For the second time in as many weeks I’m staring blankly at an unfamiliar cockpit.
Ever since the age of three when I had my first crash into a remarkably solid tree with a remarkably resilient Ford, I believed I could drive anything: lawn mower, tractor, motorbike… I have even been able to work a large JCB rear wheel steer shovel. Easy. Not now.
Last week I was handed an ID card by a very busy Tesla press lady as she pointed to a dark blue Model 3 outside while telling me it was all charged and ready to go.
“Help,” I replied. I’d no idea how to get into a Tesla, never mind get it to move…but that’s a story for the New Year.
Today I’m on more familiar territory, in a John Deere tractor cab. For those of you who don’t speak tractor, that’s a big wheeled agricultural machine in a fetching shade of Kermit green.
I’m doing some work with Scotland’s Rural College (SRUC), and I thought a company car would sweeten the package. But first, I had to pass a test with the SRUC instructor Hannah Scorgie.
Hannah had brought the John Deere from farmyard to campus and hooked up the enormous trailer, the type you get stuck behind as they move large bales from field to farm.
Sporting a farming tweed jacket, I climbed confidently into the cab and sat down. I found the ignition, as it’s still key operated.
A good start, literally, as the kids say. Now, from my Massey Ferguson 135 days I recognise the steering wheel. Again, good. The pedals found on the right and left floor are also familiar (the clutch on left, brakes on right) and I recognised the little throttle pedal on the extreme right, too.
I looked down between my legs for the two gear levers (main box and high and low ratio lever), with the gear positions cast into the steel transmission tunnel, as per the Massey Ferguson 135, but no, nothing there.
So, without instruction I wouldn’t have been able to get the green machine moving.
The gear trickery is controlled from a lever on my right-hand side. The lever has slots for: A, B, C, D and P. Although initially confused, once explained, it all made sense; P is Park, and D is Drive, like any automatic car.
The others A etc. are just gears, like 1, 2, 3. But there’s more. On the orange lever there’s a sneaky little black button to facilitate semi-automatic up and down changes within each gear.
I liked this button a lot, and overused it, like a child on Christmas day with a new drum kit.
But there is one more trick to the gear engagement. An indicator style column that needs to be used to engage forward or reverse. Once direction of travel was selected, I simply raise my left foot Hunter wellie to release the clutch and the machine is off.
When it all hooked up and I made the machine move, a sense of smug satisfaction filled the warm cab.
Right, with a basic command of the flight deck it was time for my test. Hannah unhooked the trailer, and I was left to carefully speed around the car park and then demonstrate my proficiency in parallel parking,.
No problem. This means I could now do my mincemeat pie shopping at a supermarket with my Deere.
My next challenge was to hook up the trailer. All I had to do was line up the tractor hook with the trailer eye.
This required reversing back to position the hook directly below the eye, then move the music desk style slider on the wing to raise the hydraulic hook. Then get out and connect the trailer hydraulics.
Simple. Not. After three reversing attempts when the hook slid past the eye each time, I handed over to Hannah who, of course, did it perfectly. She left me to do the manual hook up of hydraulics, though.
The final driving challenge was multi-faceted: driving the full rig through the car park, some road work, then into a stubble field, finishing up by reversing the trailer through the car park and into an imaginary tight garage.
I drew on my inner farmer, switched on my yellow flashing light and set off to hold up a line of vehicles. The final test was a breeze, like my arithmetic O level using a calculator, but much much more satisfying.
I was particularly pleased with my reversing around the car park. So were the terrified onlookers who owned the cars parked in it!
For Meat Loaf two out of three ain’t bad, but for Hannah a fail on the trailer hook up meant the John Deere keys were staying with her. But what an experience. I had to concentrate so hard on the road and in the field, more so than in any supercar, which does everything for you.
I was constantly watching out front in case I scuffed something expensive with the front forklift, and looking behind in case I cut a corner (neither of which I did). On road and in the field the feeling of superiority as a driver is palpable.
It’s just so exciting believing you are invincible and tearing across a stubble field with a massive trailer in tow. Forget a supercar track day, a morning with Hannah in the big green farming machine is more challenging… and fun.
In the words of Noddy (Holder) Merry Christmas Everyone, thanks for your company in 2021, and we’ll meet up on the other side.
