Read the entire transcript from the latest episode.
Tony Kramer: Hi, I'm Tony Kramer, your host of the Agriculture Technology Podcast, and I'm sitting down with agriculture technology and equipment experts to help you enhance your operation for today, tomorrow, and into the future. In this episode, I talk with Kory Ross about the new John Deere HSD, or high-speed disc, tillage tool lineup. With that, let's dive into the show.
Like I said, we've got Kory Ross on the show. Kory, before we get started, why don't you tell us a little bit about who you are, where you come from, and what it is you do with John Deere?
Kory Ross: Good day. My name is Kory Ross. I am the group product marketing manager for air seeding tillage and scrapers at John Deere. I grew up in Indiana on a farm. We had hogs and we grew corn and soybeans and have been with John Deere for 21 years now. Really excited to share with you the updates about the new high-speed disc.
Tony: Welcome to the show, Kory. Great to hear the background you got growing up on a farm and where you are today. Now, you said group marketing manager, so you are not only overseeing some of the tillage stuff, but you've also got air seeding and scrapers under your belt as well.
Kory: Yes. It's exciting to have a broad range of products that are really delivering a good solution to our customers, whether they're in some of the row crop country with needing some tillage solutions or even in small grains country, where they're doing a little bit more no-till solutions.
Tony: Neat to be able to see both sides of it, the conventional till side as well as the no-till on the small grains, large acreage, air seeding solutions. Let's dive into the high-speed disc or what we'll likely often refer to as the HSD. This is not a brand new tool per se. Let's go back and give a brief recap or overview of what we have as the 2680H, when John Deere came to market with that, and then we'll dive into some of these updates that we know as the HSD.
Kory: We're building on the 2680H, which was introduced in the fall of 2017. It's been a solid machine out there for customers, really delivering a nice smooth field finish in the flexibility of a dual season tool. Customers were wanting a tool that could cover acres quickly, be able to manage that heavy residue and be able to use it in the spring and the fall.
Tony: With the launch of the 2680H, John Deere didn't have a tool to answer that type of solution. This was the first go in that high-speed disc, compact disc, whatever you want to call it, correct?
Kory: Yes, that's correct. This was our entry into that market and we've really seen that market continue to grow over time as customers are looking for more flexibility with their tillage solutions.
Tony: With those tillage solutions, Kory, obviously John Deere, we have this great portfolio of tillage tools based on what you're looking to do. Is it chop and size residue? Are you looking to bury stuff? Are you looking to just scratch the surface? Why would a customer look at a 2680H or one of the new HSDs? What are these tillage tools giving the customer?
Kory: The main thing that this is giving customers is really the productivity, being able to cover acres quickly. If you look at some of the new 45-foot models, you can cover up to 400 acres a day. The volume of covering those acres quickly, and then the other thing is the simplicity of the tool. It's not having to make a lot of adjustments on the tool, it's just a consistent field finish from that tool.
Tony: You talk about the productivity and the acres a customer can cover. Let's touch a little bit on working speeds and what horsepower requirements are. Obviously, this tool being around, like you said, 2017, I believe, we've learned a lot about the tool, what it takes for horsepower, and what those really recommended operating speeds are to get the working capabilities out of the tool. What does that look like for these tools?
Kory: We recommend operating between 10 and 14 miles an hour. That's where the tool was designed to optimally work. If you operate below that speed, you're not getting the proper sizing of the residue and incorporation that you expect. We're recommending around, on average, 15 horsepower per foot of the width of the tool. That's a common misconception for a customer is that they might oversize the tool for the size of the tractor that they're pulling in.
Tony: Yes, that's a great point to bring up that we want to make sure we're getting the right size tool for the right size tractor. You talked about that 45-foot 2680H, or what we are now calling the HSD, or high-speed disc. You look at 15 horse per foot, we're looking at 675 horse at a minimum to be able to get our operating speed at that 10 to 14 miles an hour.
Kory: That's correct. It can easily take that. Depending on your conditions, it could take even more than that. Depending on how deep you are tilling, you want to give yourself some extra room to make sure that you have enough horsepower to pull that tool up to at least 10 miles an hour, and if you ultimately target around that 12 miles an hour to have some room as you encounter different conditions.
Tony: On that note, I think this is our opportunity to plug those new John Deere high-horsepower 9RXs with those horsepower ratings of up to 710, 770, and 830. Those seem like a good pairing with these large HSD tools. Am I right?
Kory: Absolutely. It's a must when you get to these larger tools to have enough power to be able to effectively work these tools in the ground, have the flexibility to cover varying field conditions.
Tony: Now that being said, you don't have to get a large tool. There are smaller or more narrow tool offerings to meet the horsepower fittings that you already have on your operation. Yes, we're talking 45-foot tool, 675-plus horsepower, but there are some other size offerings that we'll get to in just a bit here.
What I want to talk about, Kory, is, and the meat and potatoes of this episode, the HSD lineup. Like you said earlier, the HSD lineup is building off of the 2680H that Deere has had in the portfolio for a little while. Now, number of the exciting things that come along with this HSD, it's not just a naming change. We've actually got some very beneficial feature updates that are going to come along with this. Why don't you start out just giving us a few of the new updates that we are going to get with the HSD lineup of tillage tools?
