Should You Lease A Tractor In 2016?

By Betsy Jibben

As U.S. tractor sales have decreased overall, leasing has become a popular way for farmers to get their hands on a new piece of machinery without paying big bucks.

Lower commodity prices and decreased income have a strain on farmer’s checkbooks and a drain on equipment makers.

“2015 to me? I call it the year of the lease,” said Greg “Machinery Pete” Peterson.

Peterson says leasing is attractive option for some farmers. With leasing, farmers don’t have to buy new equipment, and they aren’t racking up hours on the equipment they own.

“Manufacturers offered leasing, and it was really well received by the farm audience, which made sense to me,” said Peterson. “They thought they could lease two, three years and depreciation is, really, not the farmer’s problem. For farmers, it’s tremendous,” said Peterson.

Manufacturers say they are seeing more leasing demand as well and are thinking it may be a tool they need.

“We haven’t done a lot of leasing but we need to,” said Todd Stucke, vice president of sales, marketing, and product support at Kubota.”I have a whole team of people studying it and we will come out with some very attractive lease products. Our customers are demanding it.”

“We are seeing a higher percentage of our business going towards leasing, but it’s not changing the customer base of who leases,” said Jim Walker, vice president at Case IH.