4 ms·

"I still believe you need some newer machinery in the mix, and my harvest equipment is where you’ll find it." I find this very interesting because on our farm

"I still believe you need some newer machinery in the mix, and my harvest equipment is where you’ll find it." I find this very interesting because on our farm the main source of savings has been running 7 (3-4 in the field at a time) 1480 and 1680 combines valued at $5-8,000 each. (and about 15 headers to match, equally worthless). We keep them well maintained but if we do have a failure that is not an instant fix we literally just pull another one out of the shed and carry on. Where we farm late-90's and early 2000's seeding equipment is now cheap as dirt too, we run two air seeders worth a combined $50,000, maybe? I have a Steiger, branded as a Case 9170, they have weak spots (wiring, rear diffs & planetaries) but they are cheap horsepower. Around my parts the "Rome" tractors would be older Versatile 4WDs that are easy to repower and have nice big cabs. All that said, I find the large savings claims here to be a bit suspect. Dropping new electronic engines in these frames, even if you do a lot of the work yourself, costs real money. Once you are 80-90k into a 1980 tractor.. they made a lot of good equipment in the 90's that you can walk up and buy for those kinds of dollars. And he isn't doing the work all himself, those hours cost real cash out of pocket (a small farmer like myself that fixes himself.. well you can just keep whittling down your personal hourly rate by putting in more hours).

