Branson Tractors.

Anyone have any good or bad things to say about Branson tractors. In the 35 to 40 hp range.

Friend has a 55hp and a ~30hp. I've spent quite a few hours on em. Decent power train. Every other part is on par with something you'd buy from China.

For my money, I'd go with a low hour, used, Deere or Kubota.

Ben

And what "Third World" country are the John
Deeres made in?

I bought the 6530C, 4wd, with loader back in Sept '07. Has the Cummins engine that is made by Komatsu in Japan to a Cummins spec for them. Both Komatsu and Kukji, the manufacturing company in S. Korea that builds the Branson tractor are heavy equipment builders and have the latter has been building these tractors since '69. The Cummins is an excellent power house, great torque curve, and uses less fuel than my 2000D Ford 4 cyl. I have a 12' 14 bottom, 10" sweeps, cultivator with 3 rows of smoothing fingers that I pulled with my JD 4230. This little sucker will pull it nicely in a mid range gear and beat my Deere nicely at the fuel pump while doing it.

Mine has every conceivable option to make life easier and help a single person when connecting implements for example. Everything at the hookup point is adjustable and even has a lift lever back there to get the right height.....that one thing sold me on the tractor. I have the optional monogramed air seat, just like you find on an 18 wheeler. Mine came with a 4 year power train warranty......how bout that!

Other things are 24 F 2 R, shuttle shift F-R, Telescoping and tilt steering, 3 PTO speeds, both a Live and Independent PTO drive selection, memory position control for the 3 point with one button electric up/down selection, Washer/wipers both front and rear. Trailer type power connector like you would use to connect a travel trailer to a tow vehicle......list just goes on and on.

On buying the other brands, green, blue, 2 reds, orange. I started looking in April of that year and gave up during the summer as I just didn't like what they had to offer in my size.

Was blasting down the interstate one day and saw this row of good looking red tractors and the rest is history. Another neat thing this dealer did for me was to take a MF 35, JD 4010, and Ford 3000, all in very condition, in trade. No body else even wanted to trade, 1 tractor, much less 3.

It was $37k as I bought it and I got $13 for my trade ins, so I walked away in great financial shape.

They have a national dealership and service and that is where you get service. The main import center in Georgia has a dealer oriented service after the sale philosophy.

It is extremely rugged and very well designed and built, in typical oriental fashion.....paying attention to little details. The term "Made in China" and it's ramifications have no meaning for this machine. I have had ZERO problems with it since purchasing.

Do I like it?????????????????????? Naw.

Sorry to bore you, but you asked, Grin.

Mark

Given the fact that John Deere builds 20 to 120 HP tractors in China is that supposed mean they are good or bad?

http://www.stackyard.com/news/2007/06/machinery/03_john_deere_benye.html

It's not so much the country they're built in, so much as the quality controll of the maker. I'll bet if you had a Chinese made JD next to a Korean made Branson, and tore them down, you would see ALOT higher quality components, and construction went into the DEERE. Branson isn't trying to compete with Deere on QUALITY they are competing on PRICE. That's why I said for my MONEY, I'd find a used tractor of another brand.
And don't start to think I bleed Deere green. I don't. My shed is full of OLD, RED tractors.
I also said that the power train of the Branson was decent. yea, Cummins let them brand their name on the engine, haven't you seen any other big name manufacturer lisence their name out to another company to make a few bucks??
The shifting is poor at best. The levers for the Hyd remotes and shift levers are not limited in their travel sufficiently to keep them from hitting the plastic "dash" panel. It's got several breaks in it already. This tractoe is NOT abused. Just used.
I used my friends 55hp for a couple days last fall prepping my yard to re-plant. Leaked about 2 GALLONS of hy-trans during those two days. From a tractor with less than 400 hours. That's not the first problem he's had with it. Yea, it's got a warranty, but a tractor is pretty worthless if it's sitting in the dealers shop instead of your field.
If you are willing to accept those kindof issues, fine.
I would expect more from a new tractor.

Ben

Speculation man, purely speculation and I'd bet it is totally unfounded. You use a lot of rubber words and know not what you speak of. Kukji is ISO 9001 certified. Know what that means? Look it up and educate yourself and then attempt to reestablish your credibility.

Just because it is green doesn't mean it is perfect and I have had examples of the fact for the past 35 years, numerous ones on my farm and the latest example is the JD 375 baler I just bought that had no support for the main drive chain so it attemped to self destruct and cut through one of the main shafts. 2 were on the lot and both had the same problem and cut marks.......... and after posting on this site for a number of years, there are a lot of honest people (not green tree huggers) that will attest to that. I have applied a little North Texas (Yankee engineering) to solve the problem that mother deer just overlooked.

Nothing more disgusting than a blabber mouth that knows not what he is blabbing about, or has ulterior motives.....works for the company that he is trying to stick in your face.

Want more, ask!!!!
Mark

I told ya I wasn't a green believer. Don't work for em, don't sell em, rarely even operate em. I just used Deere as an example. Could just as easily been NH or Kubota or Case IH.

I just shared the experiences I had with the Branson machines I've been around. In my opinion, they are a 2nd rate machine. I think that's what the original poster asked for.

I know that you can get a lemmon of any color.

Maybe the one's I've run were lemmons.

Maybe the're great machines.

The one's I've run were NOT great machines.

Ben

Ok Ben, thanks for your reply. I can't speak for any but the one I have and I did that.

Have a nice day.

Mark

(quoted from post at 19:01:29 04/04/12) Anyone have any good or bad things to say about Branson tractors. In the 35 to 40 hp range.

Click to expand...

Having worked around several ISO 9001 certified companies, I am not impressed when someone toots that horn. They get certified by paying a fee. Usually the certification covers one aspect of what they do, but by and large it is meaningless. The only thing you have to do is keep up an ISO paper trail for the auditor. It doesn't mean they are any better than a company that isn't ISO.

FIRST I have no in seat experience but have owned three in the past 30 months as trade ins on new tractors and in all instances we took a bath getting rid of the tractors. In our local they are just not accepted. Ended up sending one to Idabell Okla. auction really lost on it and the other two sold for far less than what we thought they would be worth.. All in location, dealer support and product. I suppose if a man was buying it to use and never think of trading a used one might be a good buy if you were getting it cheap enough.