On a blustery February day in southern Nebraska, as farmers were busy gearing up for another production season, special guests walked into Titan Machinery Holdrege for its annual open house celebration.

The guests were customers with longtime connections to the dealership, which sits in south-central Nebraska among modest, workaday farming towns in the nation’s breadbasket. It was a bittersweet event for some, as longtime technician Jim Mooney was retiring after a 53-year history with the business. 

General Manager Marcus Dunbar presented him a special rifle with “Case IH” on the stock to celebrate Mooney’s retirement. 

Clearly, serving and supporting customers are what is important to the Holdrege dealership. “There’s a lot of good people in a lot of areas, and it’s amazing how they start out as customers and a lot of them become friends. And that’s who you deal with — people you trust,” Dunbar says.

Turn for the Better

The Holdrege dealership got a major boost in 2011, when Titan Machinery purchased 6 dealerships in Nebraska from Fairbanks International, seeking to boost the company’s portfolio in the state. All the stores, including Holdrege, were situated along or near the Interstate 80 corridor, where some of the most productive farmland in the world is found. 

The Fairbanks acquisitions were Titan Machinery’s first agriculture dealerships in Nebraska and complemented its construction equipment dealerships in Omaha and Lincoln. 

Titan’s founder and chairman, David Meyer, had personally known the Fairbanks family for more than 20 years and he saw many similarities in operations and business philosophies. Among other things, Fairbanks International created and implemented, “leading edge product support best practices that have become a standard in the industry,” Meyer said at the time. BJ Knutson is now CEO of Titan Machinery. 

Marcus Dunbar, general manager of Titan Machinery’s Holdrege and Kearney stores, says the acquisition of the dealerships by Titan brought, “a lot of diversification and smart people,” to the fold, as well as, “access to resources that are more plentiful.” John Dobberstein

Dunbar had worked at the Kearney, Neb., dealership for 27 years, about 17 of that coming in sales after starting out as a service and precision technology technician. Two years ago he became dealer principal for the Kearney and Holdrege locations after his boss Timothy Gruntorad retired.

Dunbar says the Titan acquisition brought “a lot of diversification and smart people” to the fold, as well as, “access to resources that are more plentiful.”

Production farming is still the core market the dealership focuses on, although no-till practices and cover crop use is growing ­­— driven in part by government program incentives. That’s brought some demand for roller-packers, grass seeders, rolling harrows and more. 

Water conservation is also becoming a big issue, as the Ogallala aquifer in the Central and Southern Plains has seen a historic drop in levels in the last decade.

“There’s all sorts of challenges. I knew half of the people over in Holdrege and got to know the other half pretty quickly,” Dunbar says. “And then learning all new names and kids and grandkids and how those guys farm differently, compared to the way they do around Kearney, here in the valley and on the north end of the Sandhills. It’s night-and-day different practices.”

Adding Construction a Game Changer

Holdrege’s main lines include Case IH and Case Construction, and they have a variety of shortlines — Great Plains Mfg., J&M, Unverferth/Orthman, Landoll, Rhino, Land Pride, Kwik-Belt, H&S Rakes, Rowse Rakes and Westfield Augers.

Much of the decision making on equipment lines are made regionally in the Southwest region of Titan to maintain inventory all the dealerships can sell. 

“We get together every Monday and we have a manager’s meeting for all the stores in that region and discuss what we want to handle and who’s going to take what piece, so logistically it’s spread out across our footprint to better serve a customer,” Dunbar says. 

“We try and offer the best product we think makes our customers successful,” he adds about the shortlines. “It’s machinery, something’s always going to break down, something’s going to be messed up in shipping. So you partner with somebody that partners with you and takes care of the problem when it arises.”

The Holdrege Titan Machinery dealership holds an open house annually to build relationships with customers. This spring, service tech Jim Mooney (inset) retired after more than 50 years working at the dealership in Nebraska. He was honored at the open house. John Dobberstein

The addition of the Case construction line at Holdrege has given the dealership a significant boost, and Dunbar expects it will be 25-30% of its equipment sales soon. It’s not without sacrifice, as employees must complete several levels of online and in-person training in a certain time window — all of it done while helping run a day-to-day business. 

Dunbar is still enthusiastic about adding the new equipment line, though, as it’s a new chance to service clientele that may need skid steers for animal operations, or excavators to clean out drainage ditches, fix waterways or dirt work for terracing or filling irrigation pivot tracks. 

“It’s an absolute asset. It’s much like if you diversify in your farming operation. You’ve got maybe some organic stuff, some hay, maybe you do row crop commercially, maybe you buy some cows. It’s all cyclical, everything rises and falls,” he says. “And hopefully you’ve got enough to play the middle area and maybe make a little bit of money along the way.”

“When things are bad in the agricultural markets, you’ve got another avenue of income.”

Mission Possible: Finding Talent

After Titan became owner, there were some logistical changes to make in Holdrege and Kearney. But putting people in the right seat was one of the biggest challenges, as Dunbar noted he was staring at several employee retirements.