JamisonM 6y ago
"The Steigers will be repainted over the winter..." What's up with American farmers and repainting things? Drives me nuts.. I can not understand it. I would love to know.
- bluGill 6y ago
  Paint protects the iron from rust.
  - JamisonM 6y ago
    Having never stroked a paintbrush on any of my late-70's and early 80's equipment I can assure you that this is not a practical factor.
    - Loughla 6y ago
      Where do you live? If we didn't paint our machinery every 2-3 years, we would have rust in the frames. Source: The Massey 1100 that is sitting in my machine shed right now acting as a huge and impractical paperweight because of a lack of rust maintenance by the previous owner.
      - randomdata 6y ago
        What environmental conditions do you have that lead to that? Around here a brand new car will start to show significant rust after a few years, but the tractors spend 90% of their life in the shed. They stay in pretty good shape.
      - JamisonM 6y ago
        What about the rust is making your Massey 1100 unusable? I live in the Red River Valley, we have poor draining soils, a clay bottom, and almost no sand.
  - masklinn 6y ago
    Possibly JamisonM lives in a drier area where rust not a concern? Rust was certainly never an issue for my grandparents' farm, they're 20+ years gone and the tractors are still going, rust and all.
    - JamisonM 6y ago
      We have heavy, heavy soil here. We do wash equipment to make sure that wet soils are not left in the nooks an crannies of our equipment, but the idea that we'd have a frame rot away from rust.. that seems like a 100 year timeline issue to me. Combine hoppers need to be cleaned out every season and do rot away, put that's not a tractor frame. The painting at issue always seems to be very cosmetic to me, painting the hood on a tractor doesn't extend its life.. but it might increase its resale value!
  - jelliclesfarm 6y ago
    It is also known as a MaryKay* Makeover in the South <insert laugh emoticon> On a serious note...paint jobs also hide flaws and can increase resale value. *Mary Kay is a MLM cosmetics/make up company. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Kay https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Kay
- colechristensen 6y ago
  Nothing wrong with finding something to do over the winter even if there isn’t a whole lot of practical value. Some people are happier when things are neat and tidy.
  - jfengel 6y ago
    Do you need a special paint to do it over the winter? I know some paints won't cure at low temperatures.
    - colechristensen 6y ago
      I just looked at a random paint intended for farm equipment and found a minimum application temperature of 50F which is easy enough to accomplish in a machine shed or on a warm day. You could also just blast your work quick with a heat gun. Nothing need be perfect.
- eecc 6y ago
  it's for rust protection and while you're there scanning every inch of the surface you get to see defects and rust spots early on
- kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
  He's targeting 4x4 tractors specifically because he works on soft waterlogged soil. Rust is going to be an issue.
  - JamisonM 6y ago
    You'll not find more waterlogged soil than where I work, the red river valley, hence my skepticism regarding the rust thing.
- eitland 6y ago
  Downthread there's a lot of talk about rust. I grew up on an extremely small scale farm on the west coast of Norway, lots of rain and 100m from the sea, 12 or so km from the open ocean (you see the Atlantic if you drive a boat 500m out to the middle of the fjord.) Rust didn't stop any of our tractors, not a single stroke of paint even for the 40-50 years old machines. But here's another thing, picked up from a friend of me after I asked him why he bought a brand new Valtra at some point instead of buying a slightly used one that was available on the market. His answer has stuck with me since: if you enjoy getting up and going to work in the morning that count for something too. I still happily use old equipment - if it works - but I factor in the value of not wasting my (or my customers, when I work as sysadmin) patience on slow computers. Edits: spelling, redundancies
  - JamisonM 6y ago
    Haha, love this: > lots of rain and 100m from the sea, 12 or so km from the open ocean If you are that close to salt water and don't have a problem it sure does seem to make the rust thing a red herring! Agreed, it is of the utmost importance that the old machines start and go when it is time to work, that's the primary thing! But I own a rather new sprayer, worth more than my entire combine fleet combined. Why? After a lot of honest consideration of the choices we were making we concluded that the experience of spraying with our old one was so miserable that we were failing to do things that needed to be done when they needed to be done. There is no substitute for getting the job done properly, on any reasonably large farm that is the biggest profitability factor. If any farmer needs a quiet cab and heated leather seat to motivate them to go out and finish seeding in a timely manner then it is a good investment, no matter how frivolous it might seem!
    - eitland 6y ago
      Thanks for the answer! Also I really appreciate seeing so many active farmers here on HN, having grown up on a farm, studied farming and worked a bit in farms it makes me happy for HN as a community that we manage to keep farmers coming back :-)
rmason 6y ago
