Sub compact tractors,

Majicmike

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I’m in the market for a sub tractor with loader and back hoe. What do y’all have and what do you like and dislike about it. Only looking around 25hp . Looking something to remover small stumps, rake driveways and general what to play farmer stuff.
 
Bull shit you can’t do real work. My 23hp Kubotas will do anything my dads 46hp full-size will do. It takes a little longer on the big stuff. My Kubota is quick detachable so 99% of the time he don’t use his and just gets mine. I have dug 18in stumps up.
 

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The BX23s is what you seek. All other compacts claim to be as good as the BX23s, all other companies put labels on their stuff to ask you to compare to the bx23s. Just pay the extra to get the bx23s
 
I have the Mahindra eMax 20S with a bucket on the front and a box blade on the back. Also have a 2" hitch for it and can put a backhoe or a belly mower on it. Would also take a bush hog or a finish mower. Oh it also has a cab available for it.

It does all I need and more. One thing you might want to consider is how close is the nearest dealer if you are going with a new unit. Used too come to think of it. You wouldn't want.to have to take it to the next state if you have a problem.

Transporting it is another concern. I got a package deal on mine. It came with a trailer.
 
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You can do "real work" with 25hp. The limiting factor of subcompact tractors isnt the hp, it's the small size and light weight. Which is also what makes them so great for small jobs.

Kubota BX23S is THE tractor to get for what you desire. Although I will say the backhoe on small tractors is a bit anemic and slow to use in my opinion. Otherwise, the tractor is fine so long as your not expecting to move 50 yards of material quickly. Been there, done that.
 
I looked at a one size up from the Kubota 23. Loved everything about except it has a regen motor. We have a few boom lifts at work wit re Gen motors and they always have issues
I looked at the L2501
 
I have a Kubota BX24....they came with a FEL and BH. I've used the crap out of this thing for 13 years. Paid for itself the first year I had it! As has been said...they'll do the same work as the bigger brothers (within reason), just takes longer.
 
Not sure what your situation is, but one of the reasons I got the BX24 was the 4' width. My property is wooded, and when I got the tractor there was about 2 acres that the entire underbrush consisted of briars. I bought a used 36" bush hog and easily maneuvered it and the tractor through the woods to clear it all out. Couldn't have done that with a larger tractor.
First time I used the backhoe the wife said that I looked like a one armed puppeteer with Parkinson's disease :)
 
If you have the acreage then go look for lightly used full size or compact. They're out there but you need to move fast

Had a subcompact and out grew the capabilities, impressive as they are. Lift capacity on subcompacts are 700-900lbs.

Mine new one is heavier than the BX23 and is considered a compact tractor. Larger than my old one, almost twice the lift with more weight to get power to the ground. To me, this time size was important.

Green, orange, red, or blue... They all have differences. Do not go into the size HP that has the emissions. All I've heard is tales of woe.
 
Best thing I did to mine was to fab up a fixed thumb for the BH....great for picking up logs so you can cut them at a comfortable height.
Picked up a big 8' oak log and had the bucket full of oak chunks....had to get the wife and step son to sit on the chunks in the bucket to keep the front wheels on the ground so I could haul the log out :)
 
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While not technically a subcompact but my LS MT35e does it all well. I have 11 acres of rocky root clay and I am slowly taming it. I recommend one size bigger than you think you need.
Kioti is the best deal in orange and LS is the best deal in blue or any other color. And they're based in NC.
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While not technically a subcompact but my LS MT35e does it all well. I have 11 acres of rocky root clay and I am slowly taming it. I recommend one size bigger than you think you need.
Kioti is the best deal in orange and LS is the best deal in blue or any other color. And they're based in NC.
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I was planning going up one size but I just talked to 2 more guys that work on machinery and they both said to stay away from Tier 4 engines.
 
Just went through this for our little slice of heaven. Borrowed a friends BX tlb for several weekends and got a lot done with that little beastie. It put me over the edge and started the search for our own machine. I too wanted to stay below the threshold for emissions - looked seriously at Kubota, Deere, Kioti and Mahindra.

