Eight machines that would otherwise be depreciating in a shed.
The average British farm machine works fewer than twenty days a year and costs money on all the others. Kit-Share is the boring, obvious answer to that, run between neighbours who can see each other’s yards.
The single biggest capital inefficiency in British arable farming.
A six-metre drill costs somewhere north of ninety thousand pounds and is used for about nine days a year on a farm this size. That is roughly ten thousand pounds a day of standing capital before anybody has bought any diesel.
Every arable farmer in the country knows this and most of them own the machine anyway, because the alternative — waiting for a contractor while the weather closes in — has cost people more than the depreciation ever did.
Kit-Share does not solve that. What it does is make the nine days into fifteen or twenty, which turns a very bad number into a merely poor one, and puts a few thousand pounds a year back into a business that made a hundred and forty-four in its first year.
The eight, and what they cost a day.
| Machine | Day rate | Tractor needed | Days a year it works for us |
|---|---|---|---|
| The 6m tine drill | £340 | 260 hp, drawbar | 9 |
| The Cambridge rolls | £120 | 120 hp, drawbar | 11 |
| The 3m topper | £85 | 90 hp, cat II | 14 |
| The bale wrapper | £150 | 80 hp, one spool | 4 |
| The post knocker | £95 | 60 hp, cat II | 22 |
| The subsoiler | £180 | 200 hp, cat III | 2 |
| The 16t grain trailer | £110 | 150 hp, air brakes | 18 |
| The hedge cutter | £160 | 110 hp, guarded cab | 12 |
Every machine has its own page.
What it fits, who has used it, and the thing it is genuinely bad at — which is the section people actually read.
The 6m Tine Drill
Six metres of tine drill, bought in a fit of optimism in 2021 and used for about nine days a…
The Cambridge Rolls
Twelve point three metres of ring rolls. The cheapest thing to hire here and the one with the longest waiting…
The 3m Topper
A three-metre flail topper for margins, paddocks and the parts of a field a combine is never going to see.
The Bale Wrapper
A trailed round-bale wrapper. Nobody hires this because they want to. They hire it because the forecast changed.
The Post Knocker
A tractor-mounted post driver. The single most useful item on this list and the one most likely to hurt somebody.
The Subsoiler
A three-leg low-disturbance subsoiler. The most misused machine in British arable farming and we have misused it ourselves.
The 16t Grain Trailer
Sixteen tonnes, sprung drawbar, commercial axles and a working tarpaulin, which is rarer than it should be.
The Hedge Cutter
A six-and-a-half metre reach flail hedge cutter. Legally unusable for six months of the year, which is the most important…
The three rules that make peer-to-peer machinery work.
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The person who breaks it pays, and it is written down before it happens.
Not after. Every hire here has a one-page agreement that says what the excess is, who insures it, what counts as fair wear and what counts as a bent leg. It is signed in the yard on a phone and it takes about ninety seconds.
Machinery sharing between neighbours fails for exactly one reason, and it is not money. It is the conversation about money that nobody had in advance.
Every fallen-out neighbour started with a handshake and a broken coulter.
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It comes back clean and full, or it comes back with an invoice.
Twenty pounds for cleaning, fuel at the pump price plus nothing. Both are on the agreement and both are charged, including to people we like, because the moment it is discretionary somebody is being judged.
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And the owner keeps first call.
Every machine here is a working machine on a working farm. If it is drilling weather and the drill is out, the drill comes home. That is on the agreement too, it is the reason the rates are low, and nobody has ever objected to it once it was said out loud.
What a day rate includes.
Included
- A one-page agreement, signed in the yard before the machine moves
- A walk round with photographs, both ways
- A briefing on anything that can hurt you, and one is mandatory
- The plating and lighting certificate where the machine has one
- Our phone number for the whole day, answered
Not included
- An operator — you drive it, or you bring somebody who can
- Fuel, film, twine or any consumable
- Delivery, unless it is genuinely on our way
- Insurance — yours must cover hired-in plant and we will ask to see it
- Any machine at all during our own drilling, rolling or harvest window
Your insurance, not ours
Hired-in plant cover is a specific extension on a farm policy and a great many farms do not have it. We ask to see the schedule before anything leaves the yard, we have refused hires over it, and we will again. The post knocker in particular is not going anywhere without it.
What is actually free.
The diary for the machines, the rooms and the days out, all in one place because they compete for the same yard.