I think a lot of this is false economy. If you like doing mechanical work then make that your line of work. Comparing old to new: 1. New tractors get much better fuel mileage 2. New tractors have technology that can go a long way to making the payments on them 3. New tractors have a lot more operator comfort and if you're putting in eighteen hour days that's important. Lets say you're a writer. Why not keep an IBM XT around to do your work? Granted finding those 5.25 inch floppies are a chore;<). But that XT can still write and print your work. You can even use Microsoft Word version 1. The smartest play that I've seen farmers use is to buy gently used equipment. A three year old tractor has depreciated 30-40% and as long as you're able to make repairs is a steal over new. You get most of the benefits of new at a lower price.
- jabl 6y ago
  Which brings us to the frequently-on-hn topic of manufacturers loading up tractors with DRM crap so if it breaks you or the neighborhood shop can't fix it, you have to take it to the official dealer shop. Good luck booking a slot there during harvest season. But yes, maybe slightly old machines are the solution rather than spending a lot of time and money to keep ancient rustbuckets going.
  - jelliclesfarm 6y ago
    They ..like JD..should have a syllabus and certificate courses. To train farmers and contractors.
    - jabl 6y ago
      Unless I'm entirety mistaken, the point behind the DRM shenanigans is for the manufacturer to monopolize the maintenance and repair value chain.
- JamisonM 6y ago
  > 1. New tractors get much better fuel mileage Some do, some don't but this is mostly true (which is why the farmer in question is re-powering the old tractors). > 2. New tractors have technology that can go a long way to making the payments on them This is pretty flatly false. Whatever monitors, guidance, and steering technology (which is all I can think of that you might be referring to) is available for these tractors as well. > 3. New tractors have a lot more operator comfort and if you're putting in eighteen hour days that's important. This is also addressed with new seats and making the cab air-ride in the article. But then these upgrades are why I think this in particular is a false economy, he is spending a lot on these old tractors! Gently used is still pretty pricey, newer year but high-hour tractors are where I always feel the sweet spot is, a 9,000 hour 2005 model tractor is pretty cheap and is also pretty good in most cases.
randomdata 6y ago
> I find this very interesting because on our farm the main source of savings has been running 7 (3-4 in the field at a time) 1480 and 1680 combines There is a balance with labour. Big for their time, but those are not much of a machine by today's standard. A newer, larger machine could easily replace two of them. Maybe three. As harvest is typically the labour bottleneck, I can see how having as few people in the combines as possible is beneficial to the farm. The article would suggest that there are five of them regularly working on the farm. A couple of truck drivers, a cart operator, and that only leaves two to run the combines. If they, like your farm, need four 1680s get the work done they would have to find seasonal help, which can be quite difficult. But naturally other farms may have different needs and requirements.
- jelliclesfarm 6y ago
  This is certainly a problem. As farms become larger and cost of operating machinery gets higher, for some crops/grains, using herbicides as dessicants is becoming the norm. Glyphosate is used during pre harvest for dessication than as a herbicide. And it’s approved. Canadians have just started cracking down on this so organic standards are maintained. This is a whole another can of worms(also drift) due to massive increase in scale and size of farming because we just have too many mouths to feed.
  - randomdata 6y ago
    When was it never not the norm, save 50+ years ago when glyphosate wasn't commercially available? Around here, I don't think I've seen a pickup head used in my entire lifetime. Still see an occasional one sitting in the scrap heap.
- JamisonM 6y ago
  It is true that lots of my neighbours have trouble finding help, I never do though. We have a crew of retirees that help us at harvest. We retain our staff with working air conditioning and a low-stress environment. Low stress because we have way more harvesting capacity than we need. When we have 4 machines going in the field we are doing at least 1 1/2 what a new machine can do and our labour costs are made back in fuel savings. (Modern combines are absolute pigs on fuel!)
chrissnell 6y ago
The engine conversions are easier than you might think, so long as there is an adapter for your gearbox. Companies like Cummins sell them as crate motors, complete with the computer and everything you need, down to the electronic accelerator pedal. Now, you may have to cut off some motor mounts and weld on some new ones and maybe solve a few coolant and hydraulic plumbing issues but I would guess that these guys probably have a go-to motor and they’ve got that down pat. That said, I kind of doubt you’re getting out the door with an industrial Cummins turbodiesel for under $40K.
- JamisonM 6y ago
  For sure they are buying something that they are familiar with and dropping it in that works with the standard transmission. Once you have have done the first the next one is easy. (That's our experience with rotor swaps on the 1480's!) But yeah, when you add the cost of the crate engine... you're eating up a lot of your savings!

