The Field Calculators → The Iron
The Iron
Autosteer: dealer quote vs. built yourself
Put your dealer's number in and watch the overlap pay for a build. The arithmetic the quote doesn't show you.
Result
The dealer's quote, installed9000 $
Correction-signal subscription600 $ per year
Your build cost1200 $
Acres you work20 acres
Implement width10 ft
Your overlap, steering by eye6 in
Input cost per acre, per year400 $
Hours a year in the seat120 hrs
What your own hour is worth0 $ per hr
Overlap you're paying for right now
5.0% of every acre
6 in of seam on a 10.0 ft implement. That strip gets seed, fertiliser and fuel twice.
What that costs you a year, in inputs alone
$333
RTK still overlaps about an inch, so the recoverable share is 4.2% of your inputs, not the whole 5.0%.
Hours you're driving twice
5.0 hrs/yr
Not counted in the money below — your rate is set to zero.
Your build pays for itself in
3.7 seasons
$1,239 — the parts plus $39 for the guide — against $333 a year.
The dealer kit pays for itself in
never, on these numbers
The subscription costs $600 a year and the overlap it saves is worth $333. At this acreage the signal eats the gain before the kit is touched.
Ten years, built yourself
$1,239
Paid once. No account, no unlock, nothing to renew.
Ten years, the dealer's way
$15,000
The quote plus ten years of signal. The unlock usually stays with the dealer when the tractor sells.
What stays on your farm instead
$13,761
The difference between the two columns over a decade.
What this will not do
- This counts overlap and nothing else. It does not count the skips you find when the crop is up, the evenings you get back, or the pass you can still make at eleven at night before a rain. Those are the reasons people actually keep autosteer, and this calculator refuses to put a number on them.
- Measure your overlap, don't accept the default. Drive one pass, come back on the next, and measure the seam with a tape. If you steer by a marker and a steady eye your number is smaller than six inches — and so is your payback. If you're tired at the end of a long day it's bigger.
- Autosteer doesn't reduce the passes you need. It reduces the ones you waste. A 5% overlap means one acre in twenty gets worked twice, which is also one hour in twenty and one tank in twenty.
- The subscription is the whole argument. A purchase price eventually amortises; $600 a year never does. Set the subscription to zero and the dealer kit still has to beat a $1,200 build that nobody can switch off.
- Ask, in writing, what happens to the licence when you sell the tractor. The build in Chapter 3 has nothing to ask permission from — that's not a feature of the software, it's a consequence of owning the parts.
The full build and the reasoning are in Chapters 3, 4 and 5 of the guide.