What to Expect at Drop-Off Kubota LX3310 Delivery and Walk Around

Neil:
Neil from Messick's here with two special customers. This is Jeff and Lori. We're out today dropping a tractor off, delivering their new machine. We're going to take some time here, have a good conversation with these guys about what the purchase experience was like, what this looks like from kind of shopping for a tractor to actually delivering it, to financing it. Spend some time talking about their equipment and introduce you to some really cool people.

Neil:
So this is not your first piece of equipment, right?

Jeff:
No.

Neil:
What is in your fleet exactly? So you have a skid-steer?

Jeff:
Skid-steer, Kubota 1100. We have a Grasshopper mower, a Scags mower. What else do we have?

Lori:
A Walker.

Jeff:
A walk behind, yeah. Oh yeah, a Walker that you ride, that's hers. That's why I bought this for her.

Neil:
So you're ahead of the curve compared to a lot of the people that we deliver equipment to. Even at this point, with as many compact tractors as you see out there, 70% of our customers don't have much equipment experience. So the actual walk around of it explaining to somebody how a machine works is a little bit different from person to person, depending on who it is that we're dropping stuff off t.o basic operation to the tractor, it's a diesel machine, which you have other diesel equipment. When you want to start the machine, you take the key, turn it a half a notch forward, and that'll heat the glow plugs. And you'll see the little indicator there on the dash.

Jeff:
That's just like the 1100.

Neil:
Just like the 1100. What's the temperature that you start using the glow plugs on the 1100?

Jeff:
Oh, winter time, I don't know, 40 degrees.

Neil:
Okay. So tractor's going to be the same way. So once it gets 40 degrees or so outside, you give it five, 10 seconds on the glow plug before you kick the key over. It can be exactly the same thing. Once you have the tractor up and running, your throttle's up here on the dash and your hydrostatic pedal's down on the floor. Now, when you're going to be using your mower, you want that throttle up really high to keep those blades spinning. But if you're doing loader work and that kind of stuff, you can kind of shoot down the middle and a comfortable operating speed.

Jeff:
Right. Well, they recommend the RPMs for the 5400...

Neil:
For the 540?

Jeff:
Is that what it is, 540 on the RPMs?

Neil:
Usually, this one doesn't have an indicator on it, some of the tractors will have a tack that actually has a line on it this one's digital, so you don't have that line. It's going to be right about 90% of wide open.

Jeff:
Okay.

Neil:
You don't have to go the whole way to wide open throttles. So take it to wide open then back it off just a touch.

Jeff:
Just a tad.

Neil:
Yeah. That would be about where your 540 mark's at. It will tell you digitally once you've hit 540 on the screen. So basic driving, butt in the seat, machine running, pedal on the floor. Harder you press the pedal, faster you go. You think of it just like your other hydraulic equipment that the harder you press that pedal down, the less power you have. So if you're pushing into a pile of dirt, be gentle on it. You have a range selector over here on the left hand side with a low, medium high. Loader, mower, highway. Right. Basically zero to four, zero to eight or zero to 12 miles an hour. So that's basic driving, right?

Jeff:
Right.

Neil:
Pretty simple. You have a mid mount mower and you have some other three point hitch implements coming.

Jeff:
Yes.

Neil:
What are they?

Jeff:
A grader blade, snow plow for the front, a seeder for the rear, and a manure spreader.

Neil:
Okay. So the seeder's PTO powered and your spreader would be PTO powered, right?

Jeff:
Right.

Neil:
So we were talking about this a little bit earlier. So you have a yellow lever, two yellow levers that control your PTO. So the front one is just going to turn it on and off. Slide it front, turns the PTO one. The back one here is going to choose which PTO you're going to run. So if you have your mid mount mower on and you want to run your manure spreader, you just slide this to choose the rear selection, and then that'll run that and the front one will run the mid PTO, or the middle portion here will run both at the same time.

Jeff:
Got it. Okay.

Lori:
I didn't realize that.

Jeff:
Yeah. That's nice.

