48 Row Corn planter in action

dfoster · Sep 7, 2012

This was a pretty cool demonstration...

John Deere DB120 48 Row Corn Planter In Action.

Eyecatcher · Sep 7, 2012

Did you notice - even the seed was John Deere Green!!

JimWalch · Sep 7, 2012

Yea in the 60's dad thought we were big time farmers with 400 a. using a six row 30" John Deere planter! That thing takes an 80 ft. swath. Our six row took 15 ft.

mikehaugen · Sep 7, 2012

I know a guy that works for a guy (yeah it's one of those) that has one of these. He has had the frame crack more than a couple times due to uneven terrain- in illinois! Has had jd engineers and everything out to check it out to come up with a solution. I guess these were made for kansas or something, if it can't handle the uneven terrain here that is pretty bad.

MHarryE · Sep 7, 2012

One reason for buying JD green is that they usually take care of their errors, especially if it is a large (meaning lots of $$$) customer. I once received an internal Deere video talking about the cost of poor quality with poor quality meaning errors in design along with manufacture. A few years after I started my engineering career I started listening to some friends at work who were interviewing and getting offers for considerably more money than we were making. I interviewed with one of the companies a friend had rejected, a short line farm equipment manufacturer. In designing a manure spreader, their test program was renting a tractor from a farmer near the plant, loading the spreader with sand, and driving up and down a local gravel road for a week. If it crack, they patched. If it lasted, it went into production. Deere spends a higher percentage of sales on design and development than any other major farm equipment manufacturer, but the people there are still human and they screw up, but they do go out of their way to keep the screw ups as their pain, not the customer's. A customer does feel better if somebody from the corporation shows concern, especially if they bring caps.

mikehaugen · Sep 8, 2012

I wasn't necessarily blaming deere, I am a deere fan. But 48 rows wide? That is a lot of weight and a huge distance to span across uneven terrain. Without making flexible, I don't think know if anyone could design one to hold up to that.

JoeBuyer · Sep 8, 2012

MHarryE said:
Deere spends a higher percentage of sales on design and development than any other major farm equipment manufacturer, but the people there are still human and they screw up, but they do go out of their way to keep the screw ups as their pain, not the customer's..

I agree with the first part of this and to a large part the second part, but that certainly is not the case all the time. JD makes super good equipment, but we have heard the "yeah we know it's a problem but it's out of warranty" more than once. JD, as good as they are, is not immune to having a tin ear.

blueriver · Sep 8, 2012

Thats an awesome planter. As stated earlier, when I was a kid and my dad moved to six row we thought it was big time. Just how many acres would justify a 48 row? Heck I'd be hard pressed to turn it around!!!!

Gator6x4 · Sep 8, 2012

Six? Forty Eight? We thought we had "Come To Town" when I was small with a two row planter.

mikehaugen · Sep 8, 2012

blueriver said:
Thats an awesome planter. As stated earlier, when I was a kid and my dad moved to six row we thought it was big time. Just how many acres would justify a 48 row? Heck I'd be hard pressed to turn it around!!!!

not sure, but around here no one really has any field bigger than a couple hundred acres. It doesn't seem worth it to transport that to the field. It reminds me of the guy I saw not long ago with about 1/4 acre lot in town mowing with a jd 445 :laughing:

just out of curiosity, what kind of hp does it take to pull that. I can't imagine a planter takes a lot, but would imagine it would need a big machine just because of the sheer size and weight of that thing to avoid the "tail wagging the dog" syndrome.