Neil from Messick's here to talk about my personal tractor here, and an interesting exchange that I had with a customer here last week. We're going to talk about my machine and the fact that I have no ballast in my rear tires.
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I'm standing here with my personal tractor, and thinking through a scenario here that was really relevant to a conversation that I had here with a customer the other day. This particular customer was almost shocked and put off by the fact that we had a salesperson recommend that they not put ballast on their tractor. Ballasting your tractor is really, really important. When you go through and look at the capabilities of today's machines, particularly with the strength of their loaders, you need to have weight on the back side of that machine for that thing to be able to lift those heavy loads safely and for the tractor to be able to drive around.
My goodness, I feel like I've used my machine before where I am teetering on that front axle, and that's not good for the machine. Having that weight behind it to plant the rear end to distribute those forces across the tractor are far better for the machine than driving around with no rear ballast. Ballasting tractors is super important, and this customer that I was discussing this with almost looked at this as the 8th deadliest sin. Like, "Why would a salesperson from Messick's, of all places, recommend not putting ballast in your back tires?"
Now, if I can reframe the conversation here a little bit, rather than talking about ballast and that tonnage that we add to a tractor, maybe we need to think of it a little bit more as balance. You'll notice that I have my large, big, heavy snowblower here on the back of my tractor. There is no snow in the forecast. We're sitting here in February, and I've had no reason to get this thing out at this point. Yet, I've been carrying it around now for several months, and I always am carrying some implement on the back of my tractor. Rather than adding ballast to my tires, I choose to add that balance or the ballast on the backside of my machine by carrying around an implement with me, in this case, my snowblower.
It's often my flail mower in the summertime as I go back and forth from doing, say, brush mowing work and that kind of thing. When I'm done, I leave that mower on the back of my tractor. Really try to be in the habit of when I take one attachment off, I put another attachment on. That's because I rely upon the weight of these attachments to provide that balance. That back ballast that I need on the tractor is coming from this, as opposed to some kind of fluid in the tire.
This was the same scenario that our salesperson had recommended to this customer, who was going to be installing a backhoe onto their tractor that they did not intend to take off. In that case, you've got the other part of 1,000 pounds worth of additional weight hanging off the back of your machine. We've covered my balance by carrying around an implement on the back of my machine, but why do I choose to leave these tires empty? After all, you can put fluid in here and put it in and forget it. I like that aspect of it, that it doesn't take thought. It doesn't require you to carry something around if you don't want the implement on there, but there's reasons I don't prefer fluid in tires.
A lot of that comes down to ride. When you go through and you fill up a tire with fluid, you take away the air cushion that's inside of this tire that helps your tractor ride better when you're going across rough ground. It jars you around more. It makes you chatter your teeth as you're bouncing across stuff. For that reason, I prefer not to put the liquid in there. On many machines, you can have the tire ballast by using iron weights, but in smaller tractors like this, you'll notice this rim isn't even drilled for those weights because you can't get the right bolt patterns and weights aren't made for this size rim. That's not always an option.
In a machine like this, filling your tires really is the only way that you can go if you want that tire ballast. I don't feel that it's necessary to be dogmatic about ballast. If we look at our machines and we think of this more as a balance equation that when I've got weight in the front, I need weight in the back, you're going to have a machine that's going to perform appropriately. I like choosing the path of going through and saying, "I'd rather spend my ballast money on an implement that I'm going to carry around."
It does take a little bit more thought, a little bit more care. It's not a fill it and forget it type solution. There's great scenarios here where you can go through and have a machine that rides and performs a little bit better just by having your ballast and balance weight in an implement behind your tractor. If you're shopping for a piece of equipment and we can help, or if you've got parts or service needs for a machine you've already got, give us a call at Messick's. We're available at 800-222-3373 or online at messicks.com.
