REPORT: Valtra’s reverse drive function is a feature that ticks many boxes for Herefordshire contractor A Legge & Sons. So much so that three of the Finnish firm’s reverse drive models handle a wide variety of tasks for the business.
Ian Legge is not one for doing things exactly the same way that everyone else does. His machine of choice on the silage clamp for example is not a loading shovel, but a reverse drive tractor.
“We can get much more versatility out of reverse drive than we can any other tractor,” explains Ian Legge, who runs the family contracting business, A Legge & Sons from Thornbury, Herefordshire, along with his brother Graham.
“And it’s a far more flexible choice for clamp work than any loading shovel, which can be very much a one trick pony,” he says. “Nor can you get a decent extended warranty on a shovel either, to match that of the tractors.” Ian adds that when you’re not sat staring out of the rear window, the TwinTrac models can still do everything else that a conventional tractor can do. It is this level of operational flexibility that steered the Legges towards Valtra’s TwinTrac capability. The contracting family reasoned that it could make use of the reverse drive feature for clamp work and mowing, and at the time of our visit, it was running with three Finnish-built T-series Versu-specification tractors as part of its mixed fleet.
Ian Legge’s decision to go down the reverse drive route started in 2017, and the current 15-tractor fleet includes two Valtra T234 models and a T255, all supplied by Edwards & Farmer and equipped with Valtra’s TwinTrac option.
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