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Application & Configuration. Setting up equipment for optimum performance.

Neil from Messick's here to talk about you a little bit today. We're going to tell some stories, stories about equipment and its configuration. The applications that machinery goes into really dictate a lot of how they're set up and configured. The same piece of equipment can go into wildly different uses and you're going to notice wild differences in the way that it's often set up. Behind me here is our setup department. When equipment is on its way out the door, it sits off here to your right-hand side waiting to go into the shop to go through that pre-delivery process where we prep the machine and install the accessory kits and implements that are needed for your application. Today we're going to talk about those applications. We're going to talk about the stories of where this equipment is headed. So join me here today. We're going to talk about some of this fascinating machinery.

We're going to start here with this tractor. A Kubota L3902. Kubota will very proudly tell you that this tractor's smaller sibling, the L2501, is the most popular compact tractor sold in the United States every year and has been for some time. This is the high horsepower variant of that same tractor. While that one is sold at 25 horsepower, this one has a much larger engine at 39 horsepower. This tractor is equipped with a loader. You can see that there on the front. Loaders are virtually standard equipment on most tractors anymore. It's very unusual for us to sell a machine like this without one, but it can be done and it is equipped here. But on the back of the tractor here is where we have some things to talk about.

You're going to see this has a Land Pride QH15 quick hitch on the back. This is going to allow you to back up to compatible implements and pick them up without having to beat the three-point hitch arms over top of the pins on your implement. It makes hooking and unhooking your implements a breeze. People will frequently pick these up for existing tractors. Or add them after the fact while they bought some other implements. While I'm pretty flexible on when you choose to buy a lot of the things that go onto these tractors, this is one thing I think is worthwhile buying up front because it impacts your PTO shaft. When you go and say mount this mower onto the tractor without this hitch here, that PTO shaft needs to be cut down a couple of inches so that it can expand and contract properly on the back of the tractor.

If you're going to add this after the fact, you're going to have to buy a lot of the things that go onto these tractors. When you move the implement back here another three or four inches, there are cases where you'll find those PTO shafts have now been trimmed too short and it creates some problematic hookup situations. If you think a quick hitch is going to be in the future for you on implements, it's a good idea to buy it with your machine like this gentleman is here. In terms of this mower, this is Land Pride's standard duty finish mower. This would have three finish blades under the bottom of it and is perfectly suited for cutting fine grass, pastures, lawns, that kind of thing.

This tractor at 39 horsepower has more than enough power to run this 72-inch mower. The lower horsepower variants of this model say that 25-horse machine really should be pulling a 60, but at this point you've got ample power here to pull a 72. This is a Kubota SCL1000. This machine probably has the record for the longest back order of anything that we have ever sold. I believe these were introduced about three years ago and finally now the production line seems to be running with enough vigor that they're starting to show up in a lot greater quantities. We still have a back order for these things, but the back order time is starting to finally drop really quickly as these now start to show up in quantity.

This is a machine as simple as what it seems that gets configuration done. These are going out to a local rental yard that runs another brand of machines currently. We're switching out the coupler on the front here. This coupler is called a CCI. This is the common coupler found on a lot of machines, but this mini skid steer is used by the competitive brand of the fleet that these are going into. We can customize the front of these machines in order to fit that customer's existing implements. While our first SCL was going out to a rental yard, this one is going out to a landscaper. You can see some of the decision making here that's a little bit different between those two types of customers.

This is going to go out with a set of pallet forks here on the front. Then stacked on those pallet forks are two different buckets. The first one here is going to have a straight cutting edge on the front for smooth grading. The second bucket is going to have teeth on the front for ripping and tearing when you need to get into a hard pile of soil or mulch. You're going to notice when you look at these two buckets, we order them in two different sizes. The tooth bucket being a little bit smaller allows this customer to nest the buckets one inside of the other when they're pulling things around on a trailer. This excavator is a great example of a machine in its configuration following its intended use.

This is a KX040 in an open station. Open station excavators around here are only probably about five percent of our sales. They're pretty unusual. With a six-way blade on the front, this is probably again like a two percent of our machines that go out with a six-way blade, equipped with a bucket, coupler, and thumb. The customer for this machine is a paving contractor, and doesn't that make a lot of sense? Paving is a seasonal business. They do much more work in the spring and summer, the warm months, than they do in the cold, right? Asphalt doesn't always set up properly. When it's freezing cold outside, a machine like this doesn't need to have a cab because it's not usually used during those months.