Major considerations for me was physical size (smaller being better) as 90% of the work I’m doing is in the woods. A foot wider or longer means I can’t get in all the same spots, or may need to clear out more trees for wider trails.

I wanted at least 1k loader capacity and some decent ground clearance - which steered me up to the not quite sub-compacts, ie bigger tires and a little bigger frame but still very much a small tractor. The subcompacts are pretty vulnerable bombing through the woods, and once you hang a bucket or forks on their front you don’t have much lift capacity left.

Primary tasks are lifting and carrying/dragging out logs, grappling lots of brush, minor ground reshaping with a blade, moving stuff (mulch, soil, gravel, etc), and running our pto wood chipper.

After looking at all of them, it came down to Kioti’s CK line, or Kubota’s L2501 or LX2610SU.

The Kioti impressed me with the loader and features, but I ended up going Kubota because it just felt more refined and the dealer support seemed much stronger. If I lived closer to a Kioti dealer, or had someone I knew with personal experience using them, I may have gone that route.

I went with the LX and am very happy with what it has been able to do. No issues moving very large logs, or as much brush as can fit in a 60” grapple. Honestly, if I wasn’t in super tight quarters I am sure I would have been more happy with the L2501 for the extra loader capacity, greater torque and beefier components, but the LX squeezes into really tight spots and I appreciate that.

The only thing I didn’t really anticipate was how much we would be using the chipper, and that it would have been nice to have a little more power driving that. I might have liked the 33hp version for that reason, but that was a significant price jump and brought in DEF and emissions. The 25 horse motor drives the chipper pretty well, as long as I don’t put anything over 4.5” in there, and slow down the power infeed when it starts to get under a load. Chipper time is only about 10% of the hours Ive put on in the last few months, so I’m probably saving some fuel as well with the smaller motor.

In my application, smaller was better - though if I had a more open property I’d definitely have been looking for something larger as recommended by Scsmith. In the long run, I think I’m going to be very happy to have stayed with the lower cost, less complicated 25 horse machine.

I say go out and try a bunch of them at the dealerships. It’s a fun way to spend some time, and you’ll get a better feel for the different options than you can from spec sheets.

No matter what you get - hang a bunch of weight off the back. You’ll be much more stable moving heavy stuff around with that loader.

Edit: fixing an unfortunate autocorrect.
 
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Personally I’d get something a lot bigger.

you can’t do much real work with 25hp
While I absolutely agree with you. Even the smallest homeowner sized tractor with bucket and hoe beats the hell out of a shovel and wheelbarrow.

If all that one can afford is a glorified yard tractor with a pto and hydraulic attach points. That's ok. Yes it will save physical labor. Which can not be understated as a true benefit. Staying under a budget for something that makes life easier makes perfect sense.

But I personally vote for getting the most powerful unit you can afford. Aside from physical dimensions limiting use (can't get through that gate, can't tow it with my current vehicle, etc.) No one has ever said they wish any piece of equipment had less power for any job.....
 
I've been looking at them the last few weeks since we bought some land. Now is NOT a good time to buy. Just like the used car market, the used tractor market (and new one) is crazy right now. A few things to consider from my research.

-Buy bigger than you think you need. I use my brothers 2007 Kubota L4400. Gear drive. No FEL. For our needs he recommended 35-50hp.
-Buy one with a front end loader (FEL). Everyone I talked to with a tractor recommends this.
-Most everyone recommended a cab. Nice to have AC when it is 95 degrees outside and heat when it is 30.
-Fill the rear tires for ballast.
-Consider skid steer quick attachments. Most companies (Kubota, Kioti, Case, MF, New Holland, Mahindra, LS, etc) have an interchangeable SSQA system. The lone wolf is John Deere. Their SSQA system is different and as one farmer told me "JOhn Deere does stuff to make sure you keep coming back to John Deere."
-A lot recommended not getting a backhoe. The sentiment was that if you were going to do a lot of digging it would be cheaper just to rent one.
As others have mentioned having a dealer close by will be important. There are John Deere, Kubota, Kioti, MF dealers all in the east. As @Ikarus1 stated LS is in North Carolina (Battleboro). Kioti North America headquarters is in Wendell.
Most everyone I spoke to preferred the HST drive over shuttle shift.

