Standard repair and maintenance cost models for the medium size diesel engine tractor were established and compared among the four agricultural schemes in Sudan. Those schemes are all government owned and are allocated for different cropsfollowing various production systems, and adopting deviant operation management. The established models were based upon data collected over a 10-year period and it included repair and maintenance expenditure (parts and labour), maintenance managementparameters, training and experience of tractor operators and maintenance personnel, salary scales and incentives, infrastructure (roads and communication), tractor acquisition cost and its design features and facilities for replacement parts availabilityat the appropriate time. The analysis of data indicated that the correlation between tractor accumulated repair and maint4nance costs and its cumulative use in hours was best described by a power function (Y = aX{sup}b) for each and every scheme but withdifferent parameters (a, b). The comparison of the established models among the four surveyed schemes indicated that tractor cumulative use in hours was the major determinant of tractor cumulative repair and maintenance costs in the case of Sudan GeziraBoard (SOB) and Kinana Sugar Company (KSC) (r{sup}2 = 0.79 and 0.76, respectively). However, its influence in the case of New Halfa Agricultural Corporation (NHAC) was moderate (r{sup}2 = 0.40) and in the case of Sim Sim Dryland Agricultural Project(SDAP) its influence was very low (r{sup}2 = 0.14). It also indicated that KSC had the lowest costs followed by SGB and NHAC. The reasons for lower costs were attributed to the relatively better maintenance facilities and availability of replacement parts at the appropriate time, availability of better training facilities for operators and maintenance personnel, better infrastructure and relatively better salary and incentives scale.
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