Timberline Homestead A self sufficient homesteading life
Renting a tractor is no cheap cost and maxing out the usage during the rental time requires multiple rentals, and a lot of money out of pocket! So we’ve started looking at purchasing a Kubota Tractor… we are checking tractor auctions, craigslist, ebay, new, and more!
Where we live renting a 35HP New Holland tractor w/backhoe runs approximately $320 per-24hr period with an allotted 8hrs on the clock not much time really unless you have a small project!
The 35HP is not much when your primarily moving dirt, work on plumbing over long distances with hard clay, grey water filtration system, a pond, stump removal, and moving large trees and a lot of brush. Frankly the 35HP was BARELY limping along with a loaded bucket up and down the hills in our backyard.
With the 35HP rental doing what we asked just extremely slow and the extreme cost of at only 2 rentals a month we realized we would be better off owning a tractor, even if we got 3 years out of it using it 4 days a month we could most likely sell it in 3 years and come out way ahead over renting less than 3 times a month.
After doing a bunch of research, and going to different local dealers we settled on the Kubota Tractor brand. Like Ford, Chevy and Dodge everyone has their favorite brand, and I’d prefer not to get into one vs another so I will only illustrate why we chose the Kubota Tractor to buy. The Kubota Tractor support, and local resources were much greater than New Holland and Deere, as far as we were concerned we didn’t want to look into other imports or up and coming manufactures that haven’t been proven for years and years. The raving Kubota reviews online, and after talking to numerous rental places and almost all had nothing bad to say, in fact most said that they and their renters abused the tractors but rarely did they require more than maintenance. This alone was great news! We had also talked to numerous local Kubota Owners and some had come from Deere and New Holland and were much happier with the Kubota. Also, after checking out the other brands the Kubota seemed to be better built, and much more “thought out”.
We started looking at numerous Kubota Tractor Models unsure of which one would fit our needs specifically.
As far as the tractor went we knew for sure we wanted:
- HST Transmission
- Less than 500 hours.
- Front & Rear Aux. Hydraulics
- Backhoe
- Backhoe Thumb
- Something that would last and work very well for moving lots of dirt, debri, tree, stump removal, and more.
- 40-60hp due to the size overall we needed so we could utilize it almost everywhere on our property
We knew that the 35HP was not cutting it, and that a 40-45hp would most likely be fine.
After researching forums, ebay, and tractor auctions we started looking at the following Kubota Models:
- Kubota L5030
50hp, used price range 23-28k with a backhoe, FEL, and misc additional items we wanted varied on price. - Kubota L48
The Kubota L48 is a rather popular tractor as is the L5030 and we were having a problem finding L48s with low hours, that were not approaching the price of new L45 tractors. - Kubota M59
After talking with people online, local, owners of the L45 and pricing out other new Kubotas with all the options we decided to check out the Kubota M59 at a local dealer. Compared to the M59 the L45 simply looks like a toy due to the much smaller tires on the L45. The M59 really was attractive because of the hydraulic options available as well as the great PTO HP output for any future additions we may add like a 6″ PTO driven wood chipper. - New Holland 40HP-45HP
While looking we also were checking out the 40-45 HP New Holland Tractors simply because we LOVED the JoyStick FEL controls on the New Holland! It was apparent rather soon the New Holland was not built as beefy as the Kubota, and not nearly as beefy as any of the Kubota TLBs.
It should be noted that we have no plans to mow or anything to mow so we need no mid-mount attachments. If you need mid-mount attachments then the Kubota TLB units would not be for you. Since our primary usages would be moving dirt, trees, trenching, water related projects, etc, we are confident we will utilize the FEL primarily and never have a reason to remove it or use a mid-mount attachment.
Our Kubota tractor shopping was taking us from Ebay to Tractor Forums, Craigslist, and even were eyeballing some Tractor Auctions.
Upon further inspection, and price comparisons and getting a tractor with the low hours we wanted we realized it was probably smarter to buy a new tractor put a good amount down, and take advantage of a 0% interest offer. This way we could get EXACTLY what we wanted, it would be new, and have the low hours we wanted, and since it was 0% our monthly payments on the tractor would be the same or slightly more than a used model. This also meant we could take advantage of implement purchases at the time of the tractor, and wrap them into the 0% offers.
Currently Kubota and New Holland are doing 0% offers.
Depending on the model implements we were interested in are:
- 4 in 1 bucket
- Box Scraper
- 3 Pt Hitch (if not standard)
- Grapple Bucket
I am hoping we can find something affordable, with many of the implements we’d like 🙂
