At about that age I drove a tractor to town to see Grandpa. Got in trouble. I worked on that 40 JD on the farm so didn’t see any problem driving it to town. Cops thought different.
Wasn’t there a story here a year or so ago about some German guy who had a 9-year-old nephew or grandson running a front-end loader at a quarry? The kid there didn’t take the loader out on the road, but a lot of busybodies were all upset anyway. The German guy said the kid was a pretty good operator.