Why Can't John Deere Tractors Lift as Much as Other Brands?

hey it's Brock here from Rock Hill Farms and today I want to talk about why John Deere compact tractors for the most part lift less weight than their competitors almost every other brand of compact tractor in the same size and horsepower range will lift more than a John Deere tractor and I've been thinking for the last six months and asking myself why is that and then yesterday Neil from Messick's equipment made a video where he kind of touched on the same subject and gave his thoughts on it it was a really good video I'll put a link to his video in the description you should probably go check that out because it was a good informative video and he spoke more trying to give facts and things he knew where I'm gonna admit I'm just speculating and giving my opinions I do have one critique of Neil's video and he's aware of this it's just hard to cover everything in a video but he had scales under the front axle and put weight in the bucket and he said he commented on how quickly that weight puts you at your capacity of your front axle that ratio between that much weight there and this much weight on the axle is completely dependent on how much ballast you have because hypothetically you could put enough ballast on the back of the tractor that it lifts the front wheels off the ground and at that point there's no weight on your axles so before we talk about my tractor and its lift capacity I want to start by talking about kind of the most popular segment of the tractor market right now which is 25 horsepower tractors my friend Tony from Tony's tractor Adventure just picked up a tym T25 I believe that has like 2200 pounds of lift capacity on the front end loader meanwhile the John Deere 1025r I think is listed at 900 pounds or something like that so we're comparing two 25 horsepower tractors and the tym will lift about two and a half times as much so why is that first I'll tell you what it's not the answer is that John Deere can't figure out how to build a small tractor that will lift more they could make it lift as much as they want it's a decision that the tractor manufacturer has to make how much do we want this machine to be able to lift and I've got a couple of theories about why I think John Deere is limiting lift capacity and probably to most of the audience both of my theories on it are going to come across negative towards John Deere but that's not what I'm trying to accomplish here I'm not making this video as for or against John Deere so I'm confident that the answer is not that they don't know how to make it lift more the next possible answer could be maybe they're just being cheap and they say we'll just make this machine that can't lift as much we can put smaller cylinders on it a lighter weight Axle just not build it as well and because of our green paint we'll still be able to sell a lot of them I do think it's possible that saving cost is a factor but there are two other explanations that make more sense to me I kind of wonder if John Deere is trying to save you from yourself and that feels insulting I bet it kind of I don't like like the government or Corporation or anyone else trying to tell me what I can and can't do but if John Deere takes this tractor right here and doubles the lift capacity they've also doubled the likelihood that I break my front axle and they've doubled the likelihood that I get into a dangerous rollover accident and maybe they don't want the liability of taking on lawsuits because a lot of people who buy these small tractors have never ran any kind of equipment before and they end up tearing things up or getting hurt in some kind of an accident like that so one possibility I think is out there is that John Deere has had some major lawsuits about rollovers and I think it's possible that they want to limit that risk by saying we don't think a machine this size should really be able to lift more for safety reasons so let's say you make a smaller tractor like we were just talking about Tony's got this 25 horse Tim and when I talked to Tony last he was telling me like how heavy built their axles are well good so they're doing the right thing because it would be irresponsible to give you more lift capacity without giving you a heavier axle but the problem with that is if you continue to beef up the tractor to compensate for more lift capacity is it becomes a heavier tractor and that's where my second thought process on this goes that John Deere is making a 25 horse Sub-Compact tractor with the idea you can take it around in your yard without tearing up your yard it's the next thing up that's just this much bigger than the old garden tractors everyone remembers and loves that they used to make these really heavy duty garden tractors but they were tiny right well the 1025r is supposed to be just one step up from that and it's doing basic tasks that a homeowner would do in their yard and what I can tell you from experience is that when you have a small tractor like mine that believe it or not this machine the way it's setting right now weighs over five thousand pounds if you have a really small tractor that weighs 5 000 pounds you can't mow your yard with it anymore and a lot of people are buying that 1025 to mow their yard with so I think it makes sense to have a lightweight tractor that just isn't very heavy and doesn't tear up your yard but if you're going to make that tractor you should not have it lift very much so in Neil's video he talked about the fact that there's an arms race right now to see how much weight you can have a small tractor lift and with that needs to come education and heavier Builds on the rest of the tractor I was really thinking about him saying that and thinking if I'm a new tractor manufacturer and I want to make a name for myself there are only so many things you park every manufacturer of 25 horsepower tractor right next to each other and I'm not gonna buy because of outdated brand loyalty I want to compare these most of the specs aren't things that people are going to get that into and most of the features are optional on every tractor so third function every manufacturer pretty much has that as optional all of the things you might be looking for they're just line items on the on the bill out so how do you stand out lift capacity it's flashy you can you can impress people by saying how much your lift capacity is so I don't blame manufacturers for trying to sell more tractors by having more lift capacity I just think it's an interesting conversation to have and you might call me a lightweight but here's the truth of the matter I got this tractor way down to over 5 000 pounds and if I put the max lift capacity on which since I upgraded this loader I can now lift 1700 pounds if I lift 1700 pounds with this I don't feel all that confident doing a lot with it I don't know that I want a machine this size to lift more than 1700 pounds if I want something to lift more I want it to have bigger tires than I have and just be built wider and the whole the whole shooting match so I just think if you look at lift capacity it's important that you match up the frame size with the lift capacity and with the T25 that Tony got I'm not picking on that machine because that is built out bigger as a comparison John Deere has the 10 25 20 25 30 25 they have three frame sizes of 25 horsepower but none of those have a high lift capacity and having just went through it all I think it's good that the 1025 has a low lift capacity but I think John Deere should step it up and that 30 25 should be able to lift a lot more than it does at some point this becomes a circle that doesn't make sense anymore because if you say we're going to build the heaviest built 25 horsepower tractor out there it's going to have the most lift capacity and it's going to be the heaviest and the largest frame and the most everything then don't you feel like maybe it's short on horsepower depends on what you do with it most things that need horsepower are your PTO implements so if you're not running any High usage PTO implements then maybe that really large frame 25 horsepower is the way to go but somebody else could look at that tractor and say out of all the tractors this size with that much lift capacity this one has the least horsepower now you're at the bottom of the list instead of the top so it's all in how you look at it after listening to myself talk for a while I'm not sure if I made a point but I do think these are interesting things to think about and I'd like to hear what you think about everything I just said anyway this was kind of a long rambly video just wanted to share my thoughts I appreciate you taking time to watch I'll put links on the screen to a couple more of our videos and I'll see you next time

Channel: Rockhill farm

Views: 103,724

Keywords: 1025r lift capacity, John Deere tractor lift capacity, compact tractor lift capacity, John Deere vs, highest lift capacity, highest lift capacity 25 hp tractor, highest lift capacity compact tractor, best 25 hp tractor, John Deere, farm vlog, homestead, 2038R, 325G

Id: Zzq-E_GNPe0

Length: 9min 50sec (590 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 22 2023