| We all hear about the cost of doing business and how farming is an expensive venture,
but it takes a look at a scene like this to bring some of those costs into perspective.
This massive tractor cost's is operator considerable more then a suburban house in
a city and can get ten years of wandering fields with seventy-two feet of deep tillage
dragging behind it to wear those tires down to the point were they need to be replaced.
It has eight tires, each about $1,000 each. For such an expensive piece of equipment,
$800 a year for tires seems not that remarkable, until you realise that tires are
one of the lowest costs of farming. Fuel, insurance, oil, spare parts, make up only
a few of the many fixed costs that rank well above the cost of a few millimetres
of rubber that is scrubbed off each summer. This picture was taken at Fairburn
Tire. |
