Manufacturers up the ante on tractor horsepower
Monday, October 3, 2011
High horsepower tractors with added comfort and safety features are coming on the market, promising to pull large implements at higher speeds and go faster on the road for quicker trips between farms
by MIKE MULHERN
Tractor manufacturers have moved the horsepower curve higher and higher over the last 10 years while adding speed, safety and precision to deliver more productivity in the field and on the road.
Mitch Kaiser, Case IH marketing manager for Steiger tractors, says he expects to see horsepower to continue to go up and, with it, speed and operator comfort.
"Since 2000, we've already gone up almost 100 horsepower," Kaiser says. "The customers are buying bigger implements and implement companies are designing machines to use the horsepower. In Australia, there are already 120-foot air seeding machines running so the customers can cover more acres in a day's time."
Chris Howell, vice-president of product management for global tractors for AGCO, says the three buzzwords his company uses in development are "speed, comfort and safety."
He says large Fendt tractors in Europe take to the roads with a top speed of 64 kilometres per hour, adding that there are no plans to introduce that kind of speed in North American machines.
"In Europe, where we run these tractors," he says, "there are very strict regulations on trailer braking systems. They're almost at truck level standards. In North America, there is no trailer brake standard (for tractors), so you can get in a lot of trouble going at that speed with the heavy weights with no trailer brakes or not the right sort of trailer brakes."
Top speed for North American tractors is 50 kilometres per hour and, to make that safe, manufacturers have introduced improved suspension and braking systems on tractors designed to go that fast.
Chad Hogan, a division marketing manager at John Deere, says manufacturers have had to deal with a number of issues, including fuel economy and legislated limits on emissions.
"The No. 1 goal right now is a must and that's emission levels and we have to design to meet those," Hogan says, but that doesn't mean horsepower is off the table. "It's still a pretty critical need, because customer requirements for higher and higher levels of productivity have not slowed down." Neither have field widths for implements and planters.
"We now sell the widest planter on the market, a DB120, and that planter is 120 feet wide," Hogan says, adding that the 48-row planter was introduced a couple of years ago. "Maybe 15 years ago, "we probably sold more eight row planters than anything and today we're selling more 16-to 24-row planters."
John Deere's largest four wheel drive tractor has 530 horsepower while it's largest row crop tractor, the recently introduced 8360R, is 360 engine horsepower. All manufacturers offer four-wheel-drive tractors in the highest horsepower ranges. As an example, Versatile, built in Winnipeg, has tractors in the 575 and 600 horsepower range while AGCO's Challenger and Steiger have tractors rated above 600 horsepower.
Adam Reid, Versatile's marketing manager, says that most of the demand for high horsepower tractors comes from the Canadian West and from the north-central United States. The demand in Ontario is mostly for the company's row-crop tractors. He says its row-crop lineup, currently capped at 305 horsepower, will soon include a 350 horsepower, front-wheel-assist, tractor.
New Holland's high horsepower tractor marketing manager, Doug Otto, says his company recently introduced a tractor called the T8. The largest tractor in the T8 range, the T8.390, has 290 PTO horsepower and 335 engine horsepower, but the engine has a boosted horsepower rating of 390. Otto says the boost is achieved only during PTO operation, while auxiliary hydraulics are in operation, or when the tractor is moving at 14 m.p.h. or faster.
"This is intended to be an interim or short burst of power," he says, "so that when you're doing some PTO application that pulls hard, you don't lose your ground speed to get through that tough spot."
In some places – in eastern Europe, for example – large tractors are built to work one very large tract of land and never go on the road. In Ontario, there are lots of large four-wheel-drive tractors working, but most farmers use front-wheel-assist, row-crop tractors because Ontario farms tend to be relatively small and farm expansion usually means farmers have to drive, often many miles, to get to all their fields. That's where road speed comes in, but it's not all about being bigger. Some farmers are asking, "Why buy one 400-horsepower tractor when two 200-horsepower tractors could do more work and offer greater flexibility, both in the field and on the road?"
AGCO's Chris Howell says two-tractors-for-one is a bit of a trend. "If you're looking at scales of efficiency," he says, "you're almost better to run two 200-horsepower tractors with two implements rather than one large one. It all depends on your application, on your geographic situation, your land conditions and how it works."
Certified crop advisor Pat Lynch notes that tough conditions this spring favoured growers with big equipment. "Growers with large equipment pulled by large tractors got their crop in more quickly than medium-sized growers with smaller equipment," he says.
There is one more thing coming that will improve the pull of high-horsepower tractors, according to Howell, and that is European-style single, wide, low-profile tires. "They put a better footprint down. They are able to convert the draw bar power into wheel tractor a lot more efficiently." BF