Though I am aware of the way these companies are now organized, ie; Deere and company, + the others, it does seem shameful that the business model has changed and its not so friendly to what I would think is still a valuable customer base, besides the bigger operations. Is it just because its a bygone era, the smaller operations still looming on the horizon of success or failure will just have to deal with older equipment and the resources available, from antique to 10-40 year old equipment like those who collect, and restore, using aftermarket sources, because this section of the market is just no longer feasible to a large company like Deere ? Look at his start, at that time, this was a new era, and of course, servicing what you sold, stocking a large inventory, even with the cost of it, was the way to be successful, Caterpillar is a good example of that. They still are and were known for it, they had parts available for older tractors for a very long time and even now they recognize the market and have a classic line, local rep at the dealer here told me smaller, and older municipalities still get support for a lot of older equipment, so they do try to make that work somehow, I mean I know there is a point where its not feasible and things are or just have to obsolete, you can't dwell or live in the past.
In those days, when the above JD dealer started, got his foot in the door at the right time, everyone was small, in need, building their farms to be larger and more efficient, improving their operations where possible, and then you have this modern era of tractors, equipment taking over. It seemed to last his generation, then things started changing in the 70's, for many and various reasons.
We bought a dealership, my father and grandad partnered on it, a long established Ford dealership, the biggest in this area, and likely the first to open. When we were in business the philosophy was the same, as the above, we had 4 brothers as mechanics, 2 parts guys, I think 1 salesman/parts guy, there were a few others, and we built a reputation that was good, the tractors were a good line to sell, the equipment like hay tools, so-so, but we still did well with it, the industrial and or construction sales was lucrative, but corporate favored a sister dealership and I think could care less about us, but we still sold a bunch of backhoes, 29 to be precise, to the power company,corporate gave us a real hard time with doing this, but aren't you supposed to sell their line regardless ? It was the eventual undoing, unfortunate and sad, I enjoyed the business, was young, but I really had a thing for tractors, equipment and so on. Basically corporate made the terms of business terrible. We used to have 2 stories of parts on hand, plus all the hardware, the best thing was if something broke or you needed something, you could go to the shop anytime, we had a small trucking business, need something worked on, a motor job, or what have you, was a nice benefit of having a shop like this. It was a good service to the community, Deere and IH was the competitor, and farmers had their preferences, it was shameful because the industrial Ford models were good sellers and the line was slowly getting better, look at how long they built off that platform, all the way to the big merger, even Farmtrac cloning the design, it was a good proven design, even the local highway contractor, exclusively used 3000 series up to the 3910 or late series with a broom for road cleaning, and they needed more than one that is for sure. We had a distribution center across the river, I can remember the pallets of blue components, lots of large cast items and similar, you could practically get anything in a short period of time for these tractors. Maybe I've digressed here, but it sure seemed to work, the business model, I can remember going on service calls, doing pick ups or drop offs, satisfied customers, our guys did great work, I used to run the winch cable as a kid on the roll off flatbed.
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Today's Featured Article - Listening to Your Tractor - by Curtis Von Fange. Years ago there was a TV show about a talking car. Unless you are from another planet, physically or otherwise, I don’t think our internal combustion buddies will talk and tell us their problems. But, on the other hand, there is a secret language that our mechanical companions readily do speak. It is an interesting form of communication that involves all the senses of the listener. In this series we are going to investigate and learn the basic rudimentary skills of understanding this lingo.
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