JD Seller, I need your expertise

My BIL lives north of Edgewood, IA, which I believe is not far
from you. He is in the market for a compact or subcompact
tractor, mostly for mowing, but may want to add a loader, and
perhaps some other tools. He is looking at the JD X758 w/60" deck.
He is city raised and retired military, and consequently does not
have a lot of machinery experience. He has sought my advice and
counsel on this, and since I am not a JD guy, I am seeking your
advice.
He has several acres to mow, and some of it is pretty rough. He's
been using an X548 (I think), and wants something bigger and more
versatile.
Any advice or suggestions you could offer would be much
appreciated.
Thank you.

Well first off you can not get a loader for the 700 series garden tractors anymore from JD. You really could not do much with it anyway. It had maybe a 300 LBS lifting force. I know I sold one and the loader would not pickup the 60 inch mower deck that fit the same garden tractor.

So you looking at a Compact utility tractor. Yes you can get a loader and mower deck on them. They are pretty easy to change back and forth. Cost for one with a loader and deck will get in that $115-20K range real easily.

How much storage room does your BIL have??? He might be better off buying two units. If he does not need/want MFWD and diesel on the garden tractor he can buy a X730( 25 HP gas and 2wd) for 1/2 to 2/3 of what a decked out JD X758 costs. Then buy a true farm tractor with a loader. $5000 will get you some thing fairly nice.

My reasoning; If you have many things to mow around a compact utility is not near as agile as a X700 series garden tractor. Also the three point hitch design on the smaller compacts is only Cat I and even then you have to watch hitch configurations on implements for them to work. Even though they are Cat I some implements are wider/taller than the SAE standard. So they do not work the best on some small compacts. Also you can buy the two units for the same or even less money than a single unit that does everything.

This also means he would not have to switch decks and a loader around. He will find he will want use the loader lots of times. Even with the drive over decks they are not some thing you like taking off for a five minute loader job.

Shoot me an email and I will gladly recommend a good salesman for him to talk too. I will also tell him a couple to stay away from with his wallet. LOL

Received another email from BIL, and he says he talked with a salesman about a used, low hour 758. He said the salesman seemed to be in a big hurry to get rid of him so he could work on a bigger deal. Don't know which dealer or where, but BIL was not real happy. I will pass your info and suggestions along to him. My email should be open. If you could recommend good dealers, that would be great.
Thank you very much.
Happy Independence Day

Sent email