Neil:
Yeah. So you could select which one you want. The middle one is a little weird. People always ask, "Why why would I want to run both?" It's for a bagger usually. So you'd have a powered bagger on the back with your mid mount mower. So yellow levers do your PTO. On the other side over here, you have this black one, this will raise your mower deck and your three point hitch arms up and down. They are tied together, so they move in conjunction with each other. The outside lever here's your cruise control. It really is just mechanically tied to the pedal down there on the floor. Lever over here is for your rear remote to be able to operate that.

Jeff:
That would be like for the greater blade to angle it right and left?

Neil:
Angle on the greater blade. Yep. Four wheel drive right down here on the floor. You'll notice that all these levers here, range selector and your four wheel drive and this are all orange. There's movement related stuff with all of your orange levers. None of these are shift on the go, so there's straight cut gears. So stop the tractor, pull the lever, it should drop into place. If it doesn't drop into place, just tap the hydrostatic pedal forward a little bit and then-

Jeff:
To mesh the gear a little.

Neil:
Yeah. It'll rotate the gear set. And then it can mesh together.

Jeff:
Which is four wheel drive here? They both look the same.

Neil:
Yeah. The disengaged one would be two wheel, that's four wheel. You notice the difference in the brake there in the middle?

Jeff:
Okay.

Neil:
Yeah. Two and four would make a heck of a lot more sense, but this is international standard markings for tractor stuff.

Jeff:
So four wheels on the upper side.

Neil:
Four wheels the upper side. Yep.

Jeff:
Got it.

Neil:
You've got some Hills and stuff, so you probably want to use four wheel drive and stuff when you're mowing. A lot of times, I like the way the tractor drives and operates more in two wheel, but with the grades and stuff, you're going to want it.

Jeff:
Yeah. I don't want it slip and tearing the turf up. And then this here, what's this?

Neil:
That's the tilt for the steering wheel.

Jeff:
Oh, okay.

Neil:
Tilt for the steering wheel. Brakes are on the left. You see, these are split breaks. So if you want to get really fancy, you can unlock those there and then steer with your back tires a little bit. That can help you too. Like your bank over here, if you're trying to mow that bank and you want to keep the tractor on the side, breaking your uphill tire a little bit-

Jeff:
Give it better traction.

Neil:
Exactly. It can help it track across that hill a little bit better rather than wanting to drift down the hill.

Lori:
Yeah. Yeah. We usually just mow up in the pastures, he has the Grasshopper for that.

Jeff:
Yeah, but this is a good backup.

Neil:
Good backup. Or, hey, when you're in the seat, if you're looking over there and you got some weeds.

Jeff:
And it's a hundred degrees out.

Neil:
That'll be other thing to it. That's right.

Lori:
What is that gray lever over there?

Neil:
This one right here is a differential lock.

Jeff:
To lock both back wheels.

Neil:
Lock the rear end in. Yep. The one thing you want to watch with these is you don't want to step on that pedal when the wheels are spinning. So it's sliding a pin through the differential, and we will see every once in a while somebody's got it stuck and you've got the one wheel spinning.

Jeff:
And they hit it.

Neil:
Yeah. And they hit it while the diff is spinning and shear the pin off.

Jeff:
You stop and then lock it in, then go again.

Neil:
You got it. So you got a lot of buttons up here on the dash. So front and rear wipers, front and rear work lights, headlights, and turn signals. And then these two buttons are related to the tractor's regen.

Jeff:
Don't touch them.

Neil:
Don't touch them, that's about as much as you need to know, literally. The two buttons that are here on the dash, one is for what's called a park regen, and the other one is for inhibit. So if it's indicating to you that it wants to regen and you're already headed back to the garage, you can hit this inhibit button and it won't ever start. The other one right here is for what's called a parked regen. So if you have gone back to the garage, shut the engine off, which I told you not to do, and the next day you start the tractor up and you want it to go through its burn cycle, you can park it and hit this button and force it to go.

Jeff:
But it's best not to do that.

Neil:
Best not to do it. If you're using the parked regen, it's usually because something hasn't gone right to that point. But for the most part, yeah, just drive and go.