Kory: I like how you said that it builds off of what the 2680H had and then makes it even better, because customers have really appreciated the field finish. What we're bringing is we're bringing improved reliability, crop flow, and autonomy-ready components into the base of the machine.
Tony: When you talk about increased reliability and just making changes to the machine, I know there were two things very specific to that. Let's talk frame size updates as well as the bushing updates.
Kory: As we move to the HSD series, we transition from a 6-inch tube frame to a 7-inch tube frame. What that larger, more robust frame enables us to do is it brings more stability to the wings. It also allows us to put a three-year frame warranty on the tool. That's a big enhancement there. As we look at the pivot bushings on this, the transition from the 2680H to the HSD model we have larger bolt-on pivot bushings, which are going to be nice for customers that were in some of those high-wear, sandy conditions to make it easy to replace those with removing a few bolts in areas that maybe they had some higher-wear conditions.
Tony: Those were all great updates. Like you said, the customers were very happy with the tool and the field finish, but there were definitely some of just the maintenance concerns and the reliability or the structure of the tool itself. John Deere went ahead and made some great updates on these HSDs. One of the other things you talked about, Kory, was the crop flow, which I assume is referring to the basing adjustment you made from the rear disc back to the finishing attachment. Tell us a little bit about that and why that change was made.
Kory: There was definitely some corner conditions in the fall as you're going through a lot of residue. You needed some more space between the rear blades and the finishing attachment. We've increased that by 4 inches, which allows more area for that crop mat to flow through the machine, reduce the chances of plugging in certain conditions. That'll be something that customers with higher-yielding crops are going to really appreciate.
Tony: Along with some of the structural changes, the updates on the frame, the bushings, some of the frame spacing, I guess you could call it, we've also got some different size offerings now in these three-section tools. Tell us a little bit about what we can expect to see for width, for HSD working width.
Kory: There's an importance of pairing the right size tool to the right horsepower of your tractor. With the new HSD Series three-section machines, we're offering seven different models and before we had five models. We go from 25, 29, 32, 35, 39, 42 and 45-foot offerings. That gives more flexibility for the customer to pair the right tool to their tractor to get the performance that they expect out of that tool.
Tony: Hearing that there's a few more offerings, a few different size adjustments is great to hear to offer even more solutions for all the different farms out there. Now, you did talk about the HSD, the three-section. Today as it sits, these updates have come out only on the three-section frames, is that correct?
Kory: Absolutely, yes. We have taken the updates to the three-section machines. That's the most common machines that we see out there today. We're definitely evaluating the opportunity to expand those to the other machines but today our offering is on those three-section machines.
Tony: Now I want to talk about another really important one that you had mentioned that is going to come with these HSD tools, is, you mentioned it being an autonomous-ready solution. Tell us the reason behind this and what an autonomous-ready tillage tool gets us.
Kory: As we look at farming, one of the toughest challenges, and it hasn't changed since I was a kid, is finding enough help and finding good help for the operation. As John Deere, we're embarking on a journey of autonomous machines. We're building our tools to be capable and ready to run autonomously. What that means is that we're putting the necessary components on those machines, including the wire harnessing. We have a bracket there to hold on the StarFire receiver. These all come with the TruSet controller. They come with lights on there as well.
Tony: This model year 26 and going forward, having that autonomy-ready solution, aside from the tractor needs, of course, the tillage tool would be a plug-and-play, hook-and-go solution for autonomous tillage.
Kory: You would need to put a StarFire 7500 receiver on the tillage tool, but it's wired and ready to be plug-and-play with autonomy, which will make it much simpler when the customer is ready to make that decision.
Tony: All of these updates coming with the new HSDs here in Model 26 are definitely beneficial updates, all of the frame, the reliability, just making everything better, and building off of what we have with that 2680H today. Very excited to hear all this and then of course, that autonomy-ready solution for any sort of a customer looking to get into autonomous tillage in the future can buy your tools now and have them ready for autonomous tillage tractors.
Kory, if somebody is interested or wants to learn more about the new HSD lineup, where can they go? Who can they talk to?
Kory: The information is out there today, so if you want to go out to johndeere.com and you can look up the HSD Series Disk to find more information. Also I suggest that you go and talk to your local John Deere dealer. They're the experts, and they would be able to help answer more questions about your operation and what might be the right size to fit your tractor and your operation.
Tony: Awesome. Well, thank you very much, Kory, for taking the time out of your day to discuss these new updates and talk about the new John Deere HSD lineup of tillage tools. Appreciate you doing this.
Kory: Absolutely. Thank you. I appreciate it. Have a good day.
Tony: Please take a moment to subscribe to this podcast if you haven't already. You can subscribe to the show on the many different podcasting apps that we're streaming this out to, such as Apple, Google, Spotify as well as many others. While you're out there, drop us a review. We'd love to hear what you think about the show. Lastly, make sure to follow RDO Equipment Company on Facebook, Instagram, and X, and also catch our latest videos on YouTube. You can also follow me on X, @RDOTonyK.
