We get a surprising amount of snow here in the Northeast. We saw a lot of cabs on small tractors, but you would not believe how radically different the different enclosure solutions can be for the tractors that are out there. So today we're going to walk you around this machine and show you some of the things that make it a little unique. This is the Workmaster 25S, the tractor that this cab machine is based upon. You notice how small this thing looks without the big glass enclosure sitting on top of it. Today, we're going to focus on the cab itself. There's a lot to talk about here, but if you're interested in this specific tractor and the loader and the function of the tractor unit itself, we'll have a link down to the description or one of the little cards up here that links you to that video, that dives into the details on this machine. But today we're focusing on the cab. There are many different cab solutions for small tractors. For even a small machine like this you could have just simple, soft side enclosures that might be only a couple hundred dollars. Different degrees of add-on cabs in varying qualities and fits and finishes. But we always prefer to see factory cabs like this one that's behind me here.
When you go through and you look at the cost that's put into a cab like this, the resale value on some of the not as refined solutions is not real good. In fact, almost zero. We would look at a poorly fitted cab onto an existing tractor is adding no value to that machine at all. However, something like this, where the factory goes through and works up a cab solution for their tractor adds and preserves almost every dollar that you put into that cab solution. And a lot of that comes down to fit and finish, how the cab sits on the machine. It's niceties when you're sitting inside, when it comes to fit and finish, how well it sits on the machine. And this one does a really good job of that. You can tell the factory went through and took a lot of steps to make this as nice as a fit as possible.
However, there are always compromises that you're going to bump into when doing it on a small tractor like this. We're going to see that in a couple of different places. Now to my eye, a lot of things are done right on this tractor, but you can rethink through and realize that the smaller a machine gets the harder that it is in order to achieve a spacious cab with all the luxuries that we expect on a small tractor like this. You're going to notice here, when you look at this, that the cab extends a little bit beyond the sides of the tractor a little bit, it kind of feels a little bit bigger than the operator station itself. If you look down here at the loader itself, you could see that bolted onto the side of the loader post right here is this ISO Mount here that holds the cab and that it sticks out here well beyond the side of the loader.
Now there's some good things here, right? Really nice to be able to see ISO mounts on this cab. It keeps the enclosure from vibrating and hopefully helps keep the noise level down inside the cab. But it is a meaningful structure, right? Both in terms of its width, its depth and its height, there's a lot of glass here. There's a lot of space. So you're going to want to keep in mind. If you're say working in tight areas or underneath the tree limbs and stuff, there's some structure here that you need to keep in mind. Another compromise here is the lack of air conditioning on this cab. When we get into bigger tractors cabs and air conditioning usually go hand in hand, because you don't want to sit in a sweat box here on the summertime. But as you get into these small tractors, it becomes more and more uncommon.
If we reach inside the cab here and push the little button that flips up the hood, if you look down here underneath the hood, there's just not a lot of space left here for the extras that it would take to have air conditioning, right? Bigger alternators for the electrical load, the condensers and everything that are required just aren't going to shoehorn down here underneath the hood. Now there are some tractors that do that by adding them up in the headliner in the roof.It does become a little silly, costly in a small machine like this. Now to their credit while there's no air in this cab, it looks to me to be very easy to lift the doors off the hinges. You very simply need to unbolt the gas strut and then the doors lift right up off their hinges to give you that airflow in the summertime. But you will still have the structure of the cab here on the tractor year round.
So there's one thing here that is super impressive to me in the way that this cab is fitted onto this tractor. When you go through and you add aftermarket cabs onto small machines, there are two things that are often extremely problematic. One is the noise level inside the cab. They're usually kind of rattle boxes and they make a lot of noise on the inside. You almost always have to wear hearing protection inside of the cab because the amount of noise that they make and they also don't fit super well onto the tractor and seal up all the gaps that occur around that machine, whether it's the way the cab sits on the fenders or where the controls are dropping down through the bottom of the machine. There's a lot of spots around that machine for air to leak out and to make your heater really inefficient.
However, there was obviously a lot of care taken to that on this machine. So as you look around the controls, you're going to find that there's sealing and fabric that's wrapped around all those gaps in order to lock the heat in the cab and the most sound deadening that I believe I've ever seen on a cab like this before. Maybe some mixed feelings about it at the same time though. I have a DB meter. We're going to get that out shortly, but you have this thick padding here underneath the seat, around the back, padding underneath the floorboards, padding up in the headliners in order to try to absorb as much of that noise and lock out as much of that weather as possible. I look at this and feel like, wow, this is really cool. At the same time, I do think it's something that's probably a little hard to keep clean and dry.
This is a foam. So it's something that you probably don't want to get soaking wet. And even with a little bit of dirt off my boots and stuff, getting in and out of the tractor, I can see I'm already starting to get this a little bit dirty, kind of like you would in the back of your car, right? As your kids get in and out with their muddy boots, you're going to get some of that up here on this fabric. It probably can be scrubbed off a little a bit, but this is going to be something a little bit harder to keep clean than your plastic, rubber or metals that you usually would see on a tractor. So impressive sound deadening done in here, but take a look at it and make sure it's going to be something that you're going to want to live with.
One of my big frustrations with add on cabs is the noise that they often add to your machine. Getting out and running a tractor is a fun thing for me, right? Whether it's fun or work for you, wearing headphones does not add to the experience at all, right, because something is so loud. This though has actually done a pretty good job, right? When we look at all the deadening in here, I'm expecting some pretty positive results to this. So we're going to start the tractor up, rev the thing up the whole way. Kind of right up here at the top of the glass we're reading right about 90, 94 decimals. Now that's enough to be outside to reach your OSHA exposure limit in about four hours.
Jump in the tractor and close the door. I'm sitting right about 90, 91 decimals right up here at my ear. Now, one thing you want to remember is that the decibel scale is logarithmic, small changes like that are meaningful. So if you're looking from an OSHA standpoint of noise exposure, you're okay in this cab for a full eight-hour workday versus being outside the machine and only being good for four hours. The cab here is actually deadening the noise from outside a little bit. And you could only attribute that to the lengths that they've gone here with these padded headliners and thick padding in the floor.
So that's a little bit on the Workmaster 25 with the factory cab. This is the smallest factory cab solution that we have to offer here at Messick's. Right now, we actually have two of these machines in stock despite the inventory shortages that you hear about all day long. We've got two of these machines ready to roll out the door. You can see that there's a lot of reasons here to like the factory installed options on these. We can come up with a lot of different solutions for you for cabs on tractors that you might be shopping for or machines that you've already got. But we always migrate back to this kind of solution whenever we have a chance to for... It's quality, it's fit, it's finished. It's very easy to see there's a lot that they can do here at the factory that we just can't achieve by adding cabs onto machines after the fact.
Is this the future of mowing. It Looks like something out of "The Jetsons" or something, doesn't it? The little space capsule for mowing your lawn. This is a Kubota ZD mower, but we're going to be talking more specifically about this cab today, an air-conditioned cab that can go onto your mower, that's going to do a couple of things for you. Keep the pollen in off of you, keep the bugs out of your face, keep the grass blowing back on you, and keep you cool all at the same time. I'm going to show you around this. We'll talk about the benefits, but also some of the downsides and complications of installing this on a machine like this. Come along with me today, we're going to take a quick walk around this cool-looking mower.
