You just don't see these things around all that often anymore. Good heavy garden tractors have been removed from many manufacturers' product lines. There's clearly not as much emphasis put on those products anymore. So today we're going to discuss the decline of the garden tractor and why you just don't see them that much anymore.
We're going to start here by defining what is a garden tractor. If you go and you take tractors in and of themselves, there is a huge spectrum of the different equipment that's out there. Garden tractors tend to be machines that are built for a little bit more heavy-duty work than your typical lawnmower is. You're usually going to still cut grass with your garden tractor. You're going to do it in extreme comfort, usually having things like power steering or some kind of hydraulic or electric lift of that mower deck, but you're going to have a machine with a little bit more capability that's going to start to be able to accept some attachments.
Start to think things like a front snow plow or a front snowblower or in some cases, maybe a front end loader, and also the ability to have attachments on the back of the machine for taking care of that garden. The garden in garden tractor usually is going to imply some kind of capability for a rototiller or a small maybe category zero three point hitch to put a plow or something on the back of the machine. Now these are going to come from his historically all kinds of different manufacturers. We have sold garden tractors here at Messick's from machines like this Kubota right here that's discontinued now, and now been replaced by their GR series, which were out of stock on. Cub Cadet's 3000 series. Simplicity used to make some big garden tractors. John Deere has a 700 series. There's a lot of these companies that have made machines in this space over the years, but their popularity has declined because they're just simply not the best at what they do.
Sub-Compact Tractrors
So this is a Kubota BX. These are extremely popular tractors that would've been introduced about the early 2000s. I believe the first ones were in the 2000, 2001 timeframe starting with the BX 2200. This really marked the beginning of the decline of the garden tractor. Kubota and some other companies started introducing these small, extremely capable tractors. Now a garden tractor and a subcompact are going to have a lot of things in common, but they're really fundamentally built differently. These are going to be heavier machines, even though the wheel base isn't a whole lot longer. If you look at the base weight of these machines, they're going to be a lot heavier. They also made diesel engines very affordable. Diesel options in garden tractors can be very costly, but every subcompact that you're going to find is going to have a diesel engine in it.
And because of those economies of scale, the pricing of that machine started to drive down and diesel gives you that better fuel economy and better torque. Subcompacts also generally are going to come through with standard three point hitches on the back. So when you go to put on, say, a rear rototiller or a plow on the back of your garden tractor, you're sometimes going to need a sleeve hitch or a very expensive proprietary implement or an expensive add-on three point hitch onto that garden tractor. But subcompacts have come through with that as standard equipment. So you could see here, the economies have scaled. The number of these machines have started to be sold and their general utility out of the box for their capability of implements in different ends of the machine just started to make this a better option for the garden side of being a garden tractor than what a garden tractor itself ever could be.
So we've got the subcompact attacking the garden tractor from the garden end. On the mowing end, you've got the zero turn mower. Now zero turn mowers have been around a lot longer than that early 2000s mark when we really started to see the popularity of garden tractors decline, but they definitely started to grow in popularity. You found a lot more reliable transmissions working their way in this kind of machine, a lot more refinement in their mechanics, making them much better machines for mowing than what a garden tractor ever could be. Now these are purpose-built machines. They're only going to cut grass. Any kind of implements that you find with these as far as like a front snowplow or something are generally junk. It's stuff you want to stay away from. But if you're looking to cut grass to cut it very quickly, these are going to do it a good 50% or more faster than what a garden tractor is going to be able to mow with.
Where Does This Leave Garden Tractors
So while we've got the subcompact taking over those garden duties, we're seeing zero term mowers mowing grass much more efficiently than what a garden tractor could ever manage, and therefore the popularity of this machine just starts to decline and decline over the years. So where does that leave the garden tractor today? Well, there are still a handful of companies that are building them companies like Cub Cadet, Kubota and Deere still are making these big, expensive, complex garden tractors. But we've seen their popularity decline significantly in favor of these other options. In fact, today we would sell subcompacts almost 30 to one compared to what we're going to sell garden tractors. If you go through and you compare, say, a diesel four wheel drive garden tractor that isn't going to have a three point hitch on the back and has got lighter axles, that jump up into a subcompact tractor can be as little as $2,500 in order to get what is essentially a much more capable machine. That mowing side is going to be hit in the same way. We're not selling the garden tractors for mowing anymore.
And people with large mowing chores to do, garden tractors can be very comfortable machines to do them on usually are choosing to go the zero turn route for their increased productivity. So, that just has left this section of the market very cleaned out. One thing that I always watch as a salesperson is making sure that you're kind of getting your value for your dollar. There is possibly no worse place to spend your money than in garden tractors. Take a machine like a Deere X700 series, they can be phenomenally expensive pieces of equipment. When kitted out, they can be even more expensive than what their subcompacts are.
There is probably almost no machine that we see around here that resells as poorly as that piece of equipment does. Just like the demand for the new garden tractors has dried up, the demand for the used ones has as well. And you just don't see the people out there seeking out that kind of equipment like there used to be. So if you want to lose a lot of money, buy yourself a new garden tractor. We definitely see a couple of people caught in that predicament where they've spent the money for a really deluxe high-end garden tractor and want to make the move into a subcompact now for a real piece of equipment and really take a licking when they do that.
