old. The parts catalog brags that not only do they carry every part new, but they have a photo of a copy they built entirely from contemporary made parts. It's a fine tractor and not hard to work on.

bondolo 7y ago

I learned to drive tractor on a John Deere 4240! It is good to know that my skills stacking and loading round bales, plowing, discing and harrowing are still viable.

gen220 7y ago

We recently had to bin a beloved TV, and were looking for a "simple" 4k TV (i.e. not a smart TV) to replace it, and were surprised to find that they simply don't exist! We ended up uncovering a 6 year old 1080p TV that was still in the box at Best Buy. All in all, this problem might present an opportunity -- there might be new markets for these types of devices (dumb TVs, tractors, refrigerators, air conditioners, thermostats). Given them a modern UX, but eschew all of the creepy features of modern tech (always-on monitoring, open tcp/ip ports, impossible to repair). In theory these high-quality, low-recurring-revenue products should be easier to build, and similarly easy to market ("we don't spy on you, we break in ways that are fixable"). And you can charge a premium, because you're offering the freedom of ownership (ironic, I know).

Someone1234 7y ago
Just don't hook the "smart TV" up to the internet. Then you have a dumb TV.
- stjohnswarts 7y ago
  Exactly, it can't phone home so you essentially have lobotomized the smart part.
  - lucb1e 7y ago
    You still get the software crap. An old TV, power on was instant, you can switch to a different input at will. My current TV has a reasonably short boot time (but still a boot time) but then switching to HDMI input it says "smart features will be available shortly" until it fully booted. The remote is also awful, you get this crappy cursor (operated like a Wii) that isn't actually any easier than using the UI with arrow buttons, you can't turn it off, and it switches from buttons to this mouse type input when you move it too much. I hate it.
- thekyle 7y ago
  What happens when smart TVs start coming equipped with their own cellular connections for phoning home. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21900246 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21900246

knolan 7y ago

My father is an agricultural mechanic here in Ireland. Lots of farmers here use very old tractors. It’s not unusual to see David Brownes, Case Internationals, Massey Fergusons, John Deeres and Zetors going back 20 – 30 years or more. There’s a strong industry of companies selling spares too. Many farmers simply can not afford they new stuff and in many cases they are huge in size making them unsuited to small out buildings on family farms. That’s before all this new wave of shitty behaviour towards repairing rights and software.

briantakita 7y ago

The broken tractor is a big reason why the Open Source Ecology project was started. https://www.opensourceecology.org https://www.opensourceecology.org Btw, Open Source Ecology does have a DIY tractor as well. https://opensourceecology.dozuki.com/c/LifeTrac https://opensourceecology.dozuki.com/c/LifeTrac https://www.opensourceecology.org/portfolio/tractor/ https://www.opensourceecology.org/portfolio/tractor/ They regularly have courses, workshops, internships at their Missouri farm. There's a full machine fabrication shop, permaculture farm, & sustainable living community. Their courses are a great deal & they even do work exchange. Highly recommend checking it out.

apotatopot 7y ago

"tech weary" and “An expensive repair would be $15,000 to $20,000, but you’re still well below the cost of buying a new tractor that’s $150,000 to $250,000." wtf come on. This has nothing to do with technology.

pmiller2 7y ago
Here's where "tech weary" (side note: maybe "tech wary") comes in: > There are some good things about the software in newer machines, said Peterson. The dealer will get a warning if something is about to break and can contact the farmer ahead of time to nip the problem in the bud. But if something does break, the farmer is powerless, stuck in the field waiting for a service truck from the dealership to come out to their farm and charge up to $150 per hour for labor.

dsalzman 7y ago

Opportunity for a company like $TESLA or other startup to provide additional competition in the farm equipment space. It's a duopoly between John Deere (Green) and Case IH (Red). A modular electric system would work well since the required speeds are low and torque is important. Extra points for a small wind turbine based charging station that can mount to a barn.

dejv 7y ago
There is Solectrac electric tractor which seems like something that fits your description. It is definitely in very early stage, but I can't wait to see this type of vehicles to take off.
bluGill 7y ago
A tesla uses about 20 horsepower to push itself down the freeway (it is capable of much more, that is what it is using after about 5-10 seconds to get up to speed). A tractor rated at 100 horsepower is expected run at 100 horsepower output continuously. 100 horsepower tractors are considered small (or maybe mid size) tractors these days. In short, a battery operated tractor will need to stop to recharge every 5 minutes - if you can find batteries that will allow you to discharge that fast, most will not.
aguyfromnb 7y ago
>Opportunity for a company like $TESLA or other startup to provide additional competition in the farm equipment space. Wait, what? Tesla is just as bad (or worse) when it comes to right-to-repair.
Tossrock 7y ago
Tesla is notorious for exactly the kind of DRM, in-house only servicing that the farmers are trying to avoid.

