We used them any time we were not using the tractor for something else on the rear for our two barn tractors that were used in our turkey grow out operation. But the loader was used daily to chore and the rear of the tractor was only used when we were either tilling liter or using a pull type house keeper to remove cake manure. So our weight boxes got used a lot.
When cleaning out barns, the longest one of four was 630 feet long but only 40 feet wide. If we used a weight box on the back for ballast with the 4 cylinder 4wd utility tractors we could turn around fully without backing up with the weight boxes on but with a rear blade run the high risk of hooking a metal truss along the wall when doing so. The weigh t boxes worked well for us.
I built both of those weight boxes and incorporated my own quick attach system. Our pull type housekeepers used the three point to set depth of the cutting edge and used a standard drawbar for the 3pt lower links that can be found in any farm store. I used these drawbars as the basis for a lower quick attach for the weight box so it was a matter of about 30 seconds to a minute to hook up or remove the weight box. Using a conventional 3pt hook up about once in 5 tries you might get it in a minute but the rest of the time you had to move the tractor around to get all the pins lined up. And we even had extendable lower links. So for us dropping or attaching the weight box was nothing and was done as needed.
Now I have a new boughten one for my JD 5083 that I have hardly used. I much prefer the box blade on the back because it is useful with the loader, yet is still fairly short coupled. But if doing lots of repetetive loader work, like when we were doing total cleanouts of the buildings or loading litter trucks to spread in the fields, the weight boxes were the much preferred method of additional rear ballast. And we had a full set of cast weights on the rear wheels (but no fluid - I did not know about winshield washer fluid then and did not want calcium chloride).
If you have a weak loader, weighting the wheels might be enough. The tractors we used, with an oversized bulk material bucket for liter or even a standard bucket with dirt, we had enough break away force to lift the rear end off the ground unless there was additional weight on the 3pt. The Deere 5000 series tractor manual listed three forms of additional rear ballast as acceptible and to meet the rear weight requirements of the loader at least two of the three were required to meet the weight requirement. We simply could not get enough rear ballast without something on the 3pt, and the weight boxes were the most effective in confined spaces. To have not used 3pt weight would have been not observing the operator manual requirements and based on some of your other posts I am sure you can appreciate the operator trying to operate the tractor according to mfg's requirements. The tractors, lifting to maximum heights loading trucks were really not safe without proper rear ballast. The weight boxes did not tend to accidentally run into things like bulkier rear attachments.
Weight boxes have their place. The nice thing about his size tractor, most of his size implements (including probably the weight box) can be man handled around a little to line up the pins. My JD 2520 was that size. When I went up to the JD 3038E, not so much. Stuff is just enough bigger I like a quick hitch on its 3pt. But quick hitches on cat. 1 tractors have their own set of glitches. I finally have all my implements quick hitch compatible, although I still hook the top link seperately. But that is a whole nuther story.