Jeff:
If I'm plowing with it or using it in the winter and it's cold out, if I have to get out for 20 minutes, half hour, I normally don't shut machine off when it's outside. I don't like it getting cold. Now, what RPM should I run that? Because you're not supposed to let them set and idle. So just jack the RPMs up about a quarter throttle?

Neil:
Yeah. I wouldn't have it sitting there screaming if it's parked. So low idle. And you know diesel equipment, so when you would normally see a little bit of sot, little bit of more dirty exhaust, the canister's catching all of that now, so anytime that you can avoid creating that sot, you're going to extend of the DPF, you're going to regen less often. So yeah, idling it a quarter or more is probably good. And with all the electronic fuel injection that's in these, you're not burning a whole lot more fuel when you're doing that.

Jeff:
Thank goodness, at six, seven dollars a gallon.

Neil:
Yeah. We'll be thankful for that. Save what we can.

Jeff:
And this is a parking...

Neil:
Parked PTO. So if you had a wood splitter or a generator, something where you need the PTO spinning when you're not in the tractor.

Jeff:
You can hit that.

Neil:
You hit that and it will allow you to do that. Otherwise, if the PTOs on and your butt leaves the seat, it's going to cut out.

Jeff:
It shuts off.

Neil:
So you're going to start by raising the loader up in the air, curling the bucket the whole way down. There's a release lever over here on the left hand side. So you see how I curled the bucket the whole way around, and then you take this release lever and release this down, that unhooks the parking stand.

Jeff:
Okay. Push this lever down all the way and that releases that there, that's the parking stand. Now you lift front of the tractor up. Now you can unhook these on both sides.

Neil:
Yep. And right back here in the back is this little, see that lever right there?

Jeff:
Yep.

Neil:
That little [paul 00:10:18] lifts up, and that's what detaches the loader for the tractor. A lot of people opt not to get this kit on a cab tractor, because on a non cab version you can just reach forward and hit these. But this is wonderful in every tractor, is to be able to release all the hydraulics with one lever there. So once you've lifted those two pauls, you want to set this back down on the ground. Work your loader valve in every direction, and you see how it's-

Jeff:
Get the pressure out.

Neil:
Yep. Get the pressure out of it. And then we release this right there. And that's awesome.

Jeff:
Isn't that nice.

Neil:
So that's all the hydraulics right there in that one lever. Now you have that third function kit there in the front.

Jeff:
Which I have to do those.

Neil:
Right. So before unhooking that, I turn the electric one on the tractor, and then toggle the two buttons right here on the loader stick.

Jeff:
Relieve the pressure on that.

Neil:
Exactly. And you can hear the solenoid clicking.

Jeff:
Kicking.

Neil:
And then once you've done that, you just unhooked those two. And that's it. At that point, we can curl that shut and back the tractor away, and there the loader will sit. It's pretty common on large ag loaders.

Jeff:
Yeah. I never seen one before.

Neil:
Farmers will take them on and off.

Jeff:
When I seen it I said, "I have to have that."

Neil:
Yeah. The real change for this is that however they're doing it, this is halfway affordable. So in a big farm tractor, this is a $2,000 option. On this it's, what? $700.

Jesse:
It's 800 for ours. Yeah. There's a decent amount of labor in putting that thing on.

Neil:
Right. Yeah. It is a little time consuming for us to install it. So that's not just the manifold, but that's the pauls, the parking stand, all the stuff to be able to do this.

Jeff:
Makes it very nice.

Neil:
It does. Yeah. And it's actually halfway affordable, because the other ones are awfully expensive.

Lori:
And the bucket's just the quick detach.

Jeff:
Yep/ Same as the skid loader and that.

Neil:
Right. Exactly the same as your skid loader. You could interchange your buckets, if for some reason you wanted to.

Jeff:
Yeah, I have forks and I have everything for the skid loader.

Neil:
Yeah. Forks, whatever. Yep. It'll all work on the tractor.

Jeff:
I watched a lot of videos, and you'll never guess who the star was.

Neil:
There's this guy, he's on YouTube. Yeah. It is always good, if you're going to do something the first time, watch the video before you do it. Because, gosh, as many of these deliveries as I've done, people might remember 10% of what you go through.