nas 7y ago

As someone who grew up on a farm and spent 7 years running one (few thousand acres so fairly good size), I can provide some background on why this is happening. The large farms are driving new equipment sales. They are the ones buying the brand new John Deere $700k combine harvesters will all the bells and whistles. The problem is, those bells and whistles add a lot of extra complexity to the machine, making it harder and more expensive to fix. Deere doesn't make it easier since they don't provide details needed for 3rd party repair people (e.g. schematics, software tools for managing embedded controllers, etc). The people buying new equipment don't care about that. Their equipment is covered by warranty and Deere fixes it for them (or replaces it). They sell the machine after it is a year or two. So, they never deal with the crap repair-ability of new equipment. The 2nd stage used market cares a little but not so much either. They can still get Deere to fix it for them, maybe not under warranty. By the time the equipment gets to the 3rd tier used market, it is already heavily deprecated. The loss in value due to poor repair-ability is not getting fed back up the chain in any significant way which would make the primary buyers change their decision making. They want the bells and whistles and they will pay a little extra in deprecation to get them. The problem for society is that you have a $700k machine that is basically a paperweight after a decade or two. You might was well drive it in the junk pile because no one is going to be able to make it run. At least, not without tearing out heaps of electronics that are no longer working. New machines are utterly dependent on onboard electronic control systems (e.g. ECMs). They won't run without them. New machines are disposable and that is what the buyers are deciding to choose. You can't put all the blame on companies like Deere. The contrast to old farm equipment is dramatic though. We have an old Ferguson tractor, might be from the 1950s. Everything on that tractor can be fixed. If we wanted, we could make it run like it just came out of the factory. For jobs on the farm that don't need a big tractor, it does them just fine. Probably in 100 years you will still be able to keep it running if you want.

lotsofpulp 7y ago
> By the time the equipment gets to the 3rd tier used market, it is already heavily deprecated. The loss in value due to poor repair-ability is not getting fed back up the chain in any significant way which would make the primary buyers change their decision making. If the value is heavily depreciated by the time it reaches the “3rd tier” used market, why would the buyers in the “2nd stage” used market not factor this depreciation into the price they pay for it when they buy it used from the first owner? Surely people spending $700k on capital purchases know a thing or two about factoring in resell and depreciation into the prices they are willing to pay.

dekhn 7y ago

I work with CNC and 3D printing, but I still enjoy my chisels and plane. There's something satisfying knowing the tool you're using is one people have used for thousands of years (with minor incremental updates to the technology) and it's still the best tool for the job.

ngneer 7y ago

This may be the single most important information security problem worth solving on our planet. This is not about who gets to see the latest movie at what resolution, it is about vendors and farmers fighting for control of the plant, in this case the tractor, and indirectly its yields. I think the world needs an open source tractor, or else am hoping the right to repair movement addresses these difficulties.

jay_kyburz 7y ago
It's more than that. I'm in Australia, hiding inside away from the smoke haze, thinking about where global warming is going. Seems clear to me that in the next 20-30 years most farming will need to move indoors into climate controlled environments. We'll need to have closed systems where the air, water, soils, and our biodiversity is carefully managed.
- titzer 7y ago
  > We'll need to have closed systems where the air, water, soils, and our biodiversity is carefully managed. Let that sink it. We screwed Earth badly enough we need to build spaceships on Earth.

deleted 7y ago

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jeffrallen 7y ago

A farmer in my village in Switzerland imported a 1980's Ford tractor from Texas. He had to repair the front axle, which had been cut. He told me the axle was cut to render the tractor unusable after it was traded in for some kind of emissions credit. Anyone hear of such a system?

jdhn 7y ago
Sounds like the farming equivalent of Cash for Clunkers. IIRC, Cash for Clunkers rendered the vehicle inoperable by destroying the engine block, and in this case it seems that they cut the axle.
- jeffrallen 7y ago
  This is the CA one: https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/our-work/programs/farmer-program https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/our-work/programs/farmer-program And this is an example Certificate of Destruction: http://valleyair.org/grants/documents/FARMER/Certificate-of-Destruction-Form.pdf http://valleyair.org/grants/documents/FARMER/Certificate-of-... "I hereby certify that the equipment and engine described above has been received by this facility and will be permanently destroyed for recycling purposes only in accordance with the Heavy-Duty Off-Road Agricultural Equipment Replacement Program Guidelines" So, at least in CA, it is not legal to export the tractor.

