Hydrostatic transmission and positive engine braking suits south Shropshire farm.
Farlow Farm’s first experience of Kubota RTVs came from buying second-hand at a farm sale. It was to prove a turning point for the family-run farm and nursery business based at Oreton in south Shropshire, who had past experience of many different utility vehicles.
“The Kubota’s hydrostatic transmission has been a game-changer for us compared to a belt-type transmission,” explains Dan Link, who handles day-to-day running of the business with his brother Ben, and their dad Mark.
“Our south Shropshire farm is on a hillside, so we’ve plenty of gradients to negotiate and we really wanted a better UTV solution with greater safety and stability for working on slopes, and the RTV is that solution.”
Farlow Farm operates a 40-acre wholesale nursery business and a further 25 acres of grassland for its 120 head of sheep. Equipment for the task includes a pair of Kubota M7 tractors, one of which is equipped with a loader, plus two compact tractors and three RTV X1110s – all have been supplied by local dealer Battlefield Machinery.
“Buying secondhand gave us the chance to see if we were making the right choice, and since then, we’ve stuck with the Kubota models ever since, choosing buy new, with warranty, replacing one RTV every three years,” says Dan.
Dan, Ben and Mark each use an RTV for their daily tasks, clocking up around 500 hours per year per RTV. Ben Link says that of the three RTVs used at Farlow Farm, two are without doors, with the newest model arriving complete with doors.
“We bought our latest model with the optional glazed doors, just to see if we they were practical enough for what we want,” explains Ben. “The RTVs are in use every day, and we’re on and off them an awful lot, so having doors could have been considered an inconvenience – they’re not. Doors are great through the winter, and they can be taken off in the summer. We’ll probably have doors on them all in future.”
Ben says that the RTV is already an easy machine to get on and off, and the wide-opening doors do not hinder access and egress from the driver’s seat. He says that the X1110 has been a big improvement over the earlier X900 model, and is far more user-friendly.
“We’ve lost some storage space in the front now the cooling system’s radiator is in there, but it’s not a problem. Far better that the powertrain has gained CV joints instead of the earlier model’s universal joints,” says Ben.
The Link family’s experience with Kubota RTV’s has enabled them to fine-tune the specification, to make them ideally suited to the working environment at Farlow Farm Nursery. Those changes include swapping tyres from the block pattern to cleated alternatives; replacing the spool valve couplers with larger half-inch connections to match those of tractors and trailers; and fitting extra
LED lights to the roof.
“The specification provides versatility for our business,” he says. “We have a wide variety of trailers to pull when moving containerised plants and root ball stock around the place, and none of them have brakes. So we rely heavily on the RTV’s four-wheel drive and hydrostatic transmission which provides equal amounts of traction and engine braking to stay in control of what we’re moving
around.”
“We’ve enjoyed total reliability from our Kubota RTV’s and great service and backup from Battlefield
Machinery,” says Mark Link.