Jeff:
So you do it a couple times.

Neil:
Exactly. There's no substitute for screwing it up yourself or actually taking the time, hey, watch the video before you go do it the first time just to kind of get a quick refresher. Because there's no way you can absorb 10% of what we do through during these deliveries. To take the mower deck off, you want to set it down on the ground. And then that black handle on the front is held with a little pin. Pull the pin out, drop the handle front, and it will unhook the front portion of the mower deck. That loop there then, there's two feet of loop between the back of the deck here and the front of the tractor, that lifts right out. At that point then, spring loaded pin, one here, one on the other side, and unhook the drive shaft, it goes back to the middle. You are laying on the ground to reach back and hit that drive shaft. It is the same as doing the PTO shaft on the back of the tractor.

Jeff:
It's a bit easier, I guess, to come in the back side of the tractor, slide in on the backside to do it, or do you have to go in through there?

Neil:
To get...

Jeff:
To the drive shift.

Neil:
For the drive shift? Yeah, I would come in the side over here usually. There's no step on the other side, so it's going to be easier to come in on the other side than it is this side.

Jeff:
Easier on the other side. And then of course you have to slide it out sideways. I've seen guys greasing the floor up for the back wheels because they don't slide .

Neil:
The bigger the tractor and the bigger the deck, the easier this usually is. This has nice big front casters on the front, so it actually rolls pretty easy. When you go to do it, if you turn the tires the whole way around-

Jeff:
Gives you more room.

Neil:
It gives you more room. Or if you have your loader on, you can carefully lift the front end and watch what you're doing, you can slide it out the side that way too. So when you drop that handle down...

Jeff:
That whole thing comes out from under there.

Neil:
The handle actually comes off.

Jeff:
Yeah, it all comes off.

Neil:
It comes off with the mower deck.

Jeff:
That just hooks to the front and holds the front of the mower.

Lori:
Holds that up.

Jeff:
Which, that's a very nice set up, I think.

Neil:
Yeah, it works good. When you put it on, the real point of that handle is reinstalling it again. So you do that whole thing in reverse. Roll it underneath, drop the arms down, pin them in place, hook up the PTO shaft, and you do that last.

Jeff:
Okay. That's the last thing you do.

Neil:
When you take that long handle and you pull it around, it gives you leverage and it actually pulls the mower deck front and tensions all the linkage in the back as it comes forward.

Jeff:
Yeah. That'd be a little tougher in the back to hook that up with that on there, because now you can't move the mower around or anything.

Neil:
Exactly. Yeah. People will get stuck because they'll do the front first and then you can't get the rear pinned because the deck is too far forward.

Jeff:
I take it this is for the rear, the transmission.

Neil:
Yeah. That's the dipstick for your transmission fluid. And then the fill cap, you're going to need some kind of crazy funnel because it's right up here.

Jeff:
Yeah. Right there it is. Yeah. Now that oil that goes in there, that's for everything. Transmission, rear end, everything.

Neil:
Yeah.

Jeff:
The same as a Kubota.

Neil:
One reservoir for all the hydraulics.

Jeff:
Yep. And then you got the engine oil. And how many filters is on that for that?

Neil:
So there's two filters for the rear end, one on the hydraulic side, one on the hydrostatic side.

Jeff:
That's four filters there.

Neil:
Or two, two in the back.

Lori:
Just one on each.

Neil:
These two over here on the side are both fuel.

Jeff:
Yeah. Okay.

Neil:
And then your engine oil is over here on the other side.

Jeff:
Okay.

Neil:
That guy that does videos on YouTube just did a video on this exact tractor.

Jeff:
Really?

Neil:
On how to change the fluids. Yeah. I did my 50 hour service. Did we post that yet?

Lori:
Yeah.

Neil:
We did. Okay.

Jeff:
Is that when I should change the oil on this, after 50 hours?

Neil:
So yes. Your first service interval's at 50 hours. All of our equipment is that way. And what you're doing at that point is mostly just spinning new filters on. You drop the engine oil and then all the filters. You don't need to change the transmission oil. Most of these machines, especially when you have other equipment, it's unlikely that you're going to hit the service intervals.