ketzo 7y ago

Disclaimer: I have been on a tractor exactly once in my life, no idea what any of the realities of this would be. But... Doesn't it seem like there's a huge opening for Cheap Solid DIY Tractors Inc.? All I read about is how farmers hate tractors available now for their lock-in, their shitty software, their insane costs -- I wonder what's preventing someone from selling tractors that match the description listed in this article.

randomdata 7y ago
As a farmer, I don’t think I’ve ever met another farmer who hates modern equipment. I’m not sure where that narrative has come from. We drool over the latest tech. I know many who choose older equipment for financial reasons, as the article suggests. Modern equipment is insanely expensive to purchase and is simply out of reach of the smaller farmer. If older equipment was actually a hot commodity, more than newer equipment, economics tells us that older equipment would be worth more than newer equipment and that is simply not the case. Price falls consistently with age for a comparable machine. They are paying more for a 1980 model because someone else is paying even more for the 2000 model. There are plenty of basic tractors on the market with little in the way of electronics. But building a new tractor is expensive. While they come in well below the cost of a decked out John Deere, they are still a lot more expensive than a 40 year old tractor.
- deleted 7y ago
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zelon88 7y ago

When I worked in manufacturing with heavy machinery I was taught that the best type of machine is one that functions regardless of it's condition. If you ever walk around any old tractor shows you can see that style of engineering throughout all those old pieces of equipment.

everyone 7y ago

So what happens when someone tries to make tractors like the ones the farmers want? Does big-tractor put a hit out on you? (srsly I wouldnt be suprised)

tareqak 7y ago

I'm surprised that John Deere isn't going around buying their old tractors, and then scrapping them or learning how to make one again.

nas 7y ago
They know how to make the old equipment. Buyers with enough cash to buy new equipment don't want it. They get warranty and they want all the fancy electronic features on the modern stuff. Deere know what they are doing.

DaniFong 7y ago

Pay attention Hacker News! In this, finally open source software/hardware has a giant market opportunity and a population with demands: onwards; go and solve this need! make something people want: good, reliable, sustainable (in every sense) farm equipments and systems (fertilizer, pest control, seed)

economyballoon 7y ago

Also here we can see: a machine, in this case a tractor, has to be more complicated in the future to ensure economic growth and to rise added value.

rkagerer 7y ago

That's it, I'm holding onto my 20 year old mobile phone in case it makes a resurgence in another 20 years. Replaceable battery, no tracking, and components you can see and re-solder!

donatj 7y ago

I've commented this on HN before, but the small farmer is criminally underserved. You can get so much more bang for your buck buying an old tractor than anything new, and there are whole cottage industries that have sprung up making replacement parts. If you go to a tractor show you can get just about any part you need apart from perhaps major body components. I think a startup making cheap reliable tractors could make bank.

rebeccaskinner 7y ago

As a former founder of an Ag-Tech startup, I feel like this article is vastly minimizing the on-the-ground reality that are facing a lot of farmers. Sure, for smaller farmers cost might be a factor, and I'm sure nostalgia plays in a bit, but the biggest issue by far that we found when we were talking with farmers working on building our products was a profound frustration with the use of DRM, draconian licensing terms, and vendor lock-in. John Deere is basically the Oracle of the tractor world. These farmers are not a bunch of ignorant backwater hicks- the ones that we worked with are shrewd, generally educated, and not at all afraid of technology. In fact, the reason I founded a company in the first place was that there's clearly a lot of demand for better technology among farmers. The problem is that the licensing terms and lock-in from their vendors have squeezed Farmers into a corner. None of their equipment is interoperable, they are bound by expensive recurring fees for software, locked into support contracts, can't repair their own equipment; the same situation those of us in tech have been shouting about for decades. Maybe if we paid more attention to the farmers we could find some good allies in some of our movements.

graycat 7y ago

How 'bout we have some cars made that way, that is, as rugged, reliable, long lasting, easy to repair, mechanically simple, as those 1980 -- 1990 farm tractors!

soapboxrocket 7y ago

Reminds me a bit of my great-grandfather. He bought his first tractor from my grandfather when my grandfather retired and auctioned off all of the farm and equipment. There's a lost Minnesota PBS documentary from the 50s/60s about farmers still using horses and he is interviewed in it, and in the middle of the interview he just starts going off about someone shooting his horse, "those sons of bitches shot my horse!"

diogenescynic 7y ago

Reminds me of the 4x4ers who prefer 80s and early 90s Toyota, made before there were any computers involved, Which let’s them do all their own repairs and modifications.

a-dub 7y ago

A few years ago a bartender friend of mine shared a joke/investment tip with me. He said "if I had money, I'd rent a warehouse and fill it with appliances that aren't internet connected. In 20 years, people will be desperate for them." I think he may be right.

