Agriculture & Farming
In harvest, a hose is not a repair job. It is the whole week.
Farm hydraulics have a different rhythm to everything else. For most of the year a machine going down is an inconvenience. For a few weeks it is the difference between getting a crop in and watching the weather turn.
Harvest is not a normal callout
When a combine stops mid-field there is a queue behind it: the trailers, the drier, the following operations, sometimes a contractor booked for the next farm. The hose is the cheapest part of that.
So in season we would rather you called early with something that looks like it is about to go than wait for it to burst at eight in the evening. A hose that is weeping is a job we can plan. The same hose ten hours later is not.
The kit that gives most trouble
Loader hoses. Constant flexing, and they get caught on everything a loader goes near.
Balers. Density rams and tailgate circuits work hard and hot, and baler hoses run in dust and chaff that holds heat against them.
Folding implements. Anything that folds has hoses crossing a hinge, and the failure is nearly always at the fold.
Older tractors. Many have been repaired repeatedly with whatever was to hand. We see some inventive adaptor stacks. They work until they leak, and a stack of three adaptors is three times the chance of a weep.
Before the season
The most useful thing we do on farms is not the emergency callout. It is going round the machines in spring, before anything matters, and changing the six hoses that are clearly not going to last the year. See hose inspection.
Machines we work on
- Tractors and front loaders
- Round and square balers
- Combines and foragers
- Muck spreaders and slurry tankers
- Telehandlers and yard loaders
- Ploughs, power harrows and folding implements
Common questions
Can you come out to the field rather than the yard?
Yes, and in harvest that is usually the point. Give us a what3words or a pin, plus some idea of the access, because a combine in the middle of a wet field is a different proposition to one on a headland.
Do you carry agricultural fittings?
Yes. Farm kit throws up more variety than plant does, partly because implements come from across Europe and partly because a lot of machines have been repaired several times already. Metric, BSP and ORFS are all on the van.
Is it worth doing hoses before harvest?
Very much so. The hoses that fail in August are visible in June. An hour going over the combine and the baler before the season, when the machine is standing still anyway, is the cheapest hour in the year.
Can you help with an implement that will not couple to the tractor?
Usually. It is normally a coupling type or a thread mismatch, occasionally a flow or pressure problem. See fittings and adaptors.
Machine down? We can usually be with you the same day.
Tell us the machine, the hose and where you are. We will tell you honestly whether we can reach you and what it will cost before we set off.