My wife and I just returned from Maine, we were there wrapping up some construction on her little yellow farm house and thinking through coming winter weather necessities. The temperature was already dropping, leaves were in the process of turning and the difference between California and Maine weather was becoming obvious.
We ordered fuel oil, I’m sure the first tank of many, and contracted supply and service for the season. We talked about the near future need to pull snow off of shallow pitch roof surfaces, and the more serious task of digging out after a snowfall. It doesn’t snow heavily in this part of Maine very often, but when it does, there is the possibility of being stranded. A generator would take care of short term power outages, but snow removal was a little more complicated.
We could arrange for a plow truck to hit the driveway with each snow fall. We are a bit off the road, about 300′, and a bit out of town, enough to run the cost up from the typical of $25 per plow, to closer to $75, and the probability of the plow showing up in a timely fashion wasn’t good. Self sufficiency became the goal and we began looking for the $200 snow blower that I used frequently during my childhood. My wife has a theory that I have some thought process disorder which causes me to psychically channel product prices from 1962. In my world, Joe World, gas is 25 Ā¢ per gallon, Ford or Chevy still makes the fastest car on the road, and an appropriate budget for a month’s worth of food, for a family of 5, is about $100 – steaks for everybody!.
I could see the salesman at the lawn and garden center was moving his lips, but I was having a difficult time understanding at least part of his presentation. A 1336DLE Professional Ariens snow thrower seemed just about right for our needs; 13 HP, 36″ wide, 14″ of snow depth, weight bar kit, all steel drive, heated grips and a walking cab. But every time the poor guy attempted to say the price was “$200”, it sounded exactly like $2,500. How in the world could a snow blower cost as much as a brand new Chevy Impala? At that price, the return on investment would be approximately 6.6 years, compared to the plow truck and 5 heavy snow falls per year. Clearly, we needed a better solution.
Enter the Toro 522xi. A spiffy 22 HP compact garden tractor for only 7 grand, configurable to perform many tasks spanning all seasons. For only another $4,000 I’d be all set to cut the lawn, throw snow and be comfy inside a heated fabric cab. A couple thousand dollars more would get me a bucket loader and a 50″ grader blade. What a deal! For what ended up being a total of $15,000 I could have….the most expensive riding lawn mower in Maine, with a 40 year return on investment – about the price of a new ranch home, in a nice neighborhood with good schools.
I remembered that Honda sold those neat little trail bikes for a couple of hundred dollars, the type my wife and I used to teach our children how to ride motorized two wheelers. No, I don’t know what we were thinking at the time, the youngest wasn’t quite school age. Apparently now, for a mere $8,000 I could get a 650cc Honda FourTrax Rincon with a snow plow and, when not plowing snow, use it to roam around the yard and climb trees, or violently roll over while attempting to transverse small hills and gullies. I’m sure there is a lot to be said for the newer generation ATV’s as true utility vehicles, but that would have to come from someone else, at the price of new Piper Cub, I wasn’t buying into a 21 year payback.
When we got to the John Deere dealership, the vision became clear. A 4710 4 wheel drive, large frame, compact tractor was, without a doubt, the only way to go. Slap on: tillers, a backhoe, a grader blade, posthole digger, a loader, a mower deck, or a snow blower and any project would be in reach. We could raise crops, build roads, throw snow, put that perimeter fence in….raise some more crops, build some more roads. So what if it cost a couple of thousand ? Sometimes large expenditures are required as a valid investment. Unfortunately, the price for this versatile garden tractor and associated equipment was approximately $36,000 with attachments and accessories. I believe it was the cruise control that put the price over the top and brought my wife more deeply into the decision making process. Based on the price, she thought I might begin thinking in terms of widow’s liability rather than calculating return on investment. Of course she was right, and I needed to live with the reality of the situation.
Then it dawned on me……..a nice hotel on the beach in Florida, where the weather would be warm, couldn’t run more than $25 a night or so. We could spend Maine’s 60 coldest winter days laying out on the beach, dining out at night. Hell, why not go all out and spring for $150 round trip first class airfare? Another $8 a day for a nice convertible rental car, and we would be in for under the cost of that snow blower….. I think my wife liked the idea, because all she kept saying was “Yes Dear. I see Dear. OK Dear……” Neat.
Thanks
Joe
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