3 ms·

>Old iron is better built, less "electronic", and far easier to understand the designs and fabricate parts yourself. As well as cheaper to purchase. I thought

by jasode 5y ago

>Old iron is better built, less "electronic", and far easier to understand the designs and fabricate parts yourself. As well as cheaper to purchase. I thought that big farms take advantage of newer tech on tractors using GPS RTK for sub-inch accuracy and increased productivity? Therefore, depending on the workload, the decades-old "cheaper" tractor can turn out to be more costly because the farm's yield isn't keeping up with competitors. It seems like a tradeoff between old & new.

julianlam 5y ago
I believe the argument is that these new tractors are not repairable by yourself, leading to expensive repair and / or replacement cost
- jasode 5y ago
  >the argument is that these new tractors are not repairable by yourself, leading to expensive repair Correct, but the tradeoff calculation includes offsetting the expensive repair costs with potential increased productivity. Or likewise with the other option, the "savings" from cheap low-tech tractors may be negated by lower productivity.
  - PeterisP 5y ago
    Things will break. Costs isn't everything, time to fix matters. An older tractor can usually be repaired on the same day on-site, causing a few hours of downtime; a newer tractor that will be returned from service in a week causes a huge loss of productivity.
    - bluGill 5y ago
      Anyplace you use for service will have a fix it in two hours or you get a loaner policy. The two hours starts when you call, even it the mechanic is an hour away on a different farm. When it is busy season they maintain extra hours
    - jjk166 5y ago
      Seems like it would be easily addressed the way car repairs are: insurance pays for a rental while yours is in the shop. So long as peoples equipment isn't all breaking down at the same time, a service with just a few pieces of equipment could probably service a large area. That way you can also get proper repairs done, rather than having to do a quick hack that gets you back up and running by whatever deadline you have but causes long term problems.
      - albertsondev 5y ago
        Except peoples' equipment would most likely all be breaking down at the same time, because everyone is harvesting at the same time.
  - zinekeller 5y ago
    That might be justifiable if the service network is basically as fast as a DIY repair, however from what I read it is still treated to be a week-long turnover which might be fine for a low-stake consumer device but a downtime here means that net productivity will be lower than having less efficient but easily repairable machines.
- jaclaz 5y ago
  At least on construction equipment (agricolture may be different) the point is not only about costs (and frequence) of repairs, but rather on machinery down time or production loss. I have managed in the past some high production sites (road tunnels) with a specific sequence of operations and having a jumbo or a wheel loader or an excavator down meant severe delays not only in excavation, but on all the following works (concrete pouring, impermeabilization) and on all the "ancillary" works (ventilation, electric cabins moving, etc.). One of the machine at the excavation front broken for more than a few hours would have meant literally days of delays, complex scheduling modifications, etc., a total mess.
ThemalSpan 5y ago
You can retrofit gps control systems onto older machines.
- jasode 5y ago
  >You can retrofit gps control systems onto older machines. The highest precision accuracy of RTK devices has vendor-proprietary encrypted signals. E.g: https://www.google.com/search?q=rtk+signal+encrypted+gps+%22john+deere%22 https://www.google.com/search?q=rtk+signal+encrypted+gps+%22... So it seems like retrofitting for "precision ag" also depends on what commercial "RTK network" is offered in the farmer's local area. I think regular GPS is only ~10 ft accuracy so not sure of farmers are retrofitting tractor steering for that lower resolution.
  - rdtwo 5y ago
    If you add a serveyed ground station you should be able to do way better than that
  - mcculley 5y ago
    >I think regular GPS is only ~10 ft accuracy This has not been true for quite a while. The equipment used on surveying, farming, and construction equipment is much more accurate thanks to the availability of multiple GNSSs (e.g., GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, BeiDou) and terrestrial base stations to remove error (WAAS, DGPS). See: https://www.gps.gov/systems/gps/performance/accuracy/ https://www.gps.gov/systems/gps/performance/accuracy/
  - myself248 5y ago
    Yeah but you don't need commercial services to get down to the inch anymore. Running your own base station has gotten cheap and easy; witness Sparkfun selling their RTK Express kit like hotcakes. Integrating it into the vehicle is a fun second ROS project for someone who already built a toy robot car. There's a substantial population of highschoolers building the necessary skills, the trick is just to connect them to the jobs.
  - snovv_crash 5y ago
bryanrasmussen 5y ago
well that sounds like marketing, which sometimes marketing can be correct, and sometimes it can be a bunch of BS. I don't know which is the case here but my hunch would be that if it were correct then old iron wouldn't be worth more than new to the people who would be best suited to know if it were BS or not. There at any rate seems to be a discrepancy between what is supposed to be the case, and what people who should know seem to believe is the case.
- jasode 5y ago
  >sometimes marketing can be correct, and sometimes it can be a bunch of BS. I don't know which is the case here but my hunch would be that if it were correct then old iron wouldn't be worth more than new to the people who would be best suited to know if it were BS or not. I don't know if the auctions bidding wars are driven up by homeowners managing their small homestead farm or by bigger commercial operations. Homeowners don't need to compete so buying 30-year old tractors is an easier decision. I agree that using old tech can be an counterintuitive cost-saving strategy -- like FedEx deliberately using a fleet of very old planes that are gas guzzlers instead of buying the latest jets that are more fuel-efficient. Maybe some big commercial farms deliberately buy used low-tech tractors. When I drive around, all the big operations seem to use the newest tractors. They seem to always trade up instead of down. But maybe the latest John Deere "lock in" and repair costs will make them reverse that buying pattern.
  - bluGill 5y ago
    The big farmers are putting the equivalent of 75000 miles per year on their tractor. They are wearing their tractors out and can't afford for it to break.

