As I get ready to attend a major brand’s new machinery introduction event next week, which will showcase the newest in electric drive and autonomous machine operation, it’s worth summarizing just how much farm equipment design has evolved in my lifetime.
As a teenager, one of my first summer jobs was as a mechanic’s helper at an Allis-Chalmers dealership. That was the late 1970s. At that time, the brand and the dealership were making a big deal out of the fact the tractors were equipped with the relatively new air conditioned, quiet cabs, something few farmers enjoyed on their tractors then. Air conditioning wasn’t even common in farm pick-up trucks.
Of course, HVAC is standard equipment these days. The AM radios in those new tractor cabs and nearly everyone’s pickup would have a hard time even finding a radio station to tune into today. Satellite radio is quickly taking over.
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A few years later, the horsepower race kicked into high gear. When production tractors hit 500 horsepower a little over a decade ago, a lot of industry watchers said, surely we must have reached the limit. For a while we did pause there as a new race in digital technology took centre stage.
But the pause in the horsepower race was only that, a pause. Last year, John Deere pushed the limit past 800.
Several years ago I was at a New Holland event along with a few other machinery journalists. We were shown video footage of a secret autonomous tractor project. It was, we were told, just for our background knowledge, and we were asked to not report on it. We all respected that request. Now, that kind of technology is something every brand wants us to talk about.
Artificial intelligence is quickly moving into the cabs of machines and promises to push warm bodies out of operator seats. Deere’s 8R tractors have already seen a limited commercial release for autonomous tillage operations. In Salina, Kansas, last summer I watched Agco demonstrate its OutRun autonomous bolt-on technology, which allows Fendt and 8R Deere tractors to pull a grain cart through the field.
There’s no doubt all farm machines have grown in scale over the years.
I can recall delivering a combine during my time at the Allis dealership in the 1970s, hauling it on a gooseneck trailer pulled by a Ford F-250.
A couple of years ago, I did a little part-time work delivering equipment for a John Deere dealer. This time I drove a T800 Kenworth pulling a tridem RGN trailer. Often, it required running with an overweight permit.
However, it isn’t just the growth of machinery muscle anymore that is worthy of note; it’s the growth of their digital brains.
