Ep143: Are Rural King tractors a good brand to own?

hello everybody welcome to red tool-house on our YouTube channel we talk about all things homesteading and try to implement some of those things here on our rural 100 acres in southern West Virginia well in today's video I want to have another tractor discussion but I want to answer a viewer question and a couple questions I get here locally I guess that makes sense but the question was posed by Carrie hi Durand Carrie's been watching the channel for a long time appreciate you watching Carrie her question was what do I think about the tractors that northern tools self that you can see online or you can see in the northern tools catalog those are noir track tractors so that was her question well another question I get a lot is what do you think about the rural King tractors have you checked those out we have a rural king new in our area so it's it's about a 20-minute drive from here so you know what are my thoughts on those so this video I want to do two parts we're going to do today's video and the next video which if I time this right should be Wednesday's video so today's videos Monday Wednesday's video will be the second part so the first thing I want to do I'll actually want to take on the rural King tractor discussion first so do that first and then we'll talk about the North tract tractors okay so this obviously is not a rural King tractor for those of you new to the channel this is my coyote this is my DK 35 it's a 2002 model I'm in a great tractor I love it but in with anything with tractors you always have your eyes looking at other tractors right one green eyes I guess when it comes to tractor time hmm so as I mentioned earlier we have a rural king new to our area so it's been within the past year so it's kind of exciting to have a store like this dedicated to farming and those type of things so here recently they've started having tractors out in front of them and I didn't realize that rural King had a tractor brand so so some of my friends now we talk the question obviously comes up as all conversations naturally gravitate towards tractors no matter where you are so the question was what do you think about those rural king tractors and like I know nothing about them they look sexy on the parking lot but a lot of things look sexy on the parking lot so I decided to stop and take a look at that time was a rule King I said stop check them out and see what they're all about so I stopped and went through them a little bit I thought okay we're gonna have to look into this more so in trying to do a comparison or just to figure out what they're all about I obviously go to what style and size of tractor I know this is a DK 35 so this is a 35 horse rural King has their RK 37 which is a 37 horse it's within that ballpark there there RK 37 comes in four styles or formats or setups whatever you want to call it they have the open cab which is this what I'm sitting on here or they have the the cab model which has air conditioning heat and all that fun stuff and then they have regular shuttle shift or they have hydrostatic now we could argue for days we may do a video just about what's the difference between shuttle chef and hydrostatic and which is better and we'll take a lot of people off because we'll go one way and somebody will go the other you know it works but looking at those four configurations I wanted to match a configuration again that was as closely similar to mine as possible so we could kind of do some apples to apples comparison well the arcade 37 with an open cab and shuttle shift is the closest thing that that mimics my DK 35 the arcade 37 comes with standard equipment and standard features you'd expect now I did look at one obviously mimic one with a front loader so you have the front loader 37 horse engine we talked about we have foil drive it has a class one three-point hitch on the back and one thing I thought was interesting with the arcade 37 if you've got the front loader then they would go ahead and give you rim guards loaded tires and as we've talked in a previous video I'll link it up here about tires the rim guard is beet juice and that's weighted liquid to put in your tires there so again standard features nothing really out of the ordinary nothing really missing when you look at a standard compact 35 horse tractor or somewhere around those range some nothing nothing that aligned there so when looking at that arcade 37 comparably equipped it's brand-new MSRP price according to the website was 1998 so $20,000 we're talking when I buy this tractor brand-new in 2002 it was about 17,000 now granted that's 15 years ago so a lot has changed then when I try to when I try to look at a comparable coyote they don't make a 35 horse DK model anymore it starts at 45 but the CK 3510 is about 24 grand depending on what you look at so you know 17 to 24 so let's say just for the sake of easy argument to buy this tractor configuration new in coyote would be about 24 grand our K rool king brand you're looking about 20 grand right away obviously cheaper you're gonna save about 4 grand there so you know always kind of like that that's nice everybody likes to save some money well the big question is who actually is rural king tractor rural king obviously doesn't manufacture their own tractor so what is the bone structure who is RK tractors well if you do a little research you can look on rural Kings website so their tractor website which is RK tractors calm and you'll quickly see they don't they'll make any bones they don't hide it they have it on their