In my search mine matched @Verus Kubota or Kioti (for me personally). Kioti is a lot cheaper than Kubota. Most love them. You can hear horror stories with all manufacturers.

@Ikarus1 you mind sending me the specs and any other info you have on the LS. Do you like it? Anything you don't like?

For a general idea of what used tractors have been selling for go to Tractorhouse.com. This will list auction results.

Click on Detailed Search (to the right of the search bar)
Click on auction results.
Fill in the model you are interested in.
 
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I have a Kubota BX24....they came with a FEL and BH. I've used the crap out of this thing for 13 years. Paid for itself the first year I had it! As has been said...they'll do the same work as the bigger brothers (
Bull shit you can’t do real work. My 23hp Kubotas will do anything my dads 46hp full-size will do. It takes a little longer on the big stuff. My Kubota is quick detachable so 99% of the time he don’t use his and just gets mine. I have dug 18in stumps up.

You can do "real work" with 25hp. The limiting factor of subcompact tractors isnt the hp, it's the small size and light weight. Which is also what makes them so great for small jobs.

Kubota BX23S is THE tractor to get for what you desire. Although I will say the backhoe on small tractors is a bit anemic and slow to use in my opinion. Otherwise, the tractor is fine so long as your not expecting to move 50 yards of material quickly. Been there, done that.

I have a Kubota BX24....they came with a FEL and BH. I've used the crap out of this thing for 13 years. Paid for itself the first year I had it! As has been said...they'll do the same work as the bigger brothers (within reason), just takes longer.

within reason), just takes longer.

Well alrighty then, I stand corrected!!!
 
Just went through this for our little slice of heaven. Borrowed a friends BX tlb for several weekends and got a lot done with that little beastie. It put me over the edge and started the search for our own machine. I too wanted to stay below the threshold for emissions - looked seriously at Kubota, Deere, Kioti and Mahindra.

Major considerations for me was physical size (smaller being better) as 90% of the work I’m doing is in the woods. A foot wider or longer means I can’t get in all the same spots, or may need to clear out more trees for wider trails.

I wanted at least 1k loader capacity and some decent ground clearance - which steered me up to the not quite sub-compacts, ie bigger tires and a little bigger frame but still very much a small tractor. The subcompacts are pretty vulnerable bombing through the woods, and once you hang a bucket or forks on their front you don’t have much lift capacity left.

Primary tasks are lifting and carrying/dragging out logs, grappling lots of brush, minor ground reshaping with a blade, moving stuff (mulch, soil, gravel, etc), and running our pto wood chipper.

After looking at all of them, it came down to Kioti’s CK line, or Kubota’s L2501 or LX2610SU.

The Kioti impressed me with the loader and features, but I ended up going Kubota because it just felt more refined and the dealer support seemed much stronger. If I lived closer to a Kioti dealer, or had someone I knew with personal experience using them, I may have gone that route.

I went with the LX and am very happy with what it has been able to do. No issues moving very large logs, or as much brush as can fit in a 60” grapple. Honestly, if I wasn’t in super tight quarters I am sure I would have been more happy with the L2501 for the extra loader capacity, greater torque and beefier components, but the LX squeezes into really tight spots and I appreciate that.

The only thing I didn’t really anticipate was how much we would be using the chipper, and that it would have been nice to have a little more power driving that. I might have liked the 33hp version for that reason, but that was a significant price jump and brought in DEF and emissions. The 25 horse motor drives the chipper pretty well, as long as I don’t put anything over 4.5” in there, and slow down the power infeed when it starts to get under a load. Chipper time is only about 10% of the hours Ive put on in the last few months, so I’m probably saving some fuel as well with the smaller motor.

