Kioti CS2520

Owners disagree about this tractor's loader more than about anything else in its file, and both camps are describing it accurately. Someone whose father-in-law has put 400 hours on one mowing nine acres calls the loader weak and the tractor light — good for mowing, bad for lifting — and says it cannot move round bales and will tip forward over a bump without ballast. An owner at 200 hours who also has Kubota experience says the opposite reason is why he bought it: the front loader is significantly stronger than a BX's, and if they had been equal he would have taken the Kubota. Both are right about what the tractor is. It is a 1,554 lb machine with a loader rated well above its class, which means the limit you meet is the tractor's weight, not the loader's arms. The owner who tipped it forward was carrying a pallet of logs on forks bolted into the bucket, and his own conclusion is the useful one: bucket-mounted forks push the load a couple of feet further out than proper quick-attach forks do.

The complaint that comes up most often has nothing to do with capability. The seat safety switch is too sensitive on this model, and two owners describe the same scenario in detail — a roughly 120 lb spouse who cannot operate the tractor at all because the engine cuts out repeatedly, and a heavier owner who gets cut out when he leans forward far enough to set the brake lock. One fixed it with a bypass part costing a few dollars, which is not what anyone wants to do with a safety interlock. Beyond that the faults reported are scattered rather than systemic: a brand-new machine that leaked badly and needed three dealer visits before someone found an internal part that had been machined oversized, an hour meter that stopped counting at 108.5 hours and was not covered, a mid-mount deck that would only lift on one side.

What owners agree on is that it is a mower first and a loader tractor second, and that most people buy it for hills. Several mow steep ground with it and credit the low centre of gravity, the belly deck keeping weight low and 4WD for making slopes safer than the lawn tractor they came from. The dissent is sharp: one owner with four acres built into a 30-degree slope mowed with it once, found it too narrow and tippy even with ballast and filled tires, and went back to a steerable zero-turn while keeping the tractor for everything else. Pricing runs from about $15,000 in a dealer promotion with a loader and free delivery up to $23,000 with a loader and 60-inch belly deck, with a third function and grapple quoted around $5,000 more and a backhoe around $6,000 — and 0% financing over six or seven years is the deal owners keep naming.