Maybe the folks debating trikes vs wide front should try the same tractor both ways. Then they would have a better idea of what to debate.
Our old JD530 came with a single front wheel. That worked fine for the original owners on their flat farmland. The old 2 cylinder JDs are tall tractors and the original owner had it as a trike with a big cultivator slung under the body. After we took off the cultivator and started to use it for pulling a back blade it gave us a lot of scary moments. It got to be that every day was a near miss.
Not only did it tend to lift the front, but with a single front wheel if you drop the front tire (which you can't see) into a hole or off the edge of a rock you are immediately in a precarious position. First thing is that one rear wheel goes light. And then if one rear tire loses traction or comes up against a rock the rotation of the other rear tire will swing the front to the side really, really quickly. Fast enough to throw you sideways in the seat. I've had it spin 90 degrees before I was able to declutch.
It's that side slip - where the front end whips sideways - that is the big problem with a trike.
Most tractors don't do that, but with a tricycle, If one rear tire loses traction the tractor tries to spin the nose to the side.
Flipping or rolling could be a problem, but we know about those - and with luck you can see those coming and avoiding that situation is just part of nature of a trike. But the slide slip takes a person by surprise. Partly the side slip is caused because a single front wheel is so light compared to a wide front end, but simply adding weight didn't help much. There needs to be resistance on the ground.
So after a few years of being stupid, we finally figured out that we had been going about the problem in all the wrong ways. We bought a wide front complete off of a junked JD B. It bolted right up in one afternoon - even used the original bolts, holes, and even the power steering. Thank you JD for an inspired design! What a huge difference! It went from being a tractor that was unsafe even on a flat dirt road to being one that was trustworthy in the rough.
rScotty