JamisonM 6y ago

"The Steigers will be repainted over the winter..." What's up with American farmers and repainting things? Drives me nuts.. I can not understand it. I would love to know.

bluGill 6y ago
Paint protects the iron from rust.
- JamisonM 6y ago
  Having never stroked a paintbrush on any of my late-70's and early 80's equipment I can assure you that this is not a practical factor.
  - Loughla 6y ago
    Where do you live? If we didn't paint our machinery every 2-3 years, we would have rust in the frames. Source: The Massey 1100 that is sitting in my machine shed right now acting as a huge and impractical paperweight because of a lack of rust maintenance by the previous owner.
    - randomdata 6y ago
      What environmental conditions do you have that lead to that? Around here a brand new car will start to show significant rust after a few years, but the tractors spend 90% of their life in the shed. They stay in pretty good shape.
    - JamisonM 6y ago
      What about the rust is making your Massey 1100 unusable? I live in the Red River Valley, we have poor draining soils, a clay bottom, and almost no sand.
- masklinn 6y ago
  Possibly JamisonM lives in a drier area where rust not a concern? Rust was certainly never an issue for my grandparents' farm, they're 20+ years gone and the tractors are still going, rust and all.
  - JamisonM 6y ago
    We have heavy, heavy soil here. We do wash equipment to make sure that wet soils are not left in the nooks an crannies of our equipment, but the idea that we'd have a frame rot away from rust.. that seems like a 100 year timeline issue to me. Combine hoppers need to be cleaned out every season and do rot away, put that's not a tractor frame. The painting at issue always seems to be very cosmetic to me, painting the hood on a tractor doesn't extend its life.. but it might increase its resale value!
- jelliclesfarm 6y ago
  It is also known as a MaryKay* Makeover in the South <insert laugh emoticon> On a serious note...paint jobs also hide flaws and can increase resale value. *Mary Kay is a MLM cosmetics/make up company. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Kay https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Kay
colechristensen 6y ago
Nothing wrong with finding something to do over the winter even if there isn’t a whole lot of practical value. Some people are happier when things are neat and tidy.
- jfengel 6y ago
  Do you need a special paint to do it over the winter? I know some paints won't cure at low temperatures.
  - colechristensen 6y ago
    I just looked at a random paint intended for farm equipment and found a minimum application temperature of 50F which is easy enough to accomplish in a machine shed or on a warm day. You could also just blast your work quick with a heat gun. Nothing need be perfect.
eecc 6y ago
it's for rust protection and while you're there scanning every inch of the surface you get to see defects and rust spots early on
kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
He's targeting 4x4 tractors specifically because he works on soft waterlogged soil. Rust is going to be an issue.
- JamisonM 6y ago
  You'll not find more waterlogged soil than where I work, the red river valley, hence my skepticism regarding the rust thing.
eitland 6y ago
Downthread there's a lot of talk about rust. I grew up on an extremely small scale farm on the west coast of Norway, lots of rain and 100m from the sea, 12 or so km from the open ocean (you see the Atlantic if you drive a boat 500m out to the middle of the fjord.) Rust didn't stop any of our tractors, not a single stroke of paint even for the 40-50 years old machines. But here's another thing, picked up from a friend of me after I asked him why he bought a brand new Valtra at some point instead of buying a slightly used one that was available on the market. His answer has stuck with me since: if you enjoy getting up and going to work in the morning that count for something too. I still happily use old equipment - if it works - but I factor in the value of not wasting my (or my customers, when I work as sysadmin) patience on slow computers. Edits: spelling, redundancies
- JamisonM 6y ago
  Haha, love this: > lots of rain and 100m from the sea, 12 or so km from the open ocean If you are that close to salt water and don't have a problem it sure does seem to make the rust thing a red herring! Agreed, it is of the utmost importance that the old machines start and go when it is time to work, that's the primary thing! But I own a rather new sprayer, worth more than my entire combine fleet combined. Why? After a lot of honest consideration of the choices we were making we concluded that the experience of spraying with our old one was so miserable that we were failing to do things that needed to be done when they needed to be done. There is no substitute for getting the job done properly, on any reasonably large farm that is the biggest profitability factor. If any farmer needs a quiet cab and heated leather seat to motivate them to go out and finish seeding in a timely manner then it is a good investment, no matter how frivolous it might seem!
  - eitland 6y ago
    Thanks for the answer! Also I really appreciate seeing so many active farmers here on HN, having grown up on a farm, studied farming and worked a bit in farms it makes me happy for HN as a community that we manage to keep farmers coming back :-)

rmason 6y ago

I think a lot of this is false economy. If you like doing mechanical work then make that your line of work. Comparing old to new: 1. New tractors get much better fuel mileage 2. New tractors have technology that can go a long way to making the payments on them 3. New tractors have a lot more operator comfort and if you're putting in eighteen hour days that's important. Lets say you're a writer. Why not keep an IBM XT around to do your work? Granted finding those 5.25 inch floppies are a chore;<). But that XT can still write and print your work. You can even use Microsoft Word version 1. The smartest play that I've seen farmers use is to buy gently used equipment. A three year old tractor has depreciated 30-40% and as long as you're able to make repairs is a steal over new. You get most of the benefits of new at a lower price.

