[Cliff R]

I finally made a decision yesterday and have a new Compact tractor on order.

I went with the Yanmar SA424. Over the last month or so I've shopped compact tractors pretty hard and learned a LOT. Yanmar made all the John Deere compact tractors well into the 1990's before John Deere started doing their own in the Georgia plant. JD still uses Yanmar engines in them.

It appears that most of these tractors and made in South Korea except for Kubota, Yanmar and John Deere. There is also at least one brand made in Turkey if memory serves me correctly.

I really wanted to stay green with my purchase but John Deere simply has their tractors priced too high and you have to add just about everything you want to them driving the prices very quickly over $30,000. Even so this wasn't all about saving money. I set out to buy a small tractor for small jobs. Mostly loader work at the beginning since I recently logged one of my properties and have over 70 tops to deal with. I also need to do a lot of work to my driveway (gravel) this year due to excessive rainfall and washing out.

Once those projects are caught up I'd love for the new machine to double as a mower, but that wasn't a requirement for the purchase.

While shopping I actually got to test out several tractors. We had a big snowstorm dump on us so I did a lot of loader work on site with them which helped make my decision.

I had narrowed down the purchase to a several units. Kubota B2601HST, LX2610HSD, L2501, John Deere 2025R, John Deere 2032R, John Deere 3032E, or Yanmar SA424.

After actually testing them I took the Kubota LX2610 and B2601 off the list. The B2601 was weak for loader work and slow hydraulics. The LX was OK but "whiny" on the hydraulics and I wasn't liking their "treadle-pedal" system either.

After finding out what it would cost to outfit any of the John Deere models with the equipment I wanted they went off the list. This left the Kubota L2501 and Yanmar SA424.

The Kubota L2501 is a robust machine and very well built. It was lacking in power at times and the 3rd range was next to useless without a slight down hill grade and tail wind. It has no mid PTO and too big and heavy for a belly mower anyhow. It was fine very good for loader work and would have served me well here. I would have bought one but there is a nationwide backlog for the loaders with the skid-steer quick disconnect system. A pinned bucket wasn't going to cut it, although I did find several machines in other areas new on the lot that had them. I wanted to keep my business local so didn't jump on any of them.

I went to Yanmar last, mostly because it wasn't Green or Orange and not that attractive in appearance like a lot of the models out there. The rounded hood and goofy headlights was keeping me away from New Holland, Bobcat and a few others plus I wasn't as comfortable with a South Korean built machine vs Japanese.

Our local Yanmar dealer had a well used SA424 as a rental unit and they let me spend all the time I wanted testing it. I actually made two trips over there to run the unit and was very pleased with everything about it. Yanmar uses two hydraulic pumps to split the load, power steering/loader and transmission/PTO. The loader works flawlessly even at idle or lower RPM's. The transmission was very responsive and not lacking for power in high range. It also didn't whine and howl in protest if you went to move it under load without the engine all wound up.

It was also less expensive and came with loaded rear tires at no extra cost. I added third function remote, grapple and wheel weights and it was still thousands less than an entry level John Deere or the L2501 with a pinned bucket loader.

Another big plus was zero percent financing for 84 months, first responder and Military discounts, and a 10 year powertrain warranty.

I'd add here that I looked at a LOT of really nice lightly used machines, a couple were really low hour and mint condition, but the price jump to a new unit with much better financing and a 10 year warranty quickly took all of them off the list. In the used market right now there are no "deals", at least nothing to look at without traveling quite a ways. Even well used machines and ragged around the edges aren't far enough off the price of new ones with full warranties to get me to go that direction.

Well, hopefully I'll be happy with it. It woln't be here for a few weeks, I'll report back with the good, the bad and the ugly once I start pulling out some logs with it.........Cliff