The maintenance of agricultural tractors can be considered as being a group of procedures that seeks to maintain the equipment in the best operation conditions, propitiating an increase of the useful life of them, avoiding premature damages, eliminating the already observed ones and competing for a larger safety in the work. This conduct in spite of simple, demand attention and care similar or even bigger when compared to other self-driven vehicle. The present work had for objective to analyze the regularity and quality of the maintenance of the tractors from the Fazenda de Ensino, Pesquisa e Produção of the University of São Paulo State, used for the most varied work types, as plowing, harrowing, pulverization and gardening and through questionnaire, to evaluate the technical condition of the responsible operators for the machines. The results showed that the daily maintenance it was not efficient, which can result in reduction of the useful life of the machines. About the operators, it was noticed a low degree of technical knowledge related to referring subjects of the maintenance of the tractors and the lack of specific training.
agricultural machines; useful life; preventive maintenance
