Why your tractor needs to have a front loader

hello everybody welcome to ready to house on today's video I want to talk about why you should not buy a tractor if it does not have a front loader on it I'll quantify that statement here just hang with me now a while back I did a video talking about the best tractor attachment that you could have and I was talking about the Box scraper I'll link to a video here but I was I should have prefaced that it was it was the best tractor attachment for your three-point hitch obviously by far hands down the most useful tractor accessory you can have is a front loader the front loader is extremely versatile it can do a lot of things for you it can really help maximize your day it can allow you to do things that you couldn't normally do with just a regular tractor and it could also get you into trouble at times well one of the obvious uses for the tractor bucket or the front loader of course is moving dirt or gravel or or anything like that I mean you're you're basically taking a tractor and turning it into a small end loader obviously depending on the size of your tractor you can determine how much material you can move and the size of your bucket the tractor can handle but it really comes in handy for for moving dirt gravel all those type of things in fact if you look at the combination of a front loader and a box blade then to me I think that's one of the best configurations you can have on your tractor on a small farm like ours where we don't have all this room to to have big equipment in where I can really be able to do a lot of maintenance do some small landscape changes you know different topography elevation things maintenance of roads all those type of things can be done with this configuration so that's a no-brainer right there I've used this set up with the front loader with the Box blade after we had some heavy equipment in to flatten off the land and able to clear a lot of that up some of the space back of the retreat we've done using the loader and the in the box blade maintaining my roads of course definitely the box blade in the in the loader come in handy big-time there so there's a lot of lot of potential use in that configuration well another practical use of the loader is using it as a ladder let's say you're really short and you got to get stuff off the top shelf this will help actually no I don't recommend this I will confess I have used the front loader to do that from time to time but that's what decreases life expectancy i I strongly suggest not use it as it a ladder but man if you do have to reach something high you can get up there pretty easily in fact when you take your 20-foot extension ladder in the bucket and lift the bucket up you can really reach the top of top of your house the top of your bar and all that stuff works pretty well again don't try that at home it can actually work as a jack from your tracker if you have some front-wheel issues flat tire or something you need to take care of then your tractor bucket can lift up the front of your tractor so you can do some work yeah I wouldn't recommend doing this and safety element there but it does come in handy several years ago when the front spindle went out on my tractor the right front spindle that actually went out and back up here on one of the passengers very far away from the barn very far away from the garage but the beauty was that even though I was on a hillside I could point the tractor nose downhill use the bucket to lift it up and I could service this tractor in the meadow so I was able to get the spindle replace to get it all put back together and get it in the garage and do some final maintenance there so it does it's kind of like an impromptu Jack now along those same lines using your bucket of the jacket you find yourself stuck Sanderson are you here I had a full bucket load of dirt or gravel or whatever and it was not allowing my wheels I couldn't get up out of there I ended up with my front wheels and not being able to get out then I crouched and dumped my load and use the bucket as a jack to lift me up and using the bucket isn't sled of course I could put it in reverse so that's multiple times that's helped me where I'm a high side of the tractor on a stump or I've got even contracted out of the ditch that bucket has so much surface area and so much displacement where that not only does it lift the front end up but you're gonna use it almost like a scary sled should be able to back out of here your area but your inserts it saved me multiple times from having to find somebody else in a neighbor or whatever to try to pull me out now usually when it comes to the issue of counterweight usually with a front loader you need to counterweight on the back end I've run into situations in fact just the video we did two or three videos ago where Kelly was operating the tractor lifting up logs and we had the hay spear on the back that really made the rear end light but the back end was coming off the ground so much that I had her stopped so I could put the Box scraper on which is a much more much more weighty and more of a counterbalance there but sometimes when you have something really heavy on the back it's handy to have the counterbalance on the front so