literature and everything the manufacturer is tym tractors and if you go to tu im's website you can see everything about them but tym is a very large tractor manufacturer in Seoul Korea so rural king tractors are Korean made according to tym s website that their tractors are brought in from Seoul and brought into Wilson North Carolina for assembly so final assembly takes place in Wilson North Carolina now as far as the RK tractors rural Kings website says the tractors are brought in from Seoul Korea and assembled either in Waverly Ohio or Williston Florida so one of three places there so what about the engine what's the engine the Archaea tractor that's obviously the big question what is the powertrain well the powertrain is a Yanmar diesel engine with EPA Tier four compliance no tear for EPA obviously that's where everything's going now emissions controls all those type of things so you know I say yuck to that but you're not going to avoid that much anymore with new new tractors so obviously the biggest question that comes up when you're thinking about these type of tractors like an are like a rural King tractor that you would at a box store what about parts and service and what about warranty interestingly enough about parts rule King actually boasts that they do all their own service and provide all their own parts at their box stores so if you bought a tractor there you could also get it serviced and you can get parts for it they supposedly have a full tractor service team now so if they're selling the tractor then that means they've invested in bringing the guys in to do the service on it as far as parts go their website states that their distribution centers inventory a large quantity of parts so that leads you believe that maybe a one day or two days ship to their actual stores so they're probably gonna have just the basic parts they're oil filters oil that type of stuff but any actual parts you would need you'd probably have to put an order in for those so thinking about that it's like okay rule King's service guys maybe so I thought well it's a tym tractor what about looking at my local tym authorized dealer and service guy well I don't have a local to you I am the closest one is in Eastern Kentucky which is about two hour drive which ironically enough is about the same distance to find my closest dealer for coyote where I bought mine where about this tractor fifteen years ago it was about two hours away so again not a huge issue there but when I talked to the guys in Eastern Kentucky the to uim guys I said do you all service rural king tractors and he says but we can I said but do you and he said well we're not allowed to do warranty work but we can work on him and I asked him our tym parts completely interchangeable with RK is it just the the hood ornaments the only difference on the tractors and he said you know I don't know so again that leads you to believe that okay there's not a there's not a real partnership there there's not a symbiotic relationship but between tym dealers in RK so that's to be expected I guess to some degree not everybody plays nicely together but it really is the same platform of tractor now there could be some subtle differences there so if you if you buy a tractor for rural King and it's you hours and hours away but you've got a tym dealer close by then you may want to talk to those guys first to say will you work on this tractor it sounds like they're not allowed to do warranty work unless there's some special Accord set up there so speaking of warranty work what about the warranty on an arcade tractor now I do like this and this is actually good marketing it's really what it boils down to basically it really doesn't talk about necessarily the craftsmanship of the tractor it's just what kind of money you're gonna throw at it royal King offers a two-year eight-year warranty so two year warranty on the whole tractor bumper to bumper if tractors head bumpers but then an eight year warranty on the powertrain now the two-year warranty it's two years or 2,000 hours on the eight year warranty it's eight years or three thousand hours so not quite the same math there but three thousand hours is still a decent amount of time to have on a tractor I actually still only have five hundred eighty six hours on this tractor so I assume that's still working you know I haven't noticed in a while so with the warranty again a warranty warranty is what it is some people you hear horror stories about people finding warranties some people not have any issues with them that remains to be seen you can you can search tractor forums you can look at some things about the arc a warranties half of people say they're great have people say they're not everybody's always going to have an opinion on something there so what's the takeaway what's my opinion on an arcade tractor well looking at them you're being seen one in person be able to crawl up on it touch it feel at all that type of stuff it's a good looking tractor I mean it looks like it's built solidly now there are some things that I see on it that I feel like II I don't know how that's gonna hold up a little little pieces that are maybe a little too plastic a little too cheap little too flimsy it all depends on what you're going to do with the tractor of course and how you're going to handle it and how you're going to take care of it but all in all the tractor seems to be a solid build if you look at the history of TI m it's actually got a decent history they are they're decent reputable manufacturer and you're from Korean standards now I'm