yamhat
New member
Greetings,
I'm looking for some guidance on my first tractor purchase. My wife and I are city kid transplants, moved to the country finally after years of being fed up with neighbors and noise and so on...I'm sure some of you know how that goes.
So we bought a house out of town on 10 acres, which may expand to 20 down the road, the 10 next door are for sale but they want an exorbitant amount for it..so maybe if they get desparate later on? hehe. Right now it's basically all forest with a small yard around the house. We want to clear quite a bit of it out, what we want in the long (maybe very long) term is to have maybe an acre or so of nice yard, a small apple orchard, some pasture for a few goats and maybe horses farther down the road, enough garden to produce as much of our food as we can, with some woodlot in the back for firewood, and I'd like to keep a 50' or so perimeter of forest around everything for privacy...so realistically we're looking at probably 5 or so acres that would actually be maintained.
so, our immediate needs are land clearing, driveway maintainance & snow removal (400ish foot gravel drive with a couple of parking areas), tilling gardens, and whatever other random stuff comes up. I definitely won't be mowing with it for a while and I don't know if I ever will...we are in northern Minnesota and I mow the grass maybe 5 times a year...the push mower is fine for now.
implements I'm looking at for sure: loader (moving snow, dirt), backhoe (pulling stumps out, digging footers & running water/electric for new outbuildings, digging some drainage ditches, planting trees), rear snowblower, tiller, generator to replace our POS old gas one that's almost impossible to start, some kind of blade to take care of the driveway.
on the "maybe" list down the road: mower, chipper (for small stuff only, we heat with wood), log splitter (been doing fine with the 8lb maul so far, so I dunno)
so there's what I want to do. Our land is pretty hilly and with the thick woods I don't want something huge that's going to tip over and/or catch branches all the time.
I started out looking used and I'm sure like many newbies was floored at how well these things hold their value. Then I started looking at the Chinese tractors they sell at Northern Tool...which sound like they can be decent if you don't mind doing some tinkering (I don't), but the main thing that ruled them out is that my friend let me play around with his kubota B7500, and thusly I determined that the hydrostatic tranny is a must for me, and it's not an option on the Northern tractors.
I've done plenty of reading and checked out the local dealers and have gravitated to Kubota. both the JD and NH dealers here primarily deal with construction equipment and kinda looked at me funny. there are no dealers close by for Kioti or Mahindra, there's a Bobcat dealer but he also happens to be the Kubota dealer and doesn't carry any of the Bobcat CUTs.
Whatever I get needs to fit in my 7' garage door, and I'd like to be able to tow it without buying a new truck (have '01 toyota tundra, 7500lb tow rating). I can afford a tractor *or* a new truck, not both, hehe.
when I started going to dealers I was thinking I probably wanted the B3200/3300, or maybe a small L. Well, the closest dealer (the bobcat/kubota guy) had a large gap in his lineup -- a B2920 to an L3940, nothing in between. not helpful. so, we drove to the next closest dealer, about 90 miles away...he had a lot more to choose from and was much more helpful to boot. I was pretty surprised by my impressions...
I really liked the B2920. it seems really maneuverable and stable, I'm not worried about handling it in the woods/hills at all. My wife was comfortable driving it too, maybe I want that feature and maybe I don't! I'll never get to use it.
so on to the bigger...they had a B3200 and an L3400 parked right next to each other. to be frank, I was turned off by the 3200. It just seems taller and longer than the smaller Bs without really being any more substantial...I dunno if it's enough to really make a difference in maneuverability. I did notice the vibration people talk about, but it wasn't bothersome enough to be a deal killer for me, I'm not sure if I would have noticed it if I hadn't read about it beforehand. The thing that really got me about the 3200 is that sitting next to the L3400 it just seemed like so much less...just looking at it from behind the axles & rear end are so much smaller...for such a small jump in price the L just seemed like a *lot* better buy. So yeah, on to the L. I didn't realise how big, and perceptively substantial, it would be, feels like sitting on a serious, serious machine. I like where the loader joystick is better on the Bs. I really don't like the separate seat for the backhoe, I'm not a small dude and it looks like major pretzel time on there...the B2920 with the single rotating seat was way more comfortable. main thing that struck me about the L is that it's just...big...but I don't know if that's good or not.
so, anyway, that's where we stand. I'm leaning toward the B2x20 because of the maneuverability issue and the woods. I really don't think I'd be happy driving that L around on our trails. what I want to know is, basically, am I just being stupid about that? when I look at other threads on here where people are talking based on lot size, I see Ls getting recommended for 5-10 acres...on the other hand, my friend with the B7500 has 40 acres of pretty similiar land to ours, and he's totally satisfied with it. realistically, what capabilities am I giving up with a B2620/2920 vs a small L? I'm not really sure if the extra weight is an asset or a liability for what I want to use it for. my gut is telling me that the B is plenty, but since I have no experience with these things I want to hear from some folks who know what they're doing.
