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O/T Really Big Tractors

A

AG48

Member
The other day I was looking through a listing of tractors for sale and I was amazed at the number of really big tractors for sale. By really big I mean tractors with over 250 HP.

I tried to visualize what you would use a 300 or 400 HP tractor to do. I don't mean drawbar HP but PTO HP. I couldn't think of anything.

Help me out - what do they use these giants for ?
I guess if you farm a whole TWP you'd need one but who can afford $250,000 for only one section?

Just curious.
 
Nearly ever farmer here in the Panhandle has at least one and some have. Pulling some really huge equipment makes short order of planting season. Then they set for a year. Something about that don"t make much since to me. Custom silage guys use them to pack silos.
 
It's not uncommon around here to find one farmer owning three or four of those big tractors. With farms in the 3-5000 acre range they need them to pull the big tillage equipment to meet the planting time window. Steigers are especially popular. One dealership sold a new Steiger this past spring that had a list price of over $500,000.
 
The farm I moonlight occasionally operates four "big" tractors ranging from 370 to 530 HP. They are used primarily for spring and fall tillage - ripping, plowing, discing and field cultivating.

Here a CIH MX530 is in charge of the 36' Kraus disc and 36' J&M soil conditioner.

This incidentally is in western NY.
cIMG_2802.jpg
 
Outfit I worked for as a young man bought 17 new ones, about every 4 years. The first year I was there they were all 875 Versitiles, then 956, and the last year they were like a 9080, or some such.
 
For what he has in the price of the tractor, disc and conditioner, you would have thought the dealer would have thrown in a set of front weights for him. Looks like he is running fieldstones instead. ha ha.

Same around here everybody has at least one high HP tillage tractor. My cousins have 3, their "smaller" tractor for seeding and such is a NH 285.

Me... 50 PTO HP on my "big" tractor.

Rick
 
I suspect that the rack in front is just for picking up some of the larger stones that show up in the field, not for weight as those few stones wouldn't add up to much to make any difference.
 
So what if you have a 100K sports car that you drvie every weekend........we have 400K combines we drive 3 weeks a year!

Rick
 
Then where would he put the rocks he picks up when disking? in the cab? every tillage tractor should have a rock box. It's pretty hard on planters and combines if a rock like he has in the box is left on top of the ground in the field, and we Do have many rocks in NY.
 
"Many rocks in NY?" If I had a dime for every rock I've manhandled into tractor stone boxes the past 40 years I could buy out Bill Gates...(!)
 
ACG,
Yup, just making a little joke. Around here almost no one has a rock box on front, instead a couple thousand pounds in weight on the front, cast wheel wts and CaCl in the tires. Very few tracked machines either. I walk my fields and I am lucky to pick half a truck load per year. Now just 20 miles south of here there it looks like Maine/NH. An orchard owner I know claims his best crop evey year is rocks.

Rick
 
Here's our rock box, I think thats the main reason he never pulled the cultipacker behind the drill, we always made a separate pass, and the guy (me) packing, picks up the rocks. Definitely no good for the grain head, planter and so on. My farmer friend really appreciated how the fields looked, made sure none of them stone taters, especially the ones on steroids were left. I did 70 acres, lost 25 pounds, and I did not mind doing it, just my body don't like it much any more, good honest work, up and down off the tractor, I think the pile I made would have filled a dump trailer, or built one heck of a fireplace/chimney !


Oats2009025A.jpg


Oats2009044A.jpg


Oats2009043A.jpg


End result, clean on the surface, can safely lower the cutting height, that and some fertilizer, the oats yield was good, but the straw,(where he makes his money) like at my place, one field went from 10 round bales to 15, which is a full truck load on the ole Mack DM.

Oats2009029A.jpg
 
A guy I have bought feed corn from in the past has a 125 HP Case IH, newer model. He has 200 acres to plow, plant, harvest. (not as big as what you are describing) but I think any tractor over 100HP is big. Cat 3 rear hitch is big.
 
What are rocks and why are they in you fields? When I want rock I have to call a stone quarry.Just making fun as I use to farm on the east coast in limestone rock.You could not pick them up you needed a bulldozer to dig them out.I told my wife if I ever buy a farm it will be where there are no rocks,we now live in the midwest no rocks only snow.
 
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