MattCatlin
Member
I've got a little hobby farm of 40 acres I mess around with. Mainly play farm about 8 of them, grow pumpkins, sweet corn and for the critters cowpeas, buckwheat, turnips and rye/wheat. I have an old Deere 4010 that makes quick work of it, probably less than 40 hours on the meter a year. The fields are surrounded by timber and I'd like to harvest some logs for the sawmill for lumber to build some outbuildings and for a small cabin say 16 by 20 or so. I have access to a woodmizer portable mill my brother owns and might even buy my own. No way in heck my Deere is going to leave the fields, no rops and muffler is too tall anyway to drive in the woods. A small dozer like a Deere 1010 or 350 would be just the ticket, even an older smaller crawler like a td9 would be fine for my small logs. Looking at rental costs I think I'd be ahead to buy a small dozer. Trick is I need to find one with an undercarriage and motor that has several hundred hours of life left in it. I doubt I'd put 20 hours a year on it. My budget is probably $5,000 maybe stretch that to 10K. How realistic is it for me to find a machine in that price range that will run 40 hours a year relatively trouble free for several years in you opinions? All this percent wear on undercarriage seems highly subjective and maybe a little unrealistic. Seen people proclaim 85% undercarriage on a 40 year old machine in ads.
Thanks
Thanks