Trailers and garden tractors

We bought a 5x8 mesh trailer from tractor supply store yesterday for 699. We will use it for many things but the most immediate driver is to have a way to haul a riding lawn tractor out to our land. Which we don't have yet. That's the next project.

Done a fair bit of research. Am generally fond of the john deere brand from a reputation standpoint (and they have a local dealer, brookside equipment, who my father in law had good dealings with for a while now). All spring and summer have been eyeballing the JD's at Lowes. Now that we have the trailer, we went in to take a look at them (I would most likely not buy from them but its easier to look at them there). Was surprised most of their inventory was gone. The guy told us they had quit getting new ones in June and had been selling a lot all summer. It has been a wet summer (usually lack of moisture is the limitation on vegetation growth here in the summer) which may have played a factor in lots of people buying law tractors in an otherwise tough economy. Who knows.

In terms of internet research, consumer reports recommends the LA115 (1700 MSRP) or LA105 (1500 msrp) models. These are basically the lowest end consumer lawn tractors JD makes. The LA series goes up to 165 or more, and cost approaches 3000. As the scale goes up, the cuts get wider (42, 48, 54), the hp goes up (LA105/115 is 19.5 hp, top is around 26), and there is the "lawn" vs "garden" tractor thing I learned from the Lowe's guy yesterday. "Lawn" tractors have smaller wheels and less facility for attachments - they are just for mowing grass. "Garden" tractors tend to have bigger wheels and higher torque engines which can allow some attachments (eg like a tiller attachment). I believe given the fact that the mowing we need to do is not exactly "lawnesque", plus the fact that we may want to do some gardening with it, I need to go in the direction of the higer torque, larger wheeled garden tractor.

Ah well, no huge hurry here. Plan to visit the local JD dealer this week to see what I can learn there.