jabl 6y ago
Which brings us to the frequently-on-hn topic of manufacturers loading up tractors with DRM crap so if it breaks you or the neighborhood shop can't fix it, you have to take it to the official dealer shop. Good luck booking a slot there during harvest season. But yes, maybe slightly old machines are the solution rather than spending a lot of time and money to keep ancient rustbuckets going.
- jelliclesfarm 6y ago
  They ..like JD..should have a syllabus and certificate courses. To train farmers and contractors.
  - jabl 6y ago
    Unless I'm entirety mistaken, the point behind the DRM shenanigans is for the manufacturer to monopolize the maintenance and repair value chain.
JamisonM 6y ago
> 1. New tractors get much better fuel mileage Some do, some don't but this is mostly true (which is why the farmer in question is re-powering the old tractors). > 2. New tractors have technology that can go a long way to making the payments on them This is pretty flatly false. Whatever monitors, guidance, and steering technology (which is all I can think of that you might be referring to) is available for these tractors as well. > 3. New tractors have a lot more operator comfort and if you're putting in eighteen hour days that's important. This is also addressed with new seats and making the cab air-ride in the article. But then these upgrades are why I think this in particular is a false economy, he is spending a lot on these old tractors! Gently used is still pretty pricey, newer year but high-hour tractors are where I always feel the sweet spot is, a 9,000 hour 2005 model tractor is pretty cheap and is also pretty good in most cases.

randomdata 6y ago

> I find this very interesting because on our farm the main source of savings has been running 7 (3-4 in the field at a time) 1480 and 1680 combines There is a balance with labour. Big for their time, but those are not much of a machine by today's standard. A newer, larger machine could easily replace two of them. Maybe three. As harvest is typically the labour bottleneck, I can see how having as few people in the combines as possible is beneficial to the farm. The article would suggest that there are five of them regularly working on the farm. A couple of truck drivers, a cart operator, and that only leaves two to run the combines. If they, like your farm, need four 1680s get the work done they would have to find seasonal help, which can be quite difficult. But naturally other farms may have different needs and requirements.

jelliclesfarm 6y ago
This is certainly a problem. As farms become larger and cost of operating machinery gets higher, for some crops/grains, using herbicides as dessicants is becoming the norm. Glyphosate is used during pre harvest for dessication than as a herbicide. And it’s approved. Canadians have just started cracking down on this so organic standards are maintained. This is a whole another can of worms(also drift) due to massive increase in scale and size of farming because we just have too many mouths to feed.
- randomdata 6y ago
  When was it never not the norm, save 50+ years ago when glyphosate wasn't commercially available? Around here, I don't think I've seen a pickup head used in my entire lifetime. Still see an occasional one sitting in the scrap heap.
JamisonM 6y ago
It is true that lots of my neighbours have trouble finding help, I never do though. We have a crew of retirees that help us at harvest. We retain our staff with working air conditioning and a low-stress environment. Low stress because we have way more harvesting capacity than we need. When we have 4 machines going in the field we are doing at least 1 1/2 what a new machine can do and our labour costs are made back in fuel savings. (Modern combines are absolute pigs on fuel!)

chrissnell 6y ago

The engine conversions are easier than you might think, so long as there is an adapter for your gearbox. Companies like Cummins sell them as crate motors, complete with the computer and everything you need, down to the electronic accelerator pedal. Now, you may have to cut off some motor mounts and weld on some new ones and maybe solve a few coolant and hydraulic plumbing issues but I would guess that these guys probably have a go-to motor and they’ve got that down pat. That said, I kind of doubt you’re getting out the door with an industrial Cummins turbodiesel for under $40K.

JamisonM 6y ago
For sure they are buying something that they are familiar with and dropping it in that works with the standard transmission. Once you have have done the first the next one is easy. (That's our experience with rotor swaps on the 1480's!) But yeah, when you add the cost of the crate engine... you're eating up a lot of your savings!