In my application, smaller was better - though if I had a more open property I’d definitely have been looking for something larger as recommended by Scsmith. In the long run, I think I’m going to be very happy to have stayed with the lower cost, less complicated 25 horse machine.

I say go out and try a bunch of them at the dealerships. It’s a fun way to spend some time, and you’ll get a better feel for the different options than you can from spec sheets.

No matter what you get - hang a bunch of weight off the back. You’ll be much more stable moving heavy stuff around with that loader.

Edit: fixing an unfortunate autocorrect.
They just told me the L2501 has the tier 4 motor (re gen stuff) ?
 
They just told me the L2501 has the tier 4 motor (re gen stuff) ?
Wrong. I have a 2501/fel with 136 hrs, it's a non regen. and am looking to step up in hp and loader capacity. As I understand 26hp and over have the regen

If you are looking for occasional hoe use. There are 3 point units that get the job done.

Mine will be for sale soon as I find another. Maybe as soon as 2 weeks.
 
They just told me the L2501 has the tier 4 motor (re gen stuff) ?

It is tier 4 compliant, but the tier 4 emissions standards for engines below 26 hp aren’t so strict as to require dpf/def or other emission control equipment. The tiny engines are still allowed to breathe (and yes, emit a little puff of diesel soot from time to time).

So yes, it’s tier 4 - but it doesn’t have the extra crap that everyone is trying to avoid.

Over 26 and you get the dpf and regen cycles.
 
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Lots of good info here I’ve been looking at the sub compact mahindea or Massey with a backhoe for a while now. Light use. Not trying to dig a swimming pool or anything. I was told that a sub compact wouldn’t dig a hole. My response was, if I can dig a hole with a shovel then a sub compact with most certainly dig a hole.
 
Lots of good info here I’ve been looking at the sub compact mahindea or Massey with a backhoe for a while now. Light use. Not trying to dig a swimming pool or anything. I was told that a sub compact wouldn’t dig a hole. My response was, if I can dig a hole with a shovel then a sub compact with most certainly dig a hole.

You certainly could dig a pool with a subcompact tlb - it’ll just take a good long while. They beat a shovel any day, and can do real work.

I put in a few hundred feet of drainage lines with a borrowed BX backhoe over the course of two weekends. It had no problem doing the work, but the constant getting on and off to reposition every few feet of advancement took a lot of time. In a mini ex it would have been a lot faster and less climbing in and out.

Based on that experience, when it came time to buy mine I chose to save the cash on the BH and put that into other implements. I’ll rent the mini ex when I need to do something like that again.
 
Lots of different opinions (and some misinformation) so far.

Kubota BX is gold standard, but the Deere 1025R has slightly more lift and capacity for the same size. It’s not as refined, but the extra lift and “ass” is nice over the BX. I have a BX1880 and have also had the Kioti CS2410, both were good. Go with best dealer support above all, color second. All tractors are good these days.

Kubota LX series is awesome, and the L2501 is good for a larger frame tractor.

Skip the backhoe, you can rent a more capable machine dozens of times vs the backhoe. Spend the money on better attachments instead of backhoe.
 
Personally I’d get something a lot bigger.

you can’t do much real work with 25hp

No matter how big your tractor is, you're going to run up against something that it's too small for eventually. If all you're doing is digging holes, that's not such a hard thing to overcome. Most folks just use tractors for lifting and moving stuff around and don't need tons of power or weight.

Buy the biggest one you can afford that will run a 4 way or grapple bucket. Old is fine; '90s is practically late model for a good tractor. Personally I don't think 4WD is that important with a machine that has some mass behind it, but you do you. Pay someone to move it for you.
 
I was planning going up one size but I just talked to 2 more guys that work on machinery and they both said to stay away from Tier 4 engines.
LS designed their own engine (for the first time...usually it was a Mitsu) and it regens periodically. On something like this, it honestly doesn't affect how I use the tractor at all, and if anything, makes the diesel fumes less noticeable on my clothes. Something that was an add-on DPF I would say yeah I agree but on my Nissan Cummins 5.0 and this tractor the DPF system just does what it was designed to.

