I can’t say I’m a big fan of this time of the year. While farmers are anxious to get in the fields and dealers are busy helping them get ready, I’m reading all of the speculation that industry pundits tend to toss around just before planting season. Most of it doesn’t say much.
The single biggest challenge preventing specialty ag equipment manufacturers from expanding their operations and market reach is the lack of adequate distribution channels. Or more plainly stated, they can’t find dealers to sell their products. Or maybe it’s the kind of dealers they want — and need — to sell and service their equipment.
Like most of you, I’m a bit tired of all the less-than-positive news surrounding agriculture these days. While we’re obliged to report on what’s happening — good or bad — that’s impacting farm equipment sales, we can still dig around for a bit of good news wherever we can find it.
If you had the choice of working in the computer industry or the ag equipment business, which would you choose? This may not be the best year to be asking a question like this, but regardless of the time or business environment, honestly, which would you choose? Maybe even more importantly, what’s the reason for your choice?
If it’s true that we learn more from our failures than our successes, then dealers, who attended last week’s Precision Farming Dealer Summit in Indianapolis, learned plenty from their colleagues who are pioneering ways to make selling precision farming equipment and services profitable.
As 2015 draws to a close, there’s a lot of pessimism, maybe resignation, in the air that we’re in for another tough year in 2016. During the last several times I was out and about visiting dealers or at industry events, if I was asked once, I was asked a dozen times, “You got any good news for us Dave?”
Two weeks ago in this space we posed the question, “Are equipment leases trending?” Along with that blog, we conducted an informal poll of farm equipment dealers asking whether or not their sale of machinery leases increased during the past 12 months.
We’ve been hearing for some time that in lieu of buying new big ag equipment, many farmers have turned to leasing equipment. But if leasing has become a trend, it’s been difficult to verify, but there seems to be plenty of anecdotal information floating around out there.
Recent telephone calls with dealers and their written comments that have accompanied the various surveys we conduct between Farm Equipment and Ag Equipment Intelligence, are really quite revealing. Despite the current situation of excess used inventory and farmers slowing the spending on new equipment, dealers say they’re getting pushed to order more new product than they can sell — profitably.
In this episode of On the Record, brought to you by Associated Equipment Distributors, we take a look at Titan International’s 2024 results, and the tire manufacturers outlook for this year.
Built on 90 years of expertise, Yetter Farm Equipment leads the agriculture industry in designing effective and innovative equipment for residue management, seedbed preparation, precision fertilizer placement, harvest attachments, strip-tillage, and more.
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