allovernow 7y ago

Every time I see an article like this, I can't help but imagine some penny pinching MBA laughing all the way to the bank. Textbook example of running a company purely for profit, with no regard for ethics, social good, legacy, or their customers.

noisy_boy 7y ago

I don't know anything about tractors but I would assume that those used in developing countries are less "digitized" and probably easier to repair so does this open up a market for them to export? Or are they too "inferior" in terms of features that this is not feasible? For example, I would assume that, India being a largely agricultural economy, has a pretty strong base of farming equipment. Is this an opportunity for them?

annapowellsmith 7y ago

Comment from a tractor-owning friend: That's a very good piece capturing a lot of the issues (esp GPS retrofitting which is easy and make a huge difference). The one thing it doesn't quite draw out is that the market has segmented. If you are a small to mid farmer you have fairly low demands for horsepower and can tolerate small breakdowns you can fix in the field. So buying an older machine makes sense. If you are a big farmer or a contractor (person with a big tractor/combine/machine who hires out) you need high horsepower and 18 hour a day operation without breakdowns. as in fleet purchasing for trucks they have rolling finance for high capital value kit to replace it every couple of years having run up high hours. The modern electronic high power kit is quite amazing, it's not gratuitous use of electronics. Electronics also important for meeting modern emissions regs. Tractors, as the piece points out have to be ultra rugged for field work and that means that the older stuff does last well and 100hp or over will get you a long way.

ptah 7y ago

> tractors from the 1970s and 1980s aren’t so dramatically different from tractors produced in the 2000s I think we are coming to a point where "progress" stops and technology stays stable

bluGill 7y ago
Really it is tractors from the 1950s that are not dramatically different. More hydraulics and more horsepower are the only important things. AC and more comfortable cab/seats are secondary that might or might not matter to you.

Markoff 7y ago

would not importing tractor from abroad like Europe make more sense financially? you can buy them for peanuts here and my understanding is you can drive whatever you want on your private property in US, so you don't need to care about some complicance with norms I just checked classifieds and tractor here in Czechia with 20yo replaced engine will cost you 5000EUR, newer up to 10000EUR, still way cheaper than prices they quote or why is no brand taking this market by hit with some cheap basic tractors like did Dacia in car industry in Europe? seem it should be hit judging by article, just sell tractor without electronics with old design from 80/90s

joncrane 7y ago

Aren't there brands of tractors made in India and/or China that are less computerized and perhaps easier to run and repair than the bad green ones from the USA?

daveheq 7y ago

I don't know why John Deere and other manufacturers aren't making parts for these old tractors, if they're not already, seems like a huge market opportunity.

bluGill 7y ago
John Deere is. There are policies for when a part can go out of production. I can't talk about them, but it amounts to if it is replaced often it remains in production. (My local dealer has the oil filter for my 1939 tractor in stock). Electronics are tricky - chips from 20 years ago are not made anymore, so if that electronic system breaks you are done. We try to predict how many replacement parts will be needed and make a large final order but sometimes we are wrong. The fact that we make replacement parts longer than our competitors is one of our big selling points. #deereemployee, but not speaking for my company of course.

calewis 7y ago

Interesting relationship between another front-page article: https://www.foodandwine.com/news/borden-dairy-bankruptcy https://www.foodandwine.com/news/borden-dairy-bankruptcy

woodpanel 7y ago

Being a city-dweller for all my life it was a relevation to be finally exposed to farmer life. In many regards, not just the snobbish urban-myths (super conservative, unintelligent, smelly, unindustious government-dependend anti-environmental inbreds) that I held. The farmers I know, have a huge range of skills, from metalworking, construction, woodwork, mechanical engineering, biology, geology and are putting that knowledge into practice every day. All of that while planning years ahead (for instance how to plow your field this year, so that in 5-10 years you don't get a massive slope on your field's edge). So when farmers talk about fixing a tractor themselves, it's not just about being able to buy some screws or replacement joints, it's about welding that piece you need, sanding its steelframe to remove rust, knowing whether to bend or clinch instead of welding. It's even about building the tools to build those parts.

savingGrace 7y ago

What happens when we are so far away from the past, that there are no older tractors? Will our current 'new' tractors still work without dialing home or requiring computers when they're old? I keep wondering that about our automotives as well. I want vehicles that are safe for my family, but ones that I can work on with a general understanding of automotive repair and physics. Will there come a point where you can no longer work on any new automotives?

theFeller00 7y ago

I'm in the midwest and have friends that are farmers with old tractor collections. While I can't say I share their interest, it is certainly better than my coworkers plastic figurines.