Newest 'Deere' put through paces on ag campus

LINCOLN -- If you’re not used to sitting in a tractor seat, climbing up to the cab of John Deere’s new 8320R could make you think of the bridge of a battleship.

If you are used to it, there’s still plenty to know about the latest changes in a tillage tractor that has arrived for testing at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Tractor Testing Lab.

There’s reputed to be 320 horsepower, a roomier cab and better utilization of the latest electronic upgrades that come with a base list price of $266,784 from the nation’s leading manufacturer of farm tractors.

And the fact that the tractor came to UNL’s East Campus is a reminder that the nation’s only public setting for testing horsepower, fuel economy and other selling points is still important to manufacturers.

That’s despite repeated attempts in the Legislature to either abolish or downsize it.

“The reason we find it important is because it’s third-party, nonbiased data,” said John Deere spokesman Matt Arnold. “And that’s the best data to advertise in our minds.”

Count on Deere to use the report from UNL’s tractor technicians to compare against the competition and against UNL test results for Deere’s earlier models, said Arnold, a senior marketing representative at the company’s manufacturing plant for row-crop tractors in Waterloo, Iowa.

Deere’s wheeling out of the 8320R is important because of the company’s strong connection to farm customers and because the model is the first major upgrade at its size since the 8430 hit the market in 2005.

Roger Hoy, a UNL professor and director of the tractor testing lab, said excitement was running high among the lab staff and among students, many of them products of farm backgrounds, who work there between classes.

For those with a passion for poking and prodding at what will become one of farmers’ most prized positions, checking out the new John Deeres is as absorbing as racing buffs looking under Jeff Gordon’s hood.

“My expectation is a more comfortable cab,” Hoy said as he surveyed the scene from that elevated John Deere setting. “There are probably a few other details on this, but this is a big one.”

Comfort is important because “this is a tractor that’s meant to operate for thousands of hours for 10-12 hours a day.”

In pressing forward with spring and fall tillage, “you don’t want to be bounced to death and you really want to have it quiet.”

A cab with 7 percent more glass also offers better visibility to the sides and behind to whatever equipment the tractor is pulling.

“They’re selling like hotcakes is what I’m hearing,” Hoy said.

Arnold declined to discuss sales specifics, but said, “it’s a popular tractor.”

Deere engineers “took the most fuel-efficient tractor ever produced and we put a new cab on it to allow for greater comfort and longer days in the field.”

Hoy is quick to verify Deere’s fuel-efficiency reputation. As for the accuracy of its most recent claims for the 8320R, UNL technicians will be the judges of that.

Reach Art Hovey at (402) 473-7223 or art.hovey@

lee.net.