Customer drives his Valtra M120 tractor from Finland to Italy

02/27/2004

Capraro will share driving responsibilities with friends as they drive non-stop, 24-hours a day, beginning on Thursday 26 February. The trip is expected to last six days, with the tractor travelling at 40 km/h.

“We will have eight drivers all the way to Denmark and after that six drivers. Two of us will fly home from Denmark to prepare for the arrival,” says Luca Capraro.

Luca Capraro’s father Guido visited the Valtra factory in Suolahti in January 2003 together with Valtra distributor Bruno Moret. During the visit he saw a video about German Valtra distributor Ulrich Nobbe, who had driven by tractor from Central Finland back to Germany. Guido Capraro vowed to drive his first Valtra tractor home, as soon as he purchased one. A year later his son took over the farm, but the promise was kept. The tractor is now being driven by Guido’s 20-year-old son Luca.

“We are good friends with our Valtra dealer Giancarlo Moret, and he and I are the same age. Our fathers have also known each other and done business together for a long time. That’s why we decided to do this trip together,” says Luca.

The tractor is a 120-horsepower, four-cylinder Valtra EcoPower model, which is ideal for fieldwork as well as other tasks around the farm. The Capraro’s tractor is a silver grey jubilee model that celebrates over 500,000 Valtra tractors manufactured as of last year.

“We chose a Valtra because we know the local dealer well, we have seen the factory, and having test-driven this model, we know that is powerful. The 120-horsepower M Series is the best choice for our farm,” Guido and Luca Capraro agree.

The Capraro family farms organic vegetables, in addition to which they have 12 cows. Their new M120 will be used mainly on the fields and for contracting work.

The epic journey will take the Capraros from Suolahti to Italy via Helsinki, Stockholm, Gothenburg, Fredrikshavn, Hamburg, Munich and Innsbruck. They will be joined on the journey by workers from their farm and the local Valtra distributor. While one person is driving the tractor, the others will have a chance to sleep in the accompanying caravan. The team expects to arrive in Italy on the 3rd or 4th of February, and they will drive directly to the Verona agricultural fair. Supporting the journey are sponsors including tyre manufacturer Kleber, Shell, an Italian dairy and Bruno Moret’s Valtra dealership.

Tractor customisation allows for such deliveries

The Capraros unique tractor journey is made possible by Valtra’s method of customised tractor production. Luca Capraro was able to design the exact tractor he wanted together with his local dealer Giancarlo Moret. Once the pair had chosen the exact specifications from hundreds of options and variations, Giancarlo sent the order to the Suolahti factory, where customised assembly began. For example, the cabin and motor were supplied to the assembly line with Luca’s name already on them. Luca was then able to visit the factory in person to watch his own tractor being built – or in this case to drive it back to Italy.

The old-fashioned way of manufacturing tractors was to mass-produce tractors that salespeople then tried to move as best they could. Compared to the old way, customised tractor production is considerably less expensive and more efficient for both customers and the manufacturer. For example, it is no longer necessary to modify and rebuild new tractors according to the buyer’s wishes, or to have lines of new tractors waiting in storage. What is best, the customer always gets the exact tractor he wants. Recently some automobile manufacturers have also introduced similar customised manufacturing processes. Valtra has over ten years of experience in this field.

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