His store administrator, Roxanne Golus, has been there for 26 years, and other veterans include Monte Schultz (27 years in sales and support)

Jonathan Kreutzer (14 years as a precision ag specialist and 2 years in sales) and Jacob Anderbery (8 years in sales).

At this store, Dunbar has 89 years of combined parts experience with Randy Young, parts manager and staff Arvin Kuhlmann, Kevin Stehl, Samuel Siekman, Bryan Keffeler and Allan Pritchard.

Titan Machinery in Holdrege does a robust parts and maintenance program. Dunbar says parts and service is the “bread and butter” for the store in terms of going the extra mile for customers, most of them involved in intense farm production and needing timely, professional support. John Dobberstein

He has hired 17 people for different positions in Holdrege and Kearney since coming aboard, and brought back his predecessor to work part-time in a mentoring assistant role. 

Dunbar has 2 parts employees in Kearney with a combined 94 years of service, and has three service technicians there who will be retiring soon. He’s hired 2 precision farming specialists in Holdrege and moved a senior employee from that department to sales to take on a new role. 

Titan offers a college sponsorship program to bring in high school graduates to show them all the areas of the dealership businesses, allowing them to pick a path to learn. It’s a 5-year commitment, with the students going to college for 3 years and, while on break, they are paid to work at a dealership and get on-the-job training. 

This means they will have at least 2 years of experience in the shop once they’re done. “At this point we’re happy where we’re at,” Dunbar says. “We have two kids in the pipeline in college, and one other possible. And they won’t just be green kids, they will have some training and be proficient.”

Focusing on Customers

Dunbar says parts and service is the “bread and butter” for the Holdrege store in terms of going the extra mile for customers, most of them involved in intense farm production and needing timely, professional support.

One program implemented is an on-farm delivery service for oil utilizing a truck and bulk oil containers in Kearney. Other dealer locations also have oil trucks, but having multiple vehicles ensures the service still operates if there is a breakdown. They will also add parts delivery to the trip if a farmer is rebuilding equipment. 

The Holdrege store is looking at implementing a route truck again to run between stores to facilitate delivery of necessary parts. 

Every year, Titan Holdrege does an “uptime” program that allows customers to bring in combines, skid steers, tractors, wheel loaders and other equipment for inspection and necessary work. The program reduces dead time at the dealership and brings in more parts and service revenue. The signups also help Dunbar and colleagues gauge parts inventory better. 

“If you look at a 3-year roll on your parts turns, it just helps you to gauge better what to have on hand,” he says. “And then it helps us going into planting and harvest. We put in bulk orders to have enough inventory around in the region to cover our customers’ needs.” 

The maintenance program has sometimes led to new customer leads when they find service work is available closer to home.

“Some of them have been going to Lincoln and Omaha when they’ve been doing purchases and then they’ve taken their service there,” Dunbar notes. “That’s a long way when something breaks down to say, ‘Hey, I will see you in 2 hours of drive time to come fix it.’”

Hoping for Change

Along with pushing out customer-facing service and sales programs and working to ensure professional, trained employees, Dunbar’s team has also been dealing with external factors that impact the bottom line — chiefly, supply chain issues.  

In 2024, there was a steep decline in used equipment prices that came more quickly than Dunbar and his team anticipated. Interest rates also skyrocketed last year to almost 7%, and then 2 years’ worth of backed up inventory orders were being built and shipped that had been slowed by previous supply delays. 

“You had high interest rates and carrying costs and a lot of that stuff was due in a very short order, where normally you would receive terms,” Dunbar recalls. “It was somewhat of a perfect storm in the ag equipment industry for everybody. It didn’t matter what color you carried or where you were, it hit everybody.”

The Holdrege dealership got a major boost in 2011 when Titan Machinery purchased 6 dealerships in Nebraska from Fairbanks International, seeking to boost the company’s portfolio in the state. All the stores were situated along or near the Interstate 80 corridor, where some of the most productive agriculture land in the world is found. John Dobberstein

Strategic prices changes were needed to correct the incoming and current inventory on the ground to price it at the current market value. “A lot of dealerships of different colors elected to throw a lump sum of equipment on auction and basically get it over with,” he says. 

“We chose a step program, looked at each asset individually and stepped the prices down to the current market values to retail it. We offered extended warranties and financing to local customers. So, it was a little bit more strategic in how we went about.”

For this year, Dunbar feels he’s more prepared to deal with any inventory issues. He’s also anxiously watching what happens with trade deals in Washington and President Trump’s use of tariffs to bring other countries to the negotiating table.

He feels interest rates will come down a bit this year, but it’s a question of when. 

“I’m not looking for a huge swing, but a quarter to a half a point by the end of the year would be progress. It’s better than 18% like when I was young,” Dunbar says, remembering the struggles his father had with farming in the 1980s. 

“I expect by the end of the year that agriculture and the construction industries and the people we deal with will be experiencing a little bit of positivity. But we will find out.”