Jeff:
Probably not.

Neil:
It'll take you a while. So even when a machine is sitting, every two years, something like that, it's good to go over it.

Jeff:
Because it draws moisture and everything else and breaks down.

Lori:
We usually do it every year.

Jeff:
Yeah. The Kubota, my 1100.,I change it every year, the engine oil anyway.

Neil:
And I'm sure you've got a grease gun. Every 10 hours on the loader or the mower deck, it's good to run around with a grease gun and hit all that. We talked about engine oil and transmission oil. The third place that there's fluid in the tractor is the front axle. You shouldn't ever really need to check that, it's not like it's going to consume the oil. But if you notice a little puddle or something on your garage, that's another place to check. So there's a dipstick and a fill cap on the other side for the front axle.

Jeff:
And what for oil does that take?

Neil:
Same as transmission.

Jeff:
Same as transmission. Okay.

Neil:
When you want to get into the hood here, the grill guard goes through.

Jeff:
You just pull that down.

Neil:
And then you turn the hood ornament up here.

Jeff:
Oh wow. That's your hood latch.

Neil:
To release the top. That whole thing comes up. So your battery is right there in the front.

Jeff:
That's nice.

Neil:
I don't know where they get these batteries when they're new, but everybody raves about how long the original battery lasts.

Jeff:
My 1100 still has one, and how old is that? Seven years old.

Jesse:
We just had a BX in the shop, we literally just talked about it yesterday, 12 years on the original battery.

Neil:
On the original battery.

Lori:
On the original battery.

Neil:
Yeah. What the heck? Where could you go buy a battery that lasts more than five anymore?

Jeff:
That's right.

Lori:
If you get five.

Jeff:
Especially on a piece of equipment, sometimes you're lucky to get five because of the bouncing around.

Neil:
Wherever they get the original battery from, they last and last. There's a screen in here for the radiator. That can come out the side here of that little service hatch. The condenser has another one there. You're really only getting into this stuff if somehow enough dirt and chaff has made it through the screen here in the front. So it's not a carbon checkpoint.

Jeff:
If you're bush hogging and you get a bunch of grass and stuff in there.

Neil:
Yeah. Big air cleaner up here in the top, so that element comes out the side. These can last for a really long time and tend not to pick up tons of dirt, unless you're working in dusty conditions. Right. So that's the time to maybe pull that out and just check and see how plugged up it is. The big silver canister in the back here, this is the DPF that we were talking about earlier. Cool. Other than that, there's not a whole lot to these. The oil dipstick is around the side. You don't pop the hood to get down to the dipstick. So there's nothing you need to really dig around down here.

Jeff:
You can get to that?

Neil:
Yeah.

Jeff:
You have to lift this side cover off, I take it.

Neil:
Yeah. It's right over there. Yep. Behind that.

Jeff:
Have you had any trouble with these fuel filters getting knocked off or anything? I've seen a video where people were concerned about that. I don't know how you would knock it off unless you were really careless.

Lori:
Unless you're going up over a rock or something.

Neil:
When we see stuff like that, it's from people that are using grapples. When you take a grapple and you start crashing through the woods and stuff, all bets are off.

Jeff:
Running over logs and stuff.

Lori:
Yeah. You don't know what you're going to hit, rocks.

Neil:
Right. It's not a bulldozer, so you got to pay attention to what you're doing and think before you crash. I have a dent in the hood of my tractor. It's really easy to do when you start grabbing branches and that kind of stuff.

Jeff:
I thought they were fiberglass, they are metal.

Neil:
No, they're metal. Yeah. And good. So I pushed back on a tree that sprung back on me and went across my hood right here. And I immediately jumped off, put my hand underneath of it and I popped 90% of it right back out. A lot of people mess stuff up by pushing branches.

Jeff:
Oh, yeah. We all do dumb stuff certain times.

Neil:
It's how you learn.

Jeff:
Yeah. What do you think?

Lori:
Yeah.

Jeff:
You ready to go start mowing?

Lori:
Just in time. It needs mowed up there.

