Michigan - Saginaw County | No one is forcing you to buy new from the brand name dealer. Lots of machinery for sale on independent lots. And there will be much, much more as JD, and others, force their dealers to sell only, no trade-in's - and it's looking like they are headed there.
Only the bigger farm operators will be leasing new equipment over the next few years given grain prices down and new machinery prices way up.
Few and fewer will be buying outright a million dollars of new machinery - or $2 or $3 million.
I see a major squeeze for dealers. JD is laying off hundreds of factory workers right now.
What I suspect we will see in the near future is a new business model where a "custom" equipment dealer will buy at a discount that 3 or 4 year old machinery now off lease but not selling to farmers and strip off some/much of the electronics that cause 98% of the down time and service calls which make the owner dependent upon having a maintenance contract with a JD authorized service center (and other brands also, not just the Deere)
He might be forced by the courts to remove the JD name from the machine but I doubt that Deere, and others, can stop him from hot-rodding, so to speak, the machines and marketing them. The auto companies have not been able to stop it, so that is a template for farm machinery. If there is a profit there is a way. |
From the Deere dealer consolidation post from below...
