Need to bounce my first tractor purchase off the hive mind. We are building a house on 3.5 acres of former farmland in central Ohio, so we have a grand total of 2 feet of elevation change. I'd like to get a B2601 in my ideal case but I think logically a 2380 would be fine.
As former farmland the lot is entirely weeds now and will need to be converted to lawn. I imagine this is what will require a good amount of PTO usage in order to prep the lot, but after things are settled that need goes away. The west 1/3 or so of the lot will also need a lot of filling/grading to eliminate pooling water in low areas. It's a breeding ground for ticks at the moment and we'd like to make it all usable. Other than that most of the usage will be mowing and tree/bush/driveway maintenance.
One of the things that makes me lean towards the B2601 is dealing with pallets in the pole barn and hopefully being to store things more easily up high. This isn't a common usage, but just seeing it as something that would be useful. Also being able to move around some heavy items like the 700lb tire changer if I have to etc. I could struggle around without it, but it'd be nice to have. And maybe pushing a 28ft enclosed around the entirely flat and paved parking pad? Not sure that will work in either case.
The biggest issue is just pricing. A 100hr BX2380 with mower and loader seems to be about 16-18k locally which is doable in cash. B series tractors are harder to find and new is more than we would like to spend if possible. That definitely has some "meat pain" as my other half would say (Hong Kong saying for eating too much).
Thoughts on if I should try to make a B series work or settle on a BX?
As former farmland the lot is entirely weeds now and will need to be converted to lawn. I imagine this is what will require a good amount of PTO usage in order to prep the lot, but after things are settled that need goes away. The west 1/3 or so of the lot will also need a lot of filling/grading to eliminate pooling water in low areas. It's a breeding ground for ticks at the moment and we'd like to make it all usable. Other than that most of the usage will be mowing and tree/bush/driveway maintenance.
One of the things that makes me lean towards the B2601 is dealing with pallets in the pole barn and hopefully being to store things more easily up high. This isn't a common usage, but just seeing it as something that would be useful. Also being able to move around some heavy items like the 700lb tire changer if I have to etc. I could struggle around without it, but it'd be nice to have. And maybe pushing a 28ft enclosed around the entirely flat and paved parking pad? Not sure that will work in either case.
The biggest issue is just pricing. A 100hr BX2380 with mower and loader seems to be about 16-18k locally which is doable in cash. B series tractors are harder to find and new is more than we would like to spend if possible. That definitely has some "meat pain" as my other half would say (Hong Kong saying for eating too much).
Thoughts on if I should try to make a B series work or settle on a BX?
). In my case I really would have been better probably with a small L, but I had a space constraint and needed a MMM. If you can live with a 3pt finish mower instead of a MMM, then you might expand your search to other models and maybe not let machine size be the constraint. You may be able to find larger machines used for less than the BX or B. IMO when it comes to lifting think about the weight of what you think you might want to lift…then Check what the loader specs say. BX will do a lot but they don’t lift much…if you don’t need much to be lifted then the BX or B is sized just fine. Another thing to think about is are there other attachments you want to use and make sure tractor is set up for them (ie. QA would be helpful if changing from a bucket to forks or a grapple and also if thinking about a grapple need a third function…but just for the use of forks QA is very helpful. 
