DeWitt — Why did I decide to buy a 45-year-old tractor when I could’ve just gotten a shiny new one from the dealership like my neighbors?
It wasn’t just my masochistic tendency to always do everything the hard way. I did it because it was cheaper.
I’m not a mechanic, and my experience using heavy machinery is pretty limited. I used one at a landscaping job a lifetime ago. We rented one a couple times for odd jobs, but with 10 acres of pasture, it was time to pull the trigger and get our own tractor.
I bought a used 1980 Ford 4600 off Facebook Marketplace for $11,000 cash. It’s pure machine, no frills.
Tractors are expensive, as much or more than a car. A New Holland Workmaster 50 horsepower (a near equivalent to my old Ford 4600) would run you around $31,000.
Mine cost a third of that, and these old machines are built like tanks.
They were meant to outlive the farmers who bought them, to be used by their kids and grandkids on farms older than the tractor companies themselves. Solid frames. Heavy-gauge steel. Big, booming, reliable diesel engines.
It seems that Ford tractor designers took a lot longer to shift toward planned obsolescence than their auto designers.
This era of Fords is revered as solid and dependable, still from the era of “Made in the USA,” and when I saw one for sale, I jumped on it. Like I said, I’m no mechanic. I’m learning and needed something idiot-proof.
Not only do tractors cost an arm and a leg, but in order to actually do anything with them, you need to purchase implements to either pull or hook up to the power take off (PTO).
It’s a crapshoot, but if you’re lucky you might find a beat up old brush hog mower or a halfway decent plow, and you might only pay $1,000 for each.
Or you could buy the cheapest and smallest one from Tractor Supply for $1,500 and have it break at the first sign of resistance. Turns out there’s a reason so many farmers are crippled by massive debt—all the equipment is insanely expensive.
Tractors are pretty complicated machines to the uninitiated. Before I was in the market for one, I didn’t know the difference between a live PTO or an independent one. I didn’t know how to operate a double clutch. I didn’t know tractor owners now fill the tires with beet juice as a ballast and that beet juice is the superior choice to the old calcium chloride solution I found rusting out my rims.
And I certainly didn’t know how to replace the ring gear on a flywheel when it gets worn out (turns out it’s really damn complicated).
All that said, even if I wasn’t the eternal student looking to learn how to fix my own tractor, I could still afford to pay someone to fix my old Ford before coming close to paying the price of a new one.
That brings up another hot topic in tractor ownership: the right to fix your own shit.
John Deere has been in the hot seat on this for years now. In the age of onboard computers and integrated electronics, it needs to be asked: If you can’t fix it, then do you really own it?
I’ll tell you what my 45-year-old tractor doesn’t have: a computer.
Every single piece of the machine is documented in the shop manual for me to study and—with the right tools and know-how—fix or replace myself. I couldn’t imagine relying on a machine like this for my livelihood only for it to break and be told, “Sorry, you aren’t allowed to tinker with it.”
Maybe that’s why I like having an old tractor most of all.
It’s the same reason I keep my old, leather goalie pads for hockey, or why I spend hours staring at the timber framing in the old barn out back. It reminds me of the way things used to be.
Things didn’t used to suck quite so hard. In our not-so-distant past, people actually cared about more than screwing people over for a quick buck.
There was pride in good craftsmanship. People made things to be as good as they could, because they knew it would benefit future generations. Maybe we can actually make cool stuff that lasts again.
And if not, at least I can feel good that I saved a buck and got something cool out of it. Maybe one day I can give both to my kids.
Wes Contangelo is a homesteader in Michigan.