by jasode 5y ago

julianlam 5y ago

I believe the argument is that these new tractors are not repairable by yourself, leading to expensive repair and / or replacement cost

jasode 5y ago
>the argument is that these new tractors are not repairable by yourself, leading to expensive repair Correct, but the tradeoff calculation includes offsetting the expensive repair costs with potential increased productivity. Or likewise with the other option, the "savings" from cheap low-tech tractors may be negated by lower productivity.
- PeterisP 5y ago
  Things will break. Costs isn't everything, time to fix matters. An older tractor can usually be repaired on the same day on-site, causing a few hours of downtime; a newer tractor that will be returned from service in a week causes a huge loss of productivity.
  - bluGill 5y ago
    Anyplace you use for service will have a fix it in two hours or you get a loaner policy. The two hours starts when you call, even it the mechanic is an hour away on a different farm. When it is busy season they maintain extra hours
  - jjk166 5y ago
    Seems like it would be easily addressed the way car repairs are: insurance pays for a rental while yours is in the shop. So long as peoples equipment isn't all breaking down at the same time, a service with just a few pieces of equipment could probably service a large area. That way you can also get proper repairs done, rather than having to do a quick hack that gets you back up and running by whatever deadline you have but causes long term problems.
    - albertsondev 5y ago
      Except peoples' equipment would most likely all be breaking down at the same time, because everyone is harvesting at the same time.
- zinekeller 5y ago
  That might be justifiable if the service network is basically as fast as a DIY repair, however from what I read it is still treated to be a week-long turnover which might be fine for a low-stake consumer device but a downtime here means that net productivity will be lower than having less efficient but easily repairable machines.
jaclaz 5y ago
At least on construction equipment (agricolture may be different) the point is not only about costs (and frequence) of repairs, but rather on machinery down time or production loss. I have managed in the past some high production sites (road tunnels) with a specific sequence of operations and having a jumbo or a wheel loader or an excavator down meant severe delays not only in excavation, but on all the following works (concrete pouring, impermeabilization) and on all the "ancillary" works (ventilation, electric cabins moving, etc.). One of the machine at the excavation front broken for more than a few hours would have meant literally days of delays, complex scheduling modifications, etc., a total mess.

ThemalSpan 5y ago

You can retrofit gps control systems onto older machines.

jasode 5y ago
>You can retrofit gps control systems onto older machines. The highest precision accuracy of RTK devices has vendor-proprietary encrypted signals. E.g: https://www.google.com/search?q=rtk+signal+encrypted+gps+%22john+deere%22 https://www.google.com/search?q=rtk+signal+encrypted+gps+%22... So it seems like retrofitting for "precision ag" also depends on what commercial "RTK network" is offered in the farmer's local area. I think regular GPS is only ~10 ft accuracy so not sure of farmers are retrofitting tractor steering for that lower resolution.
- rdtwo 5y ago
  If you add a serveyed ground station you should be able to do way better than that
- mcculley 5y ago
  >I think regular GPS is only ~10 ft accuracy This has not been true for quite a while. The equipment used on surveying, farming, and construction equipment is much more accurate thanks to the availability of multiple GNSSs (e.g., GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, BeiDou) and terrestrial base stations to remove error (WAAS, DGPS). See: https://www.gps.gov/systems/gps/performance/accuracy/ https://www.gps.gov/systems/gps/performance/accuracy/
- myself248 5y ago
  Yeah but you don't need commercial services to get down to the inch anymore. Running your own base station has gotten cheap and easy; witness Sparkfun selling their RTK Express kit like hotcakes. Integrating it into the vehicle is a fun second ROS project for someone who already built a toy robot car. There's a substantial population of highschoolers building the necessary skills, the trick is just to connect them to the jobs.
- snovv_crash 5y ago

bryanrasmussen 5y ago

well that sounds like marketing, which sometimes marketing can be correct, and sometimes it can be a bunch of BS. I don't know which is the case here but my hunch would be that if it were correct then old iron wouldn't be worth more than new to the people who would be best suited to know if it were BS or not. There at any rate seems to be a discrepancy between what is supposed to be the case, and what people who should know seem to believe is the case.

jasode 5y ago
>sometimes marketing can be correct, and sometimes it can be a bunch of BS. I don't know which is the case here but my hunch would be that if it were correct then old iron wouldn't be worth more than new to the people who would be best suited to know if it were BS or not. I don't know if the auctions bidding wars are driven up by homeowners managing their small homestead farm or by bigger commercial operations. Homeowners don't need to compete so buying 30-year old tractors is an easier decision. I agree that using old tech can be an counterintuitive cost-saving strategy -- like FedEx deliberately using a fleet of very old planes that are gas guzzlers instead of buying the latest jets that are more fuel-efficient. Maybe some big commercial farms deliberately buy used low-tech tractors. When I drive around, all the big operations seem to use the newest tractors. They seem to always trade up instead of down. But maybe the latest John Deere "lock in" and repair costs will make them reverse that buying pattern.
- bluGill 5y ago
  The big farmers are putting the equivalent of 75000 miles per year on their tractor. They are wearing their tractors out and can't afford for it to break.