Tractors should not be on main roads at peak commuter time. AIBU

[Hoolajerry]

We live in a relatively rural town which traditionally has a large farming community. We have very poor public transport links. We have one major road which bypasses the town and is approximately 30 minutes to a major motorway. Without fail whenever you travel on this road there are tractors. In the morning there can be significant tailbacks 20+ cars long. Unfortunately the road does not lend itself to overtaking (amongst one of the most dangerous in the country). It also does not have many pull-in places and even if they do you will meet another one fairly soon.
I had this conversation with DH and he said that as a rural community they have a right to be there whenever they like. However, these are not small business tractors as per traditional farms, they are massive contractors who have set-up in the last 10 years who are therefore based significant distances from the farms they serve. One in particular is very new and has bought up swathes of land throughout the locality and has its base 2 miles from the motorway but comes all the way to our town it what seems to be a constant stream.
I know that I am being slightly unreasonable so this is a little lighthearted but it pisses me off that everyday my journey to work is taken at a snails pace following bloody tractors. AIBU?

I can deal with tractors but I get so annoyed and upset to see horsey idiots (yes! I said idiots!) taking people and sometimes older children to gallivant on roads during rush hour on a bloody horse!!!. I feel so bad for the horses, for the drivers that got to be careful, extremely slow and be in time to pickup the kids from after school etc.
And all this while the queues are getting bigger.
Why do they think 5.30pm on a Friday in busy suburban A Road in the SE is the best place to go riding is beyond me.

But there's no reason it can't be after or before rush hour

So someone who has chosen to live miles from where they work is annoyed when farm workers do the same?

The environment is truly fucked.

YABVU! They’re working, hardly out for a jolly. And they have to harvest when weather conditions are right!

But there's no reason it can't be after or before rush hour

Farmers are already restricted due to nature (daylight hours and the weather). Trying to add in another constraint may make it literally impossible for them to do their work. Can the same be said of all those travelling at peak times?

YABU

I thought if they used red fuel they weren't meant to travel more than a certain distance from the farm? I lived in one village now live in another village with ds in school in another village (Cheshire) and have never had such issues, tractors yes but to problematic levels no.

Surely the bigger issue is that so many offices which should and could have so much more flexibility still operate 9-5 massively increasing traffic on the roads before and after that period?

I live in a city and often experience similar things, the parks department, the road builders, people doing construction etc all pick rush hour to move tractors, diggers and cranes around the city. Oh and learner drivers, please ban them before 9 am and between 4.30&6pm! There's currently a guy digging up my road at 7.30 in the morning, why not wait until the traffic dies down?

YANBU OP. I'm king of laughing at all the posters keen to signal their green credentials and understanding of farming who don't realise that a lot of farming is now carried out by contractors employed by big businesses who have massive farm vehicles to move longish distances between "sites".

I think they should be banned from trunk roads upwards between 7.30 and 9am, and 4.30-6pm, with the ban not applying during the harvest period.

I actually own a small farm and can only afford a pathetically small, elderly tractor. I wouldn't dream of taking it out on the main road. Yet the town which I live adjacent to is situated between 2 major cities yet not connected by even a dual carriageway. It is full of tractors and other large farm vehicles going around 15-20mph. They cause dangerous tail backs and very rarely pull over at the many places to pull over. There are often rural road alternatives to use but presumably they don't use these because it would lengthen their journey.

Some of these contractors can be a real nuisance. Both me and my neighbours have been shouted at by them for walking on a right of way next to our homes, which has been ploughed up by them and planted. The fields in the local area have been enlarged so as to maximise yield, there are no animals grazing any more because its such productive land and its a bit of a featureless crop producing area now. (I've seen old photographs where it was mixed and rotated use). The land is pushed to its maximum to yield crops all year round. They've already sown winter barley after the harvest earlier.

I know a lot of the farm owners round here and none of them actually farm themselves any more. Its all contractors who have no connection with the land. Its just a job to them. You cant even get anyone locally to cut and turn your hayfields now because its too small a job for them to be bothered with, hence privately owned smaller or slightly oddly shaped fields lie going to waste.

And the real problem is also inadequate roads. In 2019, with poor public transport, its ridiculous that so many cities and large towns aren't linked by motorways or at least dual carriageways.

The real problem is of course

@Sirzy is right. The problem is pretending we don't have a rural economy and expecting it to work around the rigid timescale of the urban one.

Err typical towny remark - they are growing the food you eat love. Better move back to London

They're a bloody nightmare & all want shooting!

Does my head in, however my Dad was a farmer so I do see it from both sides. I now sit back and think fuck it there a worse things, I always give myself plenty of time & if I'm 5/10 minutes late there's worse things.

The Michael McIntyre sketch about farmers and tractors is hilarious.

