﻿[music] -Messick's, a helping hand with your land.
-Neil from Messick's here.
Sitting outside today on a Kubota BX 1880.
Today we're going to have a short conversation about
this tractor and when is it enough for most guys'
applications, and when does it come up a little bit short?
I shoot a lot of videos with sub-compact tractors and sometimes I feel
in the comments and when talking to guys, I almost feel like a little
bit of a defender of the subcompact.
A lot of guys watching our videos have all kinds of different applications.
Many of you might be farmers or construction companies and really
need big heavy equipment for big heavy tasks, but we want
to keep in mind when we're going through and we're looking at a lot
of the different videos that we do, that everybody's applications
are different, and there's a very, very large subset of people who a tractor
like this is absolutely perfect for what they do.
In terms of unit sales out there in the market, more subcompacts are sold
than most all of the big utility tractor classes combined.
It's a very, very high volume market.
By no means are we saying that a small tractor like this is right
for plowing your field, but it's very, very right for a guy that might have
two acres and some work to do around his house
and mulch to move and those kinds of things.
For customers coming up out of lawn and garden
equipment, subcompacts are a great choice.
The BX 1880 is the smallest and the lowest
horsepower of the subcompact
tractors, and it has a lot of the features guys are looking for,
but also some places where we get a little concerned that it might
not be enough for some applications where it is rightly sold into.
When we go through this machine and we look, say, an 1880 compared to
2380 that's sitting right here behind me,
you'll notice that they're very, very similar.
They share the same chassis, the same transmission.
Only a handful of little differences.
The tires on the 1880 are two inches smaller.
The seat is a little bit less plush, it doesn't have cruise control.
A couple of things that make it about $1400
less expensive than its bigger brother.
Obviously, that 1880 means that it is
an 18-horse engine while 2380 is 23-horse.
Both tractors take the same loader,
going to lift basically the same amount of weight.
The 1880 is going to get equipped with slightly smaller mower decks
in either a 48 or a 54, and both have standard three-point hitches.
You can see there if you have a lot of grass to mow, an 1880 might be
worth considering an upgrade to the larger
model where you can get bigger
mower decks, where that extra horsepower is going to help you mow
grass a little bit more quickly, but when it comes to a lot of that work,
a guy with an acre might be really well suited by this tractor.
There is one specific application though, where I do get a little
concerned when we see some guys buy this,
and that's when it comes back to its PTO.
When we're looking at tractors, a lot of guys are always very attuned to
their engine horsepower, right?
18-engine horsepower, but every tractor is going to have some amount
of parasitic loss between that engine and the tractor's rear PTO, that's
called PTO horsepower, so when you go look at your spec sheet, you'll
normally see a different number for that.
When this tractor's 18 horsepower at the engine, it's actually about 14
and change back here at the PTO, and 14 horsepower can be a little low
for some of the 48-inch plus, 48, 54-inch implements
that we're usually going to want to put behind this tractor.
Not to say that you can't do things, like a 54-inch snow blower and good
heavy snow with only 14 horsepower, you're going to struggle.
Rototillers in virgin soil, you're going to fight to get things through.
Now, you can always slow down, right?
These tractors have hydrostatic transmissions so it's very easy to be
really gentle on the pedal and crawl along, but some of those PTO-driven
applications you want to check the spec sheets for the implements you
might be considering and make sure that they're going to work
with the amount of PTO horsepower that this tractor has to offer.
Great tractor, a popular machine that we sell a lot too, but it is
generally to that customer that's not going to do a lot of PTO work.
If you're in the market for a tractor we can help, give us a call
at Messick's, we're available at 800 222 3373 or online at messicks.com.
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