Jeff:
I got to show you my tractor that we used to use. Let me open this up here. I'll show it to you.

Lori:
It's a little bit of an upgrade.

Jeff:
It's a 46.

Neil:
46, and you still use it?

Jeff:
Oh yeah. She just mowed two weeks ago with it.

Lori:
It starts up

Jeff:
Now, it leaks some oil and that, but nothing's ever been done to it. Runs good, she goes out and mows the field with it. But it's hot and it's dusty and it don't have quite the power that will have.

Neil:
No. Your shopping process started at a trade show. So you came into the show and were looking at equipment there. Did you know Jesse before you were buying this?

Jeff:
No.

Neil:
Okay. Started at the show, got hooked up with Jesse, stopped in at the store at some point.

Lori:
I think it started on your YouTube channel.

Jeff:
And then I wanted to actually see one. I wanted to feel it and touch it. And then we went to the York show.

Jesse:
Well, but then you guys came to the store. And that's when we really hashed out exactly what you wanted.

Jeff:
Well, that was after York though. That was after York. And then I got to know you and then I came there and talked to you.

Lori:
When was your open house?

Neil:
Would've been back in end of January.

Jeff:
We went down there too. I was hoping to see one down there. Didn't see one there either.

Neil:
Wish we had a lot more to see.

Jeff:
Seen a bunch of orange tractors, but not the one I wanted.

Jesse:
So did you ever physically look at one before you bought it?

Jeff:
No.

Lori:
Just all YouTube.

Jeff:
All YouTube. That's the first time I physically seen it.

Jesse:
Other than last week when you came in and looked at yours.

Jeff:
Well, we just got back from Hilton Dead down in South Carolina. And I told her, I said, "Let's just stop and see if he has that tractor ready yet."

Neil:
So that is the beginning, the shopping part of the process? So now here, we've got a machine for you, we're wrapping things up at this point. Did you do DocuSign stuff?

Jesse:
Yes. DocuSign for everything. It's simple. That's what I told you guys from the get go, how simple. It's almost scary how simple it can be to buy it.

Neil:
Right. So most people are paying and buying their tractors and doing the paperwork before we are actually dropping it off, which feels a little backwards. You're paying for something before you've seen it. Did you prefer doing the paperwork that way?

Jeff:
It don't matter. It doesn't matter.

Neil:
The one thing that's easy for us is that, when we're here and we're gone over this and we're having to do paperwork in addition to all of this, we've already done a lot today. Being able to do DocuSign ahead of time lets you actually read and digest the paperwork on your own time. So we like that. It simplifies our deliveries a lot. This is not everything, and this is happening, 80% of our customers anymore because of inventory shortages, we're not delivering everything in one shot. So this will be a split financing. so you're financing what's here today, and then once Jesse has the rest of the stuff together...

Jeff:
Then we'll finance that

Neil:
It has been interesting for us because we have had to learn a whole new tool set of how to do business through severe inventory shortages.

Jeff:
I got enough toys.

Lori:
This is the last one.

Jeff:
Yeah, this is the last one.

Neil:
You had room in the garage still.

Jeff:
Yeah.

Neil:
Jeff, appreciate it.

Jeff:
Thanks, Neil.

Neil:
Lori.

Lori:
Thank you.

Neil:
It's a pleasure meeting you guys.

Jesse:
Thank you guys.

Jeff:
Thanks.

Jesse:
Thank you. Thanks, Lori.

Lori:
Thank you.

Neil:
And it is the coolest part about this business is, equipment's neat, but at the end of the day, this is a people business. And it is awesome to get out with good people, to meet you guys, to appreciate what you're doing and start a relationship. So happy to be in the store, stop and say hi when you come in.

Jeff:
Absolutely.

Neil:
Love to hear what you're doing with your equipment. Yes. So if you are shopping for a piece of equipment and we can help, put Jesse's info down here at the bottom. Also available for any parts of service needs that you might need, you can give us a call at Messick's, available at (800) 222-3373 or online at messick's.com. You just stepped in the middle of my thing. So that's why we got to do it again. All right, so let's do that same thing, but I'm going to talk so much.