some of you Flatlanders may agree to disagree with this but there's times when I have the hay spear on here and I've got a really heavy round bale and I'm going up a steep hill to take the hay to the tractor to the pigs or to some part on the pasture makes me a little uneasy that front end starts to bounce a little bit the front loader it sells pretty heavy so that serves as a counterweight if I didn't have the front loader on it was going up the hill with one of those huge hay bales then that would be a problem this 35 horse track really and big enough to handle some of those bigger bales but if I really am going up something steep have something really heavy on the back and feel a little squirrely then I'll take a bucket load of dirt maybe just scoop up a front loader full of dirt there and that provides a great counterweight and helps me get up the hill without having a lot of front front-end lifting up there well one other benefit of the front loader that you can use it for is a tree felling assistant again not not my number one recommendation in fact in the video footage you're seeing here up at our camp my dad talked me into letting him use the tractor this way I wasn't too crazy about it it kind of sounds logical looks good on paper but bad wind or anything it calls that tree to kick back but we did use it quite a bit using the bucket high to push the tree over as I started it falling to make sure it was going the right direction it's not the number one recommendation I would do there well another way we use the front loader on our tractor of course with the sawmill as is as a hoist our log loader and using my chain wrapped around the bucket with the grapple from Norwood that allows me to lift those heavy logs up it's a great way to be able to pick up those logs and place them on the mill without having issues of manhandling one of those heavy laws now it's a little hard on my bucket some of you guys commented on it and I agree it needs some of the things that if I don't do it right or if you get a car and change the shape of my bucket a bucket snot coyote so it's not the heavy-duty is in the world so that's a concern as well but it comes in the only handy and it's a really good tool for that well the bucket can actually be used as a makeshift forklift well my much older videos where we were building the freezer there you can see that right in front of my right behind my side-by-side we use the bucket as a makeshift forklift to be able to lift up the freezer unit the actual cooling you to set it on top of that the freezer shelf so it came in real handy to lift that I had no other way of getting it up there unless I can figure some sort of hoist or whatever but it was a real handy way of getting that unit lift it up and put it in place now granted I don't have a quick attached option with this tractor configuration definitely something I'm looking into but if you've got a front loader and it has a quick attach then you can remove the bucket of course by fork forklift Forks there's aftermarket accessories where you can buy Forks that can be added to your buckets so there's a lot of different ways that you can actually make it a true forklift but the bucket works as well too you can obviously engineer some things there configure different ways of using it as a forklift to be able to lift items up so basically the front loader of a tractor is a much larger and a much more effortless wheelbarrow so it takes this concept and makes it much much better so there's all kinds of things you can do with it obviously you can haul wood chips you can haul sand you can haul gravel I've holed firewood I've hauled stone I've even hauled wet concrete be able to use my concrete mixer mix up my concrete dump it into the bucket and transport it to where I'm I'm pouring concrete if it's in a peculiar place that I can't get my mixer in so it really has a lot of advantages to it so what are the cons of having a front loader on your tractor but one of the obvious cons is the expense and as I mentioned in the intro saying don't buy a tractor unless you can include one of these I know wanting a front loader rubs against your wallet sometimes you don't necessarily have the funds to be able to get one but I hear people all the time in fact one of my friends did the same situation where he was buying a tractor and he was weighing okay do I want a bigger tractor or do I want a smaller tractor tractor with a bucket he went with the larger tractor without the bucket so he went 10 horsepower greater spent his money there and he regretted it all along hey man I really wish I had gone with a smaller tractor that had that loader now he was looking at a 55 horse Zetter or a 45 horse so he could have afforded the 45 with the loader said he went with a 55 without so that's why I say if you can if you're looking in that situation and your budget allows you maybe get a smaller tractor or one less accessory or one last option in exchange for the front loader because it's really going to come in handy always laugh there's a quote from Joel Salatin somebody says how come you don't have horses on your farm they said until they figure out how to put a front bucket on a horse I don't want to mess with it so a front bucket is going