This six-way blade is going to be great on the front of this machine for cutting the grades and stuff that are needed for light residential paving. Our next tractor up is this Kubota MX6000. This is a cab tractor with no loader. This machine here is set up to go out to a nursery, and they're going to be using it to run an air blast sprayer. That is a sprayer that broadcasts chemical, probably in order to keep all of their nursery stock in good shape. It's going to run a jack-toe sprayer on the back. That is a brand that we deal with, although the sprayer is not going out with this tractor. You'll see here that this has front weights on the front.

Now, without a loader out here and that heavy sprayer on the back, we add a front weight rack here in order to help balance the tractor out here. Add that weight on the front end to offset the sprayer going on the back. The salesman here made a smart decision here. Things like rear remotes and extra hydraulics for tractors continue to be hard to find. They are in short supply. We continue to see back orders for items like that, but he sold this tractor with a loader valve. The valve is installed here. The couplers are on the side, and we're just going to route those to the back of the machine to be able to hook up to that customer's sprayer.

Rather than having to reach back to his rear remotes back behind him, he'll be able to operate his sprayer using the loader valve out in front of him, which is a smart idea. Thumbs up to our salesman. Next up is another MX Series tractor. Now, you're going to see we're going to compare two similar machines here, but very different use cases. Our first one going out for more of an ag application doing nursery spraying. This one is headed out to a church camp, interestingly enough. Right now, you can see the function here of this machine follows the use case. We've got a set of pallet forks on the front. You can only imagine how versatile those are going to be for lifting and carrying things around their property. And front hydraulics.

Now, these are going to allow them to, say, put a snow plow on the front of this to clear their access roads and stuff in the wintertime. Maybe put a hydraulic post auger on the front in order to put fence posts in or equip it with a grapple if they have brush and debris to clean up. Farmers in our area are going to be headed to the field here very shortly, and there's a huge amount of ag equipment out here waiting to be picked up right now. When you're looking at things like small square balers, round balers, disc binds, there are a lot of options on this equipment because crop conditions and field conditions can be so wildly different across the country, but for the most part, we know what works best in our area, and we're going to order any equipment already equipped with the things that we believe you should have in order for your equipment to work the best already installed and configured on a machine. It's something you want to keep in mind if you're looking for a used piece of equipment and it's coming in from out of the area. We urge a little bit of caution there because those options may not be on that piece of equipment like it would be on something that's more locally sourced. Round balers can have upwards of 30 or so different options on them. There's a lot of things that can be configured.

One thing that is always done here, though, are things like crop saver systems that are on this small square baler here. It's an option that not everybody's going to use, does not come in from the factory, and is a prep item that is done here in our shops. Next up is another Kubota MX. I swear we sell more than just MX tractors here. This tractor's got an interesting story. This is going out to a viewer, actually, a gentleman named Mike down on the eastern shore of Maryland. There's a couple of unique things here on his tractor. You notice here that the windows are tinted out. We've started offering this as a service here to some customers. There's a couple of benefits to this.

If you're working in really hot, sunny days, it helps your cab to stay cool, takes some of that sun glare off if you're working out in big exposed areas, and it just looks cool, too. Mike's got some tint here on those windows to help there in the cab. You're going to notice on the back of the tractor, we've got a 12-foot batwing. That is a great fit size-wise to this kind of tractor. I think 12-foot batwings are, frankly, should be a lot more popular than what they are. 15-foot is really kind of the standard that you find out there so, so much on the market, but 12-foot fits really well behind some of these smaller tractors. This is a great setup.

You notice on the back, he does have two rear remotes on this tractor. This is not this gentleman's first tractor or first rodeo. Odds are he's got some other implements around. That's going to give some added flexibility for anything that's going to have hydraulic cylinders. Think rear blades that are going to angle or box blades with scarf wires are going to drop out the bottom. Those outlets are there on the back to operate additional attachments. Behind me here is a 750-gallon fast sprayer. Spraying and application equipment, to me, is some of the most fascinating equipment that we sell here. It's because of all the electronics and configuration and computer control that is involved in modern spraying and application. A small sprayer like this has five segments across the boom in the rear and is going to be paired with a monitor up in the cab that's going to tell it exactly where that field needs to be sprayed, show the work that's been done so that it's well documented. It is absolutely crucial that an experienced salesperson is involved when setting up a machine like this so that it performs properly out in the field. Our next tractor package here happens to be another MX Series. I'm sorry. This is just what we got right now.