Thanks everyone in advance, sorry for the long, rambly post
I'm looking for some guidance on my first tractor purchase. My wife and I are city kid transplants, moved to the country finally after years of being fed up with neighbors and noise and so on...I'm sure some of you know how that goes.
So we bought a house out of town on 10 acres, which may expand to 20 down the road, the 10 next door are for sale but they want an exorbitant amount for it..so maybe if they get desparate later on? hehe. Right now it's basically all forest with a small yard around the house. We want to clear quite a bit of it out, what we want in the long (maybe very long) term is to have maybe an acre or so of nice yard, a small apple orchard, some pasture for a few goats and maybe horses farther down the road, enough garden to produce as much of our food as we can, with some woodlot in the back for firewood, and I'd like to keep a 50' or so perimeter of forest around everything for privacy...so realistically we're looking at probably 5 or so acres that would actually be maintained.
so, our immediate needs are land clearing, driveway maintainance & snow removal (400ish foot gravel drive with a couple of parking areas), tilling gardens, and whatever other random stuff comes up. I definitely won't be mowing with it for a while and I don't know if I ever will...we are in northern Minnesota and I mow the grass maybe 5 times a year...the push mower is fine for now.
implements I'm looking at for sure: loader (moving snow, dirt), backhoe (pulling stumps out, digging footers & running water/electric for new outbuildings, digging some drainage ditches, planting trees), rear snowblower, tiller, generator to replace our POS old gas one that's almost impossible to start, some kind of blade to take care of the driveway.
on the "maybe" list down the road: mower, chipper (for small stuff only, we heat with wood), log splitter (been doing fine with the 8lb maul so far, so I dunno)
so there's what I want to do. Our land is pretty hilly and with the thick woods I don't want something huge that's going to tip over and/or catch branches all the time.
I started out looking used and I'm sure like many newbies was floored at how well these things hold their value. Then I started looking at the Chinese tractors they sell at Northern Tool...which sound like they can be decent if you don't mind doing some tinkering (I don't), but the main thing that ruled them out is that my friend let me play around with his kubota B7500, and thusly I determined that the hydrostatic tranny is a must for me, and it's not an option on the Northern tractors.
I've done plenty of reading and checked out the local dealers and have gravitated to Kubota. both the JD and NH dealers here primarily deal with construction equipment and kinda looked at me funny. there are no dealers close by for Kioti or Mahindra, there's a Bobcat dealer but he also happens to be the Kubota dealer and doesn't carry any of the Bobcat CUTs.
Whatever I get needs to fit in my 7' garage door, and I'd like to be able to tow it without buying a new truck (have '01 toyota tundra, 7500lb tow rating). I can afford a tractor *or* a new truck, not both, hehe.
when I started going to dealers I was thinking I probably wanted the B3200/3300, or maybe a small L. Well, the closest dealer (the bobcat/kubota guy) had a large gap in his lineup -- a B2920 to an L3940, nothing in between. not helpful. so, we drove to the next closest dealer, about 90 miles away...he had a lot more to choose from and was much more helpful to boot. I was pretty surprised by my impressions...
I really liked the B2920. it seems really maneuverable and stable, I'm not worried about handling it in the woods/hills at all. My wife was comfortable driving it too, maybe I want that feature and maybe I don't! I'll never get to use it.
so on to the bigger...they had a B3200 and an L3400 parked right next to each other. to be frank, I was turned off by the 3200. It just seems taller and longer than the smaller Bs without really being any more substantial...I dunno if it's enough to really make a difference in maneuverability. I did notice the vibration people talk about, but it wasn't bothersome enough to be a deal killer for me, I'm not sure if I would have noticed it if I hadn't read about it beforehand. The thing that really got me about the 3200 is that sitting next to the L3400 it just seemed like so much less...just looking at it from behind the axles & rear end are so much smaller...for such a small jump in price the L just seemed like a *lot* better buy. So yeah, on to the L. I didn't realise how big, and perceptively substantial, it would be, feels like sitting on a serious, serious machine. I like where the loader joystick is better on the Bs. I really don't like the separate seat for the backhoe, I'm not a small dude and it looks like major pretzel time on there...the B2920 with the single rotating seat was way more comfortable. main thing that struck me about the L is that it's just...big...but I don't know if that's good or not.
so, anyway, that's where we stand. I'm leaning toward the B2x20 because of the maneuverability issue and the woods. I really don't think I'd be happy driving that L around on our trails. what I want to know is, basically, am I just being stupid about that? when I look at other threads on here where people are talking based on lot size, I see Ls getting recommended for 5-10 acres...on the other hand, my friend with the B7500 has 40 acres of pretty similiar land to ours, and he's totally satisfied with it. realistically, what capabilities am I giving up with a B2620/2920 vs a small L? I'm not really sure if the extra weight is an asset or a liability for what I want to use it for. my gut is telling me that the B is plenty, but since I have no experience with these things I want to hear from some folks who know what they're doing.
Thanks everyone in advance, sorry for the long, rambly post
