When standard becomes too standard

STARCO’s new wheels for John Deere tractors have been tested in the fields of Lithuania for over a year with the help of DOJUS group. Besides selling and servicing agricultural machinery, they also rent out machinery and are official John Deere distributors.

“Standard wheels have the obvious downside of simply being too standard. With a special solution, farmers increase the usage of their tractor and reduce soil compaction,” explains Dmitry German, Technical Product Manager at STARCO with more than 15 years’ of experience with agricultural tyres. He continues: “STARCO invented a solution for the JD 6th series, allowing farmers to put non-standard wheels and tyres of different widths, as well as mount dual wheels, onto tractors.”

In doing this, farmers can use the same tractor for both preparing the soil and seeding, as well as row cropping and harvesting. Besides being a cheaper solution in the long run, it’s also better in regard to soil prevention and crop quality in a lot of farming areas.

“Dual wheels mounted on the standard wheel on a JD 6000 risk breaking in certain working conditions due to a very high stress on the welding of the mother wheel,” explains German. “Our solution is to bolt instead of weld the wheel, using a new flange. This redirects the stress on the mother wheel to ensure that the wheel never breaks. The reinforced flange is the only solution where the wheel can be bolted and used for both single and dual wheel mounting, therefore providing a multi-functional solution.”

The mounting system is STARCO’s patented clamp-on system and differs from standard solutions when it comes to design and manufacturing.

The newly invented solutions were tested in fields with dual wheels from December 2016 to December 2017 and are now ready for line production. This specific solution is designed for John Deere tractors; however the concept can be applied on other larger tractors.

In general, dual wheel solutions minimise the ground pressure, because the dual wheels increase the foot print area and allow for lower air pressure in the tyres. Some farmers even mount triple wheels with magnificent results. Read more here.

“We now bring a new solution to the market that gives various new combination opportunities for tractors. The new combinations differ completely from the original tractor set-up that was produced in the production line. In STARCO, we have created a flexible solution that improves the performance of the application – just like what we have delivered for Kubota’s compact tractors for many years,” says Thomas Ballegaard, Chief Commercial Director.

Ballegaard highlights that as an OEM-partner, STARCO develops solutions together with the OEM, but also develops solutions that integrate with the original application and improve it during its lifetime.