The tractor and linkage are painted gold. Three-point linkage on a Ferguson 35 tractor. The hitch's utility and simplicity have since made it an industry standard. At 2,500 pounds (1.1 t), the 9N could plow more than 12 acres (4.9 hectares) in a normal day pulling two 14-inch (360 mm) plows, outperforming the tractive performance of the heavier and more expensive Farmall F-30 model. For example, when the Ford 9N introduced Harry Ferguson's three-point hitch design to American production-model tractors in 1939, it was a light and affordable tractor competing principally with row-crop tractors such as Farmalls that did not yet have three-point hitches. This gives the tractor more usable traction than it would otherwise have, given the same power, weight, and fuel consumption. The primary benefit of the three-point hitch system is to transfer the weight and resistance of an implement to the drive wheels of the tractor. The other main mechanism for attaching a load is through a drawbar, a single point, pivoting attachment where the implement or trailer is not in a fixed position with respect to the tractor. The tractor carries some or all of the weight of the implement. Three-point attachment is the simplest and the only statically determinate way of joining two bodies in engineering.Ī three-point hitch attaches the implement to the tractor so that the orientation of the implement is fixed with respect to the tractor and the arm position of the hitch. The three points resemble either a triangle, or the letter A. The three-point hitch ( British English: three-point linkage) is a widely used type of hitch for attaching ploughs and other implements to an agricultural or industrial tractor.
![3 point hitch draft control massey ferguson 265 3 point hitch draft control massey ferguson 265](https://www.bareco.com.au/static/pics/masseY2001/MF112a.gif)
Ursus C-360 tractor and mowing deck, attached by a three-point linkage and driven by a PTO shaft