AgriLand paid a visit to Fenagh, Co. Carlow (close to the site of this year’s National Ploughing Championships) to catch up with the owner of a JCB Fastrac 4220.
John W Anderson spoke to tillage farmer Norman Bradley – to find out how he rates the machine; and what it’s actually used for.
He explained: “We’re Fastrac users; as you can see we have the newest model behind us at the moment.
“We started off in about 2008 with a 2135 and a ‘de-mount’ sprayer, which we bought in the UK.
Before I made the decision to buy the Fastrac my first phone-call was to a guy called Robert Russell in Russell Fastraxx.
“He gave me the confidence to go and buy it, because he said he would look after it if I ran into trouble.”
Norman said: “We bought this 4220 [pictured] last autumn. It’s probably the most incredibly comfortable tractor I’ve ever driven. It’s definitely more comfortable than my car.”
He cautioned: “Over the years, JCB had a name as being slightly unreliable. So far, we haven’t found that. The jury is out on this one; we haven’t had it long enough to know.
“Look; reliability is the ‘be all and end all’ of everything in a tractor. I think that farmers have probably been a bit slack at not insisting on reliability – over the years.
This JCB has a Fendt [Vario] gearbox, which is proven technology. It has a Sisu engine. If everything is put together properly, it should be reliable.
Norman said that the tractor is used for “absolutely everything”. He noted: “We’re now a one-tractor farm.” He went on (in the video) to describe some of the jobs the 4220 tackles, with a particular focus on the ‘de-mount’ sprayer.
He explained: “One of the things we did when we got the Fastrac, and we had it a while, was to look at the possibility of taking off the sprayer much quicker. So, with a local company – A&W Engineering – we re-designed how we’d put the sprayer on and off.
‘Less than 5 minutes’
“So, basically, we now pick it up with the teleporter and pop it on; the whole thing probably takes less than five minutes to put on and two minutes to take off. There are a few ‘de-mounts’ around; I’d recommend to anybody to have a quick look at this and see can it be made to suit their own system.”
He concluded: “With the different equipment we have – the Amazone sower; the Bredal spreader; the sprayer – we have a multitude of screens in the cab.
“If I was to look to the future, when we buy the next one, we’d just like to have one screen.” He joked: “That way, we could actually see out through the front window of the tractor again.”
