Now retired, Earl Livingston was the founder of Oklahoma-based Livingston Machinery Company (now part of Parallel Ag) and is a Farm Equipment Dealer Hall of Fame inductee.

Editor’s Note: Farm Equipment magazine asked its Alumni Group (comprised of recipients of the Dealership of the Year Award and Hall of Fame) a thought-provoking question that we call the “It’s a Wonderful Life Question.” In the famed Christmas movie, protagonist George Bailey gets to see – via a dramatic intervention by an angel named Clarence Odbody – what the world might have been like had he never been born. Similarly, we asked our award-winning executives to ponder that same challenging question, and to consider how their communities might have been altered had their businesses “failed to launch” or perhaps failed to survive trying times. Here’s what we learned. – Mike Lessiter, editor/publisher.

First I would like to remind you what an honor it was to be inducted into the Farm Equipment Dealer Hall of Fame and how surprised and humbled I am by it. The thing I am the proudest about all of this is that the honor is truly a testament to what a group of dedicated employees can achieve in a team effort — to build something great.

I was lucky right out of college to go to work for Case Power & Equipment in Elk City, Oklahoma which was a Case company store. I started as an accountant and within a year got to move into sales, selling Case tractors and utility equipment. I was fortunate to work for a great man by the name of R.L. McNeill who instilled in me how important customer service is and that the best thing you have to promote in a dealership is the employees, no matter what product you sell.

After working for Case Company at Elk City from 1973, I managed the Case Company Store for a couple years in the late 70s at Paris, Texas, until coming to Chickasha, Okla. in November 1979. I came to manage Chickasha Tractor & Equipment which was an independent store handling Case, Ford, Hesston, and Sunflower. Even though we had Case and Ford, our Hesston contract is what we relied on to pay the bills. I fell in love with the hay business and, with the introduction of the Hesston big baler into the market, my life was changed forever. I ran this business from November 1979 until the spring of 1987, when I started my dream of Livingston Machinery Company (LMC), born in May 1987.

Earl Livingston

“By hocking my house and my personal vehicle, I talked the First National Bank into setting me up a revolving credit line of $100,000.” —Earl Livingston

Starting a company with no major product lines to sell was a risky, bold venture. Seeing the great potential of a business totally devoted to 24/7 service to hay customers, I went in business with my wife, one employee, 2 old pickups, a worn-out truck and trailer with shot brakes. I rented a 50x100 shop and a portable 12x24 office building. 

By hocking my house and my personal vehicle, I talked the First National Bank in Chickasha, Okla., into setting me up a revolving credit line of $100,000 to buy and sell used farm tractors and hay equipment and stock fast-moving parts for Hesston big balers and windrowers. I let all the people I had sold hay equipment to in the past know we were available for 24/7 service. I made a couple agreements with other Hesston dealers to split the profits on anything I could sell, and we were off and running.

Fast forward a couple years, and we got the Hesston dealership, and started selling new big square balers and windrowers in large numbers across several states. Everything we sold, we started in the field and provided 24/7 service – no matter where they were located. 

Dedicated Staff was the Key

It took special employees to buy into our 24/7 commitment to customers. We had laminated cards printed up for the taking to all customers with my phone number and all the parts and technician phone numbers. We had a dedicated 24/7 parts and service phone number listed. We rotated weekly who was on call after-hours. We put together mobile shop trailers and traveled several states reconditioning balers and windrowers in a several state area. Not only did we service the balers we sold but anyone who asked for help. We sent 2 men in each rig out 2 weeks each time and rotated people each 2 weeks without ever bringing the rigs home – sometimes months at a time. 

So it's easy for me to say, without a doubt, that it was our dedicated employees’ commitment to our 24/7 service was the reason why we were inducted into the Farm Equipment Dealer Hall of Fame. My service manager Terry Marshall started with me in the early 1980s at Chickasha Tractor and worked for me 36 years before retiring. I had numerous employees with me for 25 years plus years. I put our 4 dealerships in an employee-owned stock ownership plan (ESOP) and became an employee-owned company in December 2008. 

So several years after I retired in 2016 and LMC sold to Ag Solutions out of Iowa, my employees got their ESOP money. Most who were fully vested and who’d been in the ESOP at least 10 years got at least $250,000 and some even got more which was a well deserved life changing event in their families’ lives. 

Our best year with the 4 stores was in excess of $125 million in revenue, and we employed 112. Over that 30-year period, we employed hundreds of employees and touched lots of lives in a positive manner.

Our hay customers relied on us so much to keep them running, and many told us if we ever got out of the hay business, so would they. The hay business is a continual, hurry-up business. You watch the weather like a hawk as to when you have a good window to cut your hay, then you have to rake, then bale, then haul, then try to market it and start the process over about every 28 days in the alfalfa business. Most farmers fertilize between every cutting and spray for weeds every year and continually check for insect or worm infestations. Not to mention praying for rain, praying for a fair price for their product and praying for their families and their well being. 

Earl Livingston

“Our hay customers relied on us so much to keep them running, and many told us if we ever got out of the hay business, so would they.” —Earl Livingston

Our customers and Livingston Machinery were a team and most of our long-term customers seemed more like family. In my 43 years in this business, I had several customers in which I’d sold to all three generations.

Suppliers Important to Triangle of Success 

And yes, our suppliers were just as an important link in our success as our employees and our customers. Our biggest supplier was AGCO Corporation with our Hesston, Massey Ferguson, Fendt, Sunflower and application products. They were very important to every step of our growth and success as a Dealership. We were also dealers for Manitou, Gehl, Woods, H&S, Trimble and other lines.

4-H & FFA – Investments in the Future

My wife and I decided when we first started in business that we would always help as many 4-H and Future Farmers of America (FFA) kids as we possibly could. Every year we were in business, we supported any and all school programs when asked, whether it was for school annuals, cheerleading, band, volleyball, baseball, basketball, etc. We actually did that in a several state area when asked and attended numerous FFA & 4H premium sales each year, supporting the kids, some years spending $80,000 to $100,000, and it was the best advertising we did. 

One of my proudest moments was receiving an honorary State Farmer Degree at the State FFA convention in Oklahoma City for helping so many youth in Oklahoma, on top of several local Honorary Chapter Degrees. Both my daughter and son were active showing hogs and steers in school and playing sports. Both my children grew up in the dealership and worked from junior high through all school and college. My son actually stayed at the dealership several years after I retired for a total of 25 years.

High School Sweetheart

I am fortunate to be married to a farm girl who was my high school sweetheart with whom I will be married to 54 years come July. She has endured being married to a workaholic who after retiring from the equipment business still farms and ranches running about 400 mother cows and bales 8-9 thousand bales of hay per year.

Thanks again for honoring me and my family and, most of all, my dedicated dmployees for this great honor.

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