This tractor's a little bit different than some other utility tractors that you may see around. Being two-wheel drive and a gear-driven transmission, this is a significantly large tractor that you can get at a price point of only $14,870 at list price. We're going to take you around this machine here today, talk about some of the things that it lacks in order to drive that price point so low, but specifically point out some of the applications where this tractor might be a great value for some of the chores that you need to get done.
We're going to talk prices here for a minute and a lot of these videos, people often are asking to hear about the prices of the tractors that we're talking about. By large, I avoid doing that because these videos are on YouTube for years and prices change. The numbers that I'm going to give here this morning are the prices as of January of 2022.
These are the ones that have been say increased a little bit to address some of the rising inflation and stuff that we see in the economy right now. Consider these some of the worst-case scenario pricing or the pricing probably is going to stay here for a little while as inflation starts to taper off a little bit. This tractor that we're talking about here today, L2501F is the model code in the Kubota price book, denoting that it's a two-wheel-drive tractor with a gear drive transmission.
This has an MSRP of 14,000 to $875. If you were to get this same tractor with a four-wheel-drive front axle instead of two-wheel drive, you're going to add $2,100 to that price point. The most common configuration of this tractor though for us goes a step further. It's actually having that four-wheel-drive front axle, but also having a hydrostatic transmission instead of a gear drive. In that case, you're adding a full $3,500 to that tractor's price at $14,870.
That's an increase of over 20% of the cost of the tractor. That's tied up right there in four-wheel drive and a little bit better transmission, a little bit more flexible, easier to operate transmission. You want to keep that in mind when you're shopping for some of these really cheap economy tractors. Oftentimes, you'll hear comments out there of, "I saved 20% on brand X," or "Bought whatever tractor."
Many times people are overlooking some of the differences and these kinds of things where you're comparing a hydrostatic versus a gear drive transmission and that stuff. Be aware that when a dealership like us is choosing what inventory to stock, we tend to usually stock the more high-end tractors, the more feature-rich stuff. We're salespeople. A lot of those things have good application for you. Having four-wheel drive and those kinds of things.
There is significant driver to the tractor's cost and more cheaply equipped machines with say simpler transmissions and two-wheel drive front axles are available in many of these manufacturers' product lines. They're just not things that you generally find in a lot of dealers, lots who are used to selling more feature-rich equipment. It may surprise you that we do actually sell a handful of two-wheel drive tractors anymore.
Most of us would look at our pickup trucks or our tractors and whatever and want four-wheel drive for that tractive power that you need to pull and to dig and to get out of the mud and all those kinds of things. There's many applications for tractors that don't necessarily really need a four-wheel-drive front axle. If you're doing a lot of that work as we've talked here, you could save quite a bit of money by opting to have the more basic version of the tractor.
Take brush hogging. A lot of people take a tractor out to maintain their fields and pastures and that stuff and do a lot of mowing with them. If you're simply driving back and forth in a dry field, there's very little need to have a four-wheel-drive tractor. In fact, oftentimes, we'll encourage you to disable your four-wheel drive in those kinds of applications because it only wears your front tires because the front tires natural lead in the transmission.
Having a two-wheel drive tractor is going to save you a lot of expense and is also easier on the turf as you go back and forth for simple mowing. Another person I've actually sold one of these recently too personally here is the lumber yard here in town. They're simply taking one of these tractors with a loader on it and using it to load things into lumber yard. When you're doing loader work like that on asphalt primarily, there's no need for that extra traction for four-wheel drive.
Even loader applications, if you're in the right place, you can get by without the added cost of a four-wheel-drive front axle. Hanging in agricultural applications are probably the most common place where you'll see these things show up. If you're going to be going out and raking and tedding fields and that stuff, that work is very easily done with very basic tractors.
You don't need a fancy transmission to kick something in gear and go drive back and forth out in the hayfield. We'll see two-wheel drive tractors out doing that work all the time. Something this size is really well suited to a small rake or tetter to go out and get that work done. With a tire like this in the front as well, you're going to do a lot less damage in your fields as you're making your turns back and forth. Not only are you in two-wheel drive, but you're going to see here these ag ribbed tires are just going to get enough traction there on the front to pull your front end around but there's nothing there that's really going to tear up your headlands and stuff as you're making turns back and forth.
