How much DAMAGE do R4 tires do to a wet lawn?

Neil from Messicks here. We're out with a Kubota BX series tractor with a set of R4 tires on it to do a quick demo for you today on the turf damage that is done by an industrial tire. You guys seem to like tire videos. Every one of them that we do seems to solicit a lot of comments and a lot of opinions. We're going to take a little bit more time today and go over the turf damage that happens from an R4. This is coming on the heels of the video that we would have done here about two weeks ago on tractive differences between turfs and R4s.

One of my personal favorite videos that we've done so far using a load cell hooked up behind the tractor. A lot of guys on the backside of that seemed to want to see the differences in turf damage. We're going to show you a little bit of that today.

Turf damage is one of those things that's really hard to quantify. It's not really testable, repeatable in a way that you can come up with some clear, consistent differences. Today, we're out here beside our building and down in old standing grass. This lawn has been here for several decades and it is extremely, extremely wet. If you are in our geographic area, it seems like it has done nothing but rain for the last two weeks. We just probably received 15 or 18 inches of rain in the last week alone. There's been a lot of localized flooding and that kind of stuff. The ground is absolutely saturated. It should make it a little bit easier for these tires to tear the turf up and that is what we're trying to show.

The demo that we're going to do for you here today is going to be a couple of different scenarios. We're going to try two wheel drive, four wheel drive. We're going to drive at different speeds and show that there are absolutely scenarios where a set of R4 tires can tear the living daylights out of your turf. If you drive carefully with them, and you're sane about what you do and you think through your application, you're going to find that they're very doable even on sensitive turf like this.

It should come as no surprise to anyone that in two wheel drive, you could do most any driving around your lawn with a set of R4 tires and not tear things up. Otherwise, absolutely nobody would buy them. I can sit here and do donuts, even if the steering lock the whole way around in this wet, soft grass, you can see I'm not doing any turf damage at all. One thing that you want to keep in mind here as you see, I don't have the loader on this tractor. I took it off before I came down here. That loader has an extra four, 500 pounds of weight that really is sitting on top of those front tires.

Anytime you're doing mowing like this, you do want to be removing your loader. It is a absolute piece of cake. I've got a lot of videos showing how that's done, but there is no reason to be driving around with that big, heavy thing hanging on the front of your tractor and then pushing those front tires down harder into the ground. Two wheel drive R4 tires, donuts all day long. It simply doesn't matter. You won't rip stuff up. Four wheel drive can be a different story. We shift into four wheel now and we lock those tires in and we make them start pull and work. I could feel the four wheel drive pushing me at the turn, but even then, I'm not tearing the grass up. 

 I'm going to try to now at this point, you'll notice in all our videos, I usually run with the engine RPMs low. That's so I can talk over top of the engine. I've got a little bit of turf damage over here where it's some grass out, but I'm just not doing much. Let's go a step further here because I want to tear this grass up. We're going to push the diff lock on so that we lock up the rear. Now I can hardly steer and I'm absolutely sliding across the grass.

Like I said, there's no clear scientific way to do this demo that we can have repeatable results that are going to happen for everyone, but out here for me today, old standing yard, wet grass that should be fairly soft and easy to de-root at this point. I'm just not doing a whole lot in terms of significant turf damage. I could see a couple of little scuffs, couple little places where I tore it up when I was spinning in four wheel drive, but just not doing a whole lot. When you look at your tire options on these tractors, for us, at least here, we do sell R4s on probably about 80 or 90% of our machines largely because they give the best compromise between traction and being kind to your turf.

That said, this is always an active debate on the internet because guys with turf tires simply don't complain about them either. They're good on your turf and a good heavy tractor like this on four wheel drive can get a lot of tractive power still. Like our video from about two weeks ago showed, with the load cells, there are some significant differences when it comes down into that low end run pooling power that our treaded tire is going to give you that a turf simply can't.

That's about the best demo I can give for you. For us, for most customers in a variety of applications, our fours are usually the way to go, but you're not going to be really concerned with your turf tires either if you've got sensitive turf. If you're shopping for a piece of equipment, then we can help, if you have parts needs for machines that you already have or service work that can be done, give us a call at Messicks we're available at 800 222 3373 or online at messicks.com