If you still want to avoid a 25+HPP Tier IV engine, good luck because
A. they are just as expensive as a new one and you'll be buying a several year old tractor without much of a warranty.
B. Hundreds of hours of unknown use with unknown maintenance on most (including Kubota and Deere) but paying a new tractor price.

It's not like DPF hasn't been around since 2005 or before.....most people ran into issues on tuned trucks because they were dumping fuel. I don't really worry about it on offroad equipment. My buddy has 2 newer-than-2018 Bobcat Skidsteers with Regen and DEF and hasn't had a bit of trouble with either or his mini-ex with thousands of hours on the clock. Of course he changes the oil every 100hrs like you're supposed to and changes the fuel filters regularly as well.
 
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Someone donated a fully restored 32 hp 1952 Farmall Super A to our farm... pretty much useless except for hillin' up rows and bush hoggin' fields... unless there are steep parts to yer land, then it's pretty much useless.
 
I went up there last week. Same price as Carolina power in Sanford so I’m going to see if I get father out of town can I save some money or a trailer throw in😎
Damn hate I missed ya. Kubota national pricing, so we should all be the same. I'd call before you ride anywhere, tractors are very hard to get. Our lot would be over full if everything we have on order would come in. Trailers are in short supply too.
 
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Someone donated a fully restored 32 hp 1952 Farmall Super A to our farm... pretty much useless except for hillin' up rows and bush hoggin' fields... unless there are steep parts to yer land, then it's pretty much useless.
enter it in the Thresher Reunion near Denton in July. All I see is Q-tips driving Farmall super As that look better than my truck on any given workday
 
I have basically the same tractor as ikarus1 except the 37hp version with New Holland stickers. It has done everything I have asked and more. I wouldn’t buy the backhoe attachment. I will recommend getting the largest one you can afford or that will fit where needed. I have had a few iffy situations where I didn’t have enough weight on the back to match what the fel is capable of. Whatever you decide to buy you will find more uses for it than you imagined when you were looking at them.
 
hard to till a garden with that, or layoff rows, not to mention the cost of those tracks. But sure to build a shooting berm or do most landscaping tasks nothing beats a skidloader. But for the same price I could own an awesome cab tractor and hire 100 landscapers.

Buzz kill.
 
Just get this. (It's not my $$$$$)

View attachment 390356
Tha's what we really need... most of the property is covered with 8" of rolled granite gravel. We dig it up, truck it off-site and bring in tractor trailer loads of compost. Then the Super A plows in leaf mulch and lays out the rows. ;)
 
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Well alrighty then, I stand corrected!!!

I'm going to come to your defense here with my spin on it: A bigger tractor is always better unless you must trailer it regularly for a landscaping business, or you absolutely have no room to store it. Also keep in mind that a small tractor that's "what every dentist thinks he wants" causes the price to be commensurately higher, ...a bunch higher. That price-inflation bubble tapers-off pretty quickly on a used tractor that "most" newcomers to tractor ownership think is "too big". That can work in your favor when shopping and is something to keep in mind. Additionally, I'd be looking for something that's new enough to have a ROPS, but old enough to still have analog guages. Do some online studying. It's fun. Good luck!
 
We have a Kubota L2501 with loader and it has really shined for everything we’ve used it for, and it’s a working machine at least 3 days every week. Not a single hiccup. Kubota has 0% interest for 5 years, too. Tractor, loader, box blade, 3rd function valve, and grapple was a shade under $25,000.00. Paid 10k cash down, payments are 300 and some change. That machine was worth every penny.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
My only comment is to concur on thinking twice about a backhoe attachment. When we were looking at tractors we thought that was what we wanted. The salesman said that if you want a backhoe attachment that you should get one from the factory that way because the add on ones don’t work very well. Don’t know if it’s true or not, but we went without. Haven’t needed a hoe yet.
 
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