However horses, don't get me started on those 🤦🏻‍♀️

@AreWeAnywhereNear your post really made me laugh 😂

I’m a farmer, DH is a contractor. We work hideous hours, the vast majority of the year, to put food on the tables of everyone else. We’re against the clock all the time, unfortunately there’s no way of making the weather cooperate so when it is in our favour, we need to be out there without taking breaks so people can get to work five minutes earlier. Or rather, so people don’t get held up by five minutes.
Unfortunately there isn’t a secret network of tracks between fields so we have to use roads. We’re as considerate as we can be, and pull over when we can, but sometimes it’s not feasible. To you it might be that we’re being ignorant but in reality pulling back out into traffic with a tractor and silage trailer, say, is much easier said than done and we could add a significant chunk of time to every section of road we travel that way.
We don’t want to piss people off, we aren’t doing it on purpose, we just have shitloads (sometimes literally) to do.

@QualCheckBot I really, really take issue with you saying that to contractors it’s ‘just a job’. Maybe to some, but definitely not to all. The reason so many farms have contractors in isn’t because they can’t be arsed themselves but they need higher yields etc to continue viably farming, and to do this, they need bigger gear which costs more money which they can’t afford. So they get us in, because we do have the bigger gear. It’s not necessarily to do with detaching themselves from the land or the job at all.

@QualCheckBot I really, really take issue with you saying that to contractors it’s ‘just a job’. Maybe to some, but definitely not to all. The reason so many farms have contractors in isn’t because they can’t be arsed t^hemselves but they need higher yields etc to continue viably farming, and to do this, they need bigger gear which costs more money which they can’t afford. So they get us in, because we do have the bigger gear. It’s not necessarily to do with detaching themselves from the land or the job at all.

So basically what I said was accurate then. I honestly get the impression that the contractors round our way would prefer if all people, whom they consider a nuisance and an inconvenience to their industrial scale farming, could just move out of the countryside and be banned from entering it. Its full of rights of way which are no longer used any more. They are rude and fairly aggressive if you ever encounter them. This is my home and they don't live here so it is my right to flag it up.

Perhaps they are nicer around your way.

Yes they have jobs to do, but do they need to be on the roads at peak times?

No, they do it for fun

Seriously? FFS.

But there's no reason it can't be after or before rush hour

Are you really that stupid?

For the hard of thinking or just seriously selfish/stupid try reading @floravus post at 20:10 & engaging your brain

You chose to live in a rural area presumably you know that farming is the majority industry in rural areas!

YABVU
However annoying it is.
And actually big tractors do not go ‘at snails pace’.

Maybe move closer to your work and stop doing so much driving and causing emissions? Leave the countryside to those for whom it is a place of work?

Yabu the roads are not just for car drivers.

My problem is the gaggles of lycra-clad hobby cyclists. Two abreast in numerous groups cycling 20m apart. Going miles and miles down rural A roads with no possibility of traffic safely passing them.

My problem is impatient drivers who think they are the only road users that matter. I knew as soon as I read this thread that it would immediately degenerate into someone having a go at people legally undertaking a healthy and zero carbon hobby. Cyclists have as much right to use the roads as cars hth.

@QualCheckBot perhaps I wasn’t clear. Absolutely it is your right to raise issue with them being rude or whatever, that’s not on and clearly isn’t acceptable. My issue lies in you calling it ‘just a job’ that’s not my experience of contractors. DH for example pushes himself to the absolute limits to make sure he does a good job, he loves what he does, wants to make the farmers happy with the work he does and he certainly doesn’t consider other people, any other people, to be a nuisance, and I don’t think he’s particularly unusual in that. Yes they hold people up and they can be a pain on the roads but they don’t do it for fun, they do it because the work needs doing and in an increasingly tough agricultural world, it needs doing right and fast.
Maybe they are, it would seem so from your post.

Funny, don’t see anyone complaining when tractors are out in winter pulling cars from snowdrifts etc.

My issue lies in you calling it ‘just a job’ that’s not my experience of contractors

I'm baffled by it tbh on a thread moaning about tractors holding up commuters trying to get to something that is 'just a job' presumably? 🤷🏻‍♀️

My issue lies in you calling it ‘just a job’ that’s not my experience of contractors. DH for example pushes himself to the absolute limits to make sure he does a good job, he loves what he does, wants to make the farmers happy with the work he does and he certainly doesn’t consider other people, any other people, to be a nuisance, and I don’t think he’s particularly unusual in that.

But other people also do jobs in which they "push themselves to the limit". Honestly, the contractors around here are horrible. The ones I know all live in the local town, not in the countryside, so to them its just a workplace. They have no understanding of the history of the local rural area (hence ploughing up rights of way), they just want the job done as quickly as possible.

I live in a very arable area and I like to call it an arable wasteland at times. Its industrial scale farming. Local farmers and farm workers tell me that its only recently that it became like this, that there used to be more people living here and employed on the land, and quite a community.

As I said, the road I am complaining about is the main road between two cities. There are alternatives. There are places to pull over. I don't mind so much being stuck behind a tractor pulling a trailer load of grain. I do mind being stuck behind a large piece of farm machinery for miles in a queue of traffic, doing 20mph between one farm and another 20 miles away when I'm trying to get to work. Particularly when there are slower but alternative routes.

That too @Teateaandmoretea 😂

I never said they didn’t, altho I would say similar jobs aren’t necessarily mega common, but certainly, not the only ones. Fair enough, Qual it sounds as if there are issues in your locality. I’d post more but I have to go to the day job now