sitting obviously on a de dong tractor so for me to say Korea's junk or anything like that would be hypocritical so again you just don't necessarily know what's gone into the build of that and when TI t ym says hey we're going to rebrand this tractor for rural king are there special accords or the things that they've made of a taking things away have they cut corners somewhere who knows well I talked to the service guys at my local rural King just got an idea of what these guys are about and the guy I was talking to you was a diesel mechanic he was very young and I'm not gonna say just because you're young you're not a good mechanic but obviously experiences with lemon there but you know this guy and a couple other guys seem very knowledgeable now there's a couple guys there that I wouldn't let do service on my bicycle so again you're not quite sure what you've got there when it comes to service on your tractor that's going to end up being unique per location maybe you've got a really good team you know what I like to see and again this sounds biased I like to see a guy maybe my age or older that says oh yeah I've worked on tractors for years I could take care of your service for you you know that to me would give me a little more comfort there but if that guy leaves well you got and in full disclosure I have never in the fifteen years I've owned this tractor I've never taken it in for service I do all my own service so I really don't have a metric to compare against to say well this service is so much better than that because I've never done it I didn't need to and in full disclosure I've never worked I've never driven an arcade tractor it's not like I've had one out in the field to test it out to see how it goes so I really don't feel comfortable say thumbs up or thumbs down to RK that's not fair obviously I have an opinion everybody on the Internet has opinion right but with that being said there are some considerations or questions that I would suggest before making a purchase on an arcade tractor the first suggestion I'd make is talk to somebody who owns one if you know of anybody obviously the Internet is a great tool you can go on some of these forums start talking to these people that have tractors ask him what do you like about it what do you not like about it what's ticked you off what have you loved what issues have you had have you had any issues how many of you know what have you what do you use it for have you run it over a hill yet all those type of things ask whatever question you want and see what they think about it if that person happens to be local ask him hey can I come over and sit on it drive it around maybe tear up some stuff with it see how far they'll let you go before they run you off their property I think what's really critical to is talk to your local rural King find out talk to the service department talk to those guys and see say if this is a brand-new rural King and everybody behind the service counter it looks like they're wet-behind-the-ears yeah maybe yeah maybe that's a big deal maybe not but go ahead and talk to them and just see get their opinion see what they've what they've run into far as service goes since they've been in location they're a big question can you do basic mechanic work now this is a this is for anything whether we're talking tractors are side by sides or tillers or anything can you turn a wrench do you know how to do basic mechanic work that if you do then you're really going to eliminate a lot of these service discussions if you can change your oil on your tractor if you can diagnose some basic issues then service is really not going to be that big of a deal parts still but again with the internet almost anybody can get parts off the internet for anything so you know if you're comfortable with doing your own mechanic work to a certain degree then maybe that's not that big of a deal if you're not a wrench Turner and service is something you're gonna have to take advantage of then think about transport are you going to have a way to transport your tractor to the service department it's not like unless you live right beside wroking you're not gonna hop on this thing and drive it in for an oil change or whatever service warranty service needs to be done you're gonna have to transport that so rule King does deliver to your home when you purchase the tractor so you're going to be able to have it delivered here to your house but you're gonna have to coordinate some way to get it trailer to rural king for service so take that in consideration if the rule King's a couple hours away that you bought it from then you're obviously going to have to transport your tractor quite a ways to get it serviced another question is downtime a big deal for you again with a new brand manufacturer tractor and maybe it has downtown maybe it doesn't maybe it's the tank maybe it's rock solid maybe it has issues but if you have to transport it to rural King for service are you in a situation where hey I use my tractor every single day I got to have it every day I don't know that I can have this downtime now then that's another issue as well if you're in that situation then you need to learn how to turn a wrench because if you can run into that with almost any tractor and another big question is how long do you plan to own this tractor is this a gateway tractor for you is this going to lead to much larger and other tractors that are going to make you broke overtime or is this a tractor you think you need on your homestead or small farm indefinitely think about that so well okay what's