to be expensive if you look at adding a bucket to a tractor of this size yeah maybe five seven even ten grand depending on all the accessory elements you get with it so it's a considerable expense when you look at the whole expense of a tractor well another con and maybe it's not fair to call it a con maybe it's more of a concern is most of these front loaders can lift way more than they should if that makes any sense or way more than the tractor should allow it to this coyote is is a perfect example of that this front loader has a lot of lift to it so much where I can get the rear end of this tractor off the ground fairly easy very quickly now obviously there is an adjustment I can't actually adjust my hydraulic assembly here to to not be able to lift as much but I'm hoping for the past so many years I've hoped that I'm smart enough to know okay well you don't do that don't get fast at it know when you're going to start lifting the front end you should be able to feel that but you can find yourself in a really weird situation or a scary situation where you've got a load of something and bang you feel the rear end coming up it's going to meet somewhere in the middle or again on uneven ground there's a there's a fear of it lifting up and in twisting turning around flatland I don't know you Flatlanders have all the luck but and I've even showed that we can talked about that already with lifting logs using this as a hoist to lift logs sometimes it makes the rear end light and can get you in a situation there where the front end gets a little gets in a low spot then wow you start to feel that vacuum come up pretty quickly and along that same notes that's where a four-wheel drive tractor in a front loader I really like the marriage of those two because in a situation where you've got a heavy load in your bucket and your back tires are off the ground or they're very very light and they're your only Drive tires you could be spinning so you can find yourself really in a crazy situation where hey I need to back out of this spot I need to I need to move but my only wheels touching the ground aren't Drive wheels with with this configuration with a four-wheel drive I actually had the back tires completely off the ground it looks like one of those acrobatic dogs kind of walking around its front paws to be able to get from point A to point B again don't recommend that but if you're stuck in a situation where you need to to move then the front-wheel drive or the foil drive will allow those front tires to to have some pull power well probably the biggest con outside of price of course is the wear and tear on your front end all that weight being lifted by the tractor obviously puts more stress on the front end so you could really find yourself in a situation where your front end your spindles your axles your hydraulics all of that stuff is going to get more strain on it I've already replaced the spindle assembly and the the front axle for this side of the tractor simply because it move apart it came apart several years ago I think I did a video I would actually doing the repairs on it but I treated it to the fact that it it had a premature death due to all the bucket work that I do I used this front loader a lot so I expect the efficiency of the loader to rub against the lifespan of the front end of this tractor so that's something you need to take into consideration well another con and it's kind of silly but it's something I didn't realize until I had the tractor and used it quite a bit is the bucket and it's normal when you're not using it it blocks your headlights so when you're driving around at dark doing some other things your headlights are blocked out my headlights are beat-up that's why I had to add the light bar here because my front bucket blocked my headlight so much that I had this big blind spot when I'd be doing work after dark so you come in and wondered Troy why did you put your light bar underneath the roll bar wouldn't you have a better angle if it was above it yes you're right I would but it wouldn't be there very long because the tree line will take it right off as soon as I go through the woods [Music] hundred acres to do video work and even mows the grass right beside me so if you're in the market for a tractor and your budget allows consider getting a front loader it's never gonna be one of those things you regret I don't know of anyone that says man I really wish I'd have bought the brush hog or the auger or the tiller before I bought the bucket make almost every time you go say go with a bucket bucket is going to help you out in so many places so if it's a toss-up between a bigger tractor or smaller a little bit smaller tractor with a bucket I'd always take the smaller tractor with a bucket obviously I'd like to have the bigger tractor with the bucket but again that rubs against money all right well that wraps it up everybody take care

Channel: Red Tool House - Homestead

Views: 11,240

Rating: 4.9333334 out of 5

Keywords: tractor and loader, using a tractor bucket, how to use a tractor and loader, how to use a tractor bucket, running a tractor loader, front end loader

Id: 7UBoGXfCDPY

Length: 15min 50sec (950 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 23 2019