A spreading contractor in Ancaster, Lincolnshire explains how John Deere's 7R tractor with reactive steering improves comfort and fuel efficiency during biosolids spreading operations across large areas.
We're a spreading contractor in Ancaster, Lincolnshire. We spread about 20,000 hectares of biosolids every year. We supply and spread ash and soil based fertilisers and then contract spread biosolids and all types of farmyard manure. So after running this seminars for this season, a few things we've really taken away from them. Really liked technology being one, being able to see where the tractors are, the fuel usage, the tonnage is coming off the machines and the time they've spent on the job. So the comfort of the 7R is really important to us. The feedback from the staff over the season has been great. From the size of the cab to the seat comfort, to all of the massaging seats, heated seats on a cold morning, to the integration of the spreaders into the Command Pro joystick and the Isobus into the screens has been really handy. The advantages of the 7R into our business is the fuel consumption that we get. So we've saved from previous years about 20 to 30% fuel consumpt. So we're using in the range of 28 to 30 litres an hour across transport and working. After demoing the 7R with the new reactive steering, a few things we really liked is that on the road the steering is a lot less twitchy, it's a lot smoother, so it's really handy. Makes it comfort on the road even better and then in the field it keeps the wheels nice and straight when we're spreading and then on the headland turns makes it a lot less smoother turning through the corners and through the headlands with a new bigger steering cylinder. We find when we added the heavier weight blocks on the front, the steering was a lot smoother from pulling out from junctions and just turning on the headlands at slower speeds it was a lot smoother, a lot easier. Dealer backup is really important to us as a business. We're covering an area of nearly 20,000 square miles. The 7R this season has been really reliable for us. One little issue, we had a quick phone call to Farrells. They managed to diagnose the sensor without coming out on site, brought the sensor and got us back up and going. Within the we definitely recommend the 7R to other people, other businesses just based on his performance from this season it's been great for us.
