A compact utility tractor overview
The challenge of a tractor pull is a great tradition. Souped-up dragster-style machines, spitting smoke, noise and dirt, pull increasingly heavy sleds of weight to see who can tow the most, the farthest, through 300 yards of muddy track. However, real tractor users aren’t looking for a machine with heavy drag. In fact, owners of utility tractors — those do-it-all tool carriers used by farmers, landscapers and large estate owners — need equipment that goes beyond just strong and focuses on streamlined, efficient and productive.
Mow grass, dig trenches, auger holes or pick and place large piles of dirt or gravel with a compact utility tractor’s power take off attachment system (PTO). Compact tractors are a versatile breed of machine, taking implements in the front, back and under the belly, pulling way more than its weight on most jobsites.
Today’s compact tractors are defined as small agricultural tractors equipped with a 540-rpm PTO and a three-point hitch designed for Category 1 implements. Compact tractors generally have a mass less than 4,000 lbs and use less than 40 PTO hp to run their attachments. Today, John Deere, Kubota and New Holland are the three most popular manufacturers of these machines — all with decades worth of compact tractor experience. Yet, there are plenty of new players primed to accommodate the growing compact tractor market (one of small equipment’s most explosive machine categories over the last 10 years). Case IH, Bobcat, Yanmar, KIOTI and Massey Ferguson are all bringing innovative alternatives to the small utility tractor market.
Compact tractors quickly appeared from 40 hp down through the early 1980s, filling the market gap left by American tractor manufacturers gearing up to meet market demand by the American farmers for larger and higher horsepower Ag tractors. Invariably, schools, parks, landscapers, cemeteries, hobby farmers — known as lifestyle families today — all took an immediate liking to these high-production, economical-to-own and user-friendly compact tractors. These general market customers all have one need in common: a compact size machine with a four-wheel drive capability to get more work done.
Most compact tractors today are sold with a loader on the front (typically in a package deal). Most every other attachment will run off the compact tractor’s rear PTO. A PTO system works by taking the engine horsepower and transferring it through a driveline to a series of gears in the transmission housing. This drives a PTO shaft that can be attached to an implement. What is important is how efficiently the machine accomplishes this task. Always compare tractors with like PTO horsepower.
There are hundreds of model choices and unique features galore. So before you start worrying about brand, you will first need to figure out what you want this tractor to do. But after you zero in on your weekly applications (major jobs, jobsite sizes, price points and storage areas), you’ll need a nice catalog of the major brands and models to survey the market before you buy.
Keith Gribbins is managing editor for Compact Equipment, based in Peninsula, Ohio.
