Farm Machinery Servicing

It’s a very strange thing.

Some people will service and maintain their cars in immaculate condition and yet at the same time treat their agricultural machinery with indifference and sometimes even contempt.

We are not quite sure why that is but it’s presumably linked to the fact that farm machinery looks heavy duty and manufactured to last, so, they assume it will do so with minimum intervention.

In fact, farm machinery servicing is at least as important as car servicing if not more so.  That’s because your agricultural equipment is probably directly linked to your income whereas your car may well not be.

Farm machinery servicing is important because Australia’s farming environment is particularly unforgiving where equipment is concerned.  It does n’t take long for corrosion to start to get a grip or relatively minor alignment problems to make the transition to a state where they’re in danger of shaking the item apart.

As you might expect, at White’s Tractors we are great believers in preventative farm machinery servicing.  No, that’s not because we have a vested interest.  It’s more because we have seen the cumulative and very expensive damage that can arise when things like tractors and mowers simply are n’t well maintained.

Prevention is ALWAYS cheaper than cure!

A variation on this theme is what is sometimes referred to as ‘DIY servicing’.

This is a very large area for discussion and includes numerous bad practices often involving things such as using the wrong lubrication, fixing non-standard replacement parts or making highly-dangerous modifications and repairs simply because the person doing so did n’t know how to do it properly.

In all the above scenarios, you are gambling with potentially very large amounts of your money plus possibly your health.

Even in a re-sale situation, experienced buyers will often be able to tell very quickly that a piece of machinery has been poorly maintained or not maintained at all over a long period of time.  If that’s the case, watch how quickly they will start to knock huge sums off the amount they are prepared to offer you for it – assuming they actually wish to offer anything at all once they’ve really assessed what state it’s in.

So, the moral of the tale is clear.  Don’t economise on or neglect your farm machinery servicing.