One thing you want to pay close attention to when you're starting to look at two-wheel or a four-wheel drive and also your transmission options in these tractors is watching what happens to the PTO. There are actually changes that might happen internally in that transmission that goes through and impacts the type of PTO that you have on the back of your tractor. In the case of this machine, this PTO is not a live PTO. What that means is when your tractor is driving and you go to clutch this machine in order to change gears, it disengages the PTO from the engine. If you have a rotary cutter or a tetter or something on the back of the machine, every time you go and push that clutch down, that PTO is now not under power. If you have a load back there, say you're on your rake or whatever that's going around in your hayfield.
When you push that clutch down, it's going to really slow down or nearly come to a stop and stop working your crop properly or stop mowing your grass the way that it should. That's not the case on every tractor with a gear-driven transmission like this. Oftentimes, you'll see dual-stage clutches where when you push the clutch halfway down, you clutch the transmission and at the full way down, you clutch the transmission and the PTO. On this particular tractor, you want to keep an eye out because this PTO is not under power while you're shifting the gears of the machine.
A couple of things we need to talk about here when we're driving this tractor today, in terms of the gear drive transmission in this series tractor. Down here between my legs there's a one to four gear selector. On my right-hand side, there's a shuttle. The nice thing about this lever is laid out where your low in reverse are in line with each other and your high is gated off to the right.
If you're going stay between forward and reverse, going in and out of a pile, doing loader work, you just take the lever straight forward, straight back between forward and reverse, that's handy. However, you hear that little grind? You need to bring this tractor to a complete stop with shifting between these gears. This part of the transmission is not fully synchronized. That means generally that you got to either be really good at double clutching and speed matching or basically bring the tractor to a stop when you're making that selection.
The one through four over here on the main shifter are not that way. Those are synchronized. I can shift those on the go. One of the greatest things about this particular tractor is the engine, this 2501 is underneath the limit for needing a DPF. It seems like Kubota took the largest highest displacement engine that they could tune down to 26 horsepower and stuff it down under the hood of this thing. It kind of punches a little bit above its rating if you say that. You'll hear that from a lot of the people that own this thing.
A wide-open throttle for engaging noise levels. Wide-open throttle is at 2,400 RPMs. Listen to that, it's quiet. Like not quiet but I don't feel the need to have hearing protection on. I generally do wear earmuffs and stuff when I'm out running my own tractor. Gosh, there's no need for that. If you go down to where the PTO RPMs are, for your 540 for your rear PTO, it's like 2050 RPMs right there. I mean, that's like quiet purring in a lot of tractors. Some of these machines now run them up at 3,200 RPMs and stuff for wide-open throttle and they scream a little bit. This is like the perfect little diesel sound. It's it low RPM. That's really torque, just a great little engine.
Then the last thing here with these two-wheel drive tractors that people don't think about is what your steering angles are like. You can take this tractor here. If I stop and go into low range, second gear and crank the wheels the whole way around. My back tire might be moving 18 inches. When you have bigger chunkier tires and stuff on your front wheels, you're often going to have steering stops and stuff there to accommodate the big chunky four-wheel-drive front tires. Having two-wheel drive in these little skinnier donuts here in the front, you're able to increase that steering angle that makes this tractor extremely maneuverable. If you're good enough to do steering breaks-- We're going to do a video on steering breaks later. By breaking that inside tire you can almost make this tractor pivot around that inside point of that tire when you're using the steering breaks for the two-wheel-drive tractor. Again, if you're working in barns, you're tedding a field with a two-star tedder, a real wide tedder behind a small tractor like this and you're making your headland turn and nearly need to come back, say, on an eight-foot swan, you get to the end, you stomp down that steering break and you go whip the thing right around and actually make it right back around where you want to be.
It's a lot of those applications. There's hayfield-type work and that kind of stuff where a little tractor like this can get a lot of work done. We underestimate that here in the North-East. You'll see a lot more tractors like this generally in southern states. Up here, in the northern states, we tend to buy a lot of the feature-rich kind of packed out, every little bell and whistle on it machines. There's a place out there for stuff like this. It's good to be educated about the different options that are out there in the market, right?
Speaking for me, personally, I would say for most of the general tractor-buying population out there, four-wheel drive is an important enough feature on a tractor that you want to avoid models like this. Yes, you can buy a really big tractor for a really lowish price point but by and large, I would generally choose a maybe smaller tractor with four-wheel drive over a bigger tractor without. For most people in most of your general, like loader, landscaping, egg, small type applications. That generally's going to make the most sense for you.
But if you have chores where you know you're buying a machine that you've got, say, thousands of hours of rush-hoggin to do or you're a hay farmer and you just need a basic chore tractor, you can definitely save some money by going and picking up machines like this. They can be very attractively priced, and a machine that you can definitely get a lot of work done by having a basic chore tractor like this.
