How to tell when your old guidance system is costing you money

Most farmers know what their machinery costs to run. The guidance system is harder to pin down, because it never sends you an invoice. Its costs show up as overlap on the as-applied map, an afternoon lost to a signal dropout at sowing, or a seasonal operator stuck on an unfamiliar screen.

With headers rolling across much of the country, the next few months are the natural window to audit the technology in the cab. Make the call now and new gear can be installed, set up and familiar to everyone before the next season. Leave it until autumn and any upgrade lands in the busiest weeks of the year.

Here are the signs an upgrade will pay for itself, how to tell if your current gear is still doing the job, and what to ask a dealer before you sign anything.

Most of the payback from accurate guidance comes from not covering the same ground twice. When a system starts drifting between passes, the cost is easy to underestimate. On a 2000-hectare cropping program, every percentage point of overlap means 20 hectares of seed, fertiliser, chemical, fuel and machine hours paid for twice, on every operation, every season. If you run controlled traffic, drift also puts wheels back onto the ground you have been keeping clear.

Pull up last season’s as-applied maps or keep notes while harvesting and look for double-ups along run lines and around headlands. If they have grown over time or running over crop, an older receiver tracking fewer satellites, or a correction signal that no longer delivers the accuracy you are paying for, could be the cause.

Picture the last paddock of a tight seeding program, rain due tomorrow, and the screen loses its fix along the tree line. A system that works nine days out of 10 is still a liability if the 10th day falls in a window like that. Regular dropouts near tree lines, in undulating country or around sheds suggest your hardware is struggling to hold a position fix. Newer receivers track more satellite constellations, converge quicker and use better inertial sensors to ride through those gaps.

If your unit has a few seasons behind it, ask your dealer straight: does it still get software updates, and can you get parts quickly? Support for older displays and receivers can thin out over time, and that tends to become obvious at the worst possible moment.

Many older displays were built for one job – steering straight lines. Variable-rate prescriptions, automatic section control and ISOBUS implements from different manufacturers all ask far more of a display than it was designed to give. If you are running one monitor for the seeder, another for the sprayer and a third for guidance, that clutter costs time at every changeover and adds more things that can fail.

Speed matters too. A display that takes minutes to load a job or lags between screens slows down every operator, every day, and those minutes add up across a season. Waiting 20 minutes for convergence that can drop out feels like dead time.

In a mixed fleet it is common to find a different screen in every machine, each with its own menus, file formats and quirks. That makes it harder to share boundaries and guidance lines between machines, and harder to get casual and seasonal staff up to speed. One platform across the fleet, whatever colour the tractor, means one interface for everyone to learn and it’s easier to pick the correct guidance line!

Once you have pinned down the problem, a good dealer conversation should get to the real cost of fixing it:

If you farm with red or blue tractors, there is a good chance the guidance technology already in your cab was built by PTx Trimble (formerly Trimble Agriculture), even if the screen carries the tractor’s badge. That makes the brand’s current ‘Trade In. Trade Up.’ program a useful example of how the upgrade decision can play out.

Until December 20, 2026, farmers can trade in older Trimble units, along with qualifying displays, receivers and steering systems from other brands, for up to $5000 off PTx Trimble list prices on activation licences*. The offer covers new GFX-1060 and GFX-1260 displays, a NAV-960 guidance controller and the farmer’s choice of guidance unlock.

PTx Trimble says its upgraded satellite engine and inertial sensors deliver over 50 per cent better positioning and line-following performance than older solution, and with Centerpoint included for the first year, 2.5cm accuracy and convergence time under a few minutes across most of Australia, you are more accurate, faster, for longer.

On the display side, the 10-inch GFX-1060 and 12-inch GFX-1260 are Android-based touchscreens running PTx Trimble’s Precision-IQ software, which handles guidance, steering, mapping, data logging and application control from one screen. Optional ISOBUS capability lets a single display run implements from a range of manufacturers, the GFX-1260 can manage up to 255 sections, and the displays are designed to work across virtually all machinery brands.

Support is built in too. Onboard Wi-Fi and Bluetooth on the NAV-960, plus remote assistance on the GFX displays, give dealers more ways to diagnose a problem without a trip out to the paddock. PTx Trimble dealers handle the installation and train operators on the new system, and can talk through current finance offers so the upgrade can happen this season rather than next.

An upgrade delivers the best return when it is earning from the first day of planting. Deciding after harvest leaves time to install, calibrate and get every operator comfortable before the season break, and the trade-in window closes on December 20.

If two or more of the signs above sound familiar, it is worth the conversation. Find your nearest PTx Trimble dealer and check whether your current gear qualifies for Trade In. Trade Up.