Here's my philosophy, and mind you, it is formed by local circumstances where dealers are a long way away for service (120+ miles), the first place you look for a helping hand is at the end of your arms and there aren't any government programs to make us whole:

New tractors aren't worth it. They're not worth the risk, they don't deliver more of what we need, and they do it at an atrocious price.

For the same money invested in a new machine, I can buy reliability through redundancy. Here in central Nevada, lots of guys have a couple of working machines just sitting there in the machinery yard, waiting for another machine to break down. We buy older machines, we buy them cheap, we put in some money to get 'em going, then we use them interchangably. Lots of older Case, Deere, some Olivers, IH, Fiat-Hesston, Deutz tractors around here. None of them are what you'd call pretty. Through hard experience, we've learned that having a spare tractor is better than having a new tractor.

For the price of a new ~140HP tractor, I could buy three 6000 to 9000 hour tractors, fix them up, and have money left over. 

To quote Joe Stalin: "Quantity has a quality all it's own."