the longevity of these rural king tractors mmm nobody really knows we're all kings not new and not old enough Keva the same situation I was in with coyote coyote been around for wasn't like they were brand-new in 2002 but around our area and nobody really had a lot of experience with them so I kind of took that risk well this I want to have this tractor for a long time and so far 15 years later knock on wood it's still been a solid tractor the one thing that does give me a little bit of pause when talking about rural king tractors is their service and sales department is directly linked to their retail and retail is retail retail changes all the time rural King is family-owned it's still but it's still a box store and they they are franchised so it's one of those deals where you can say well if something changes in the retail industry they may go away or they may change their business model they decide hey we're getting out of the tractor business so again if that happens and you've got an arcade tractor that's 10 years old you're still going to need parts you're still going to need all those type of things so that's where I'd make sure that this tym connection would still be solid at that point because you may not have a rocking in your area and another thing as I mentioned already rural King brand tractor is a newer brand tractor just like coyote at one time was a new tractor just like most tractors at one time are new tractors so when you're looking at you say well because it's a new brand they're gonna do a lot of things to try to get that brand brand level up that's why I'm kind of afraid to look at or buy a new coyote because the way this was built it's very solid I hear stories and reports that coyote doesn't put as much detail or much quality product into manufacturing these anymore now that may be true that may not but in that situation these new manufacturers will sometimes build them over spec so how is this a really good belt a well-built tractor people really start liking them two years three years manufacturing everybody gets behind it and then they can start to cut corners they can start to cut back in some of these areas so that may be an issue there they also lower the price again low entry price gets people looking hey well-built tractor cheaper than the competition we're going to give it a try and then of course the the warranty better warranty than everybody else you know how can you lose it that's the marketing gimmick there that's the game they're playing in marketing take a product that's built pretty well with the plan of maybe it going downhill I'm not saying that's what roll kings doing but that's a very common model set the price low to get people to bite throw a big warranty out there and just plan on eating it for a while if you do have warranty issues and then hopefully you get a lot of sales going and you ride that momentum to become a profitable manufacturer at some point so again not necessarily saying thumbs up thumbs down I do like the looks of the tractor but unless I had it here for a couple days driving it around or I really sit down and talked with somebody that had one I wouldn't feel comfortable saying yes or no but definitely do your homework if you're if you're going to look at buying one of those tractors do all the research do more than I did of course check out their website arcade tractors comm but don't just camp out there again that's marketing they're going to tell you what they want you to hear look on some of these third-party tractor forums talk to people get some discussion going and see what they've luck they've had with their arcade tractors one other note if you want to learn more about arcade tractors roll King and I do appreciate their approach on this this was kind of cool they just recently announced actually just last week I got an email from rural King I'm on their email list so I got an email from rural King that said check out our partnership with a YouTube channel called outdoors with the Morgans and it's a it's a YouTube channel about homesteading and outdoor type stuff well they've got a lot of RK tractors and I haven't watched their videos yet but just kind of flipping through their channel in this research it looks like they have at least two different RK tractors now that royal can give those to them did they buy them I don't know I'm not going to make any assumptions there but when when a retail established it announces a partnership there's obviously some money or some goods changing hands there but they supposedly are going to take the RK tractors through the ringer and show you how how they use them on their farm or homestead so that's something you can check out again there could be some marketing bias there but again do your homework well if you like this video give it a thumbs up if you have any suggestions or comments about RK tractors be sure to leave them below everybody seems to share those well and and I get some good discussion on there subscribe if you haven't and check us out on our website read tool-house calm take care everybody [Music]

Channel: Red Tool House - Homestead

Views: 202,913

Rating: 4.8288045 out of 5

Keywords: red tool house, rk tractors, rk 55, rk 24, rk 37, rural king tractor, rural king, subcompact tractor, rural king tractors reviews, rk37 tractor, rk 37 compact tractor, rk 37 for sale, rk 37 specs, compact tractor comparison, rk 55 tractor, rk 55 from rural king, tractor review, compact tractor

Id: nm7X-rR0u-w

Length: 20min 0sec (1200 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 16 2018