This one's got some neat stuff on it. We talk a lot about the versatility of pallet forks. You can see this tractor is going to be going out here with a 4,500-pound set of forks. I usually like to double the capacity of the tractor when sizing my forks so that we know that we're not going to bend one of them if we put all the load on one fork. Sitting in front of me here is a Land Pride 84-inch snow plow. We're going with 84 inches because when this plow is angled sideways, it's still going to cover the footprint of the tractor. Plows like this can be ordered with either one hydraulic cylinder or two. Two is obviously going to be preferred with heavy snow in front of it.

It's going to give that plow more power in order to angle left to right. Those hoses are going to plug back into the third function kit that's been installed on the tractor. You can see the lines running back the side of the boom. That gives that extra powered function out on the end of the loader. Behind this tractor is a 72-inch rotary cutter, but not just any rotary cutter. You'll remember when the video started out here, one of the first tractors that we talked through was an L3902 with a 72-inch rotary cutter. That cutter, though, was out of Land Pride's standard duty series. We still have a 72-inch cutter here, but up on this MX where we have 60 horsepower, we're going up to the next series up to a medium-duty cutter with a higher horsepower gearbox and a longer warranty.

A little bit heavier construction. You'll see how the corners here are rounded off. It's a more durable, heavy-duty built cutter that is suited appropriately to the tractor. We do sometimes hear complaints about some of our implement companies not being heavy-duty or high quality. Oftentimes, that's because this medium or standard-duty need for your implement based upon your tractor isn't followed real well. Our salesperson could have gone by and saved a couple of hundred dollars by speccing out this tractor with a lighter-duty rotary cutter, but it's not appropriate for the tractor, and odds are the customer wouldn't have been happy with it in the long term. Watching the horsepower or the weight of your tractor and sizing it to your implement appropriately is important in the longevity of your implements.

The tractor behind me here is a Kubota M5-111, and walking past it, my eye was drawn immediately to the R4 tires that are on this tractor. Normally, you have a really set of tall R1 ag-tread tires on a machine like this. More often than not, a tractor in this horsepower class is going out to haying applications or barnyard work, field work, where you want the tractor sitting up high. In the case of this machine, it's going out to a landscape yard. They're going to be using it for loading soil and stone and mulch out in the yard, pulling sprayers, taking care of general landscape yard kind of tasks, and in that case, you don't want necessarily a machine that sits as high or a machine on aggressive ag-tread tires.

These R4s are going to be kinder to the surfaces that they're driving on and overall are going to wear longer. They'll get more hours on this set of tires than they would had they chosen the ag tires that are more typically found on this machine.

The tractor behind me here is a New Holland ts6120 this one's got an interesting story. It's going out to a local seed company that's going to be using it to pull a drill and they're using it to test different hybrids different seed hybrids to see how they perform in this area. This company has the need for this tractor they need it long enough that they don't really probably want to buy it and a lease is a little too many years and so we kind of can find some ways here in Messicks to do things like long-term rentals for tractors like this when you know an outright purchase may not make the most sense. 

Walking by this i had no idea what this was. This is going out to a local retirement community and they came here to us needing a post driver. Now they knew exactly what they needed, they know who made it they knew the model number and we know nothing at all about this particular piece but it is a post driver you pull it around with a stack of fence posts over here on the side and you place them underneath this driver right here which you can align to push it straight down into the ground pretty cool piece. Now even though we know nothing about it being able to source something through the like this through us comes along with service right. There's a lot of valves there's a lot of hoses there's hydraulics involved it's going to come with some kind of warranty with it all services that we're able to provide so even when we don't necessarily uh have expertise on every piece like this if you do we are certainly here to help.

The machine behind me here is a Kubota SVL97. Now compact track loaders like this are most often used for dirt work right but when equipped with the right attachments like a forestry mulcher on the front and cooling packs and protective armor on the rear a machine like this can be turned into an effective land clearing machine. We've done a complete video on this going front to back over top of all of its options if you're interested in equipment like this the link on this one will be floating around up here at the top. You can see from walking around out here just how important it is to have application in mind when you're looking for a piece of equipment. Taking a machine and customizing it for the chores that you have for it to do can have a massive impact in your productivity and happiness with that machine and it also underscores the need for talking with your sales people about this. 

So often we do so much work on the internet we talk to our neighbors we think we know what we need we come in and we ask for that tractor and never have a conversation about what it is that we need and how we can help to best configure that machine for you. If you're shopping for a piece of equipment and we can help or if you have parts of service needs for a machine you've already got we are experts when it comes to this stuff we're available at 800-222-3373 or online at messicks.com.


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