JD Lawn Tractors (was Re: [AT] Cockshut, Oliver, Coop etc.

Mike Sloane mikesloane at verizon.net
Wed Nov 23 09:49:01 PST 2005


I guess all the ag manufacturers do things differently. At the New 
Holland dealership where I worked in northwester NJ, we were competing 
with a Case IH dealer (same parent company) in NJ, two New Holland 
dealers in PA and the local MF, JD, and Kubota dealers. Selling farm 
equipment against the JD, MF, and Case IH dealers wasn't the big 
problem, but selling against the other NH dealers was - they were bigger 
and could quote lower prices delivered from PA than we could. And they 
promised to pick up and deliver for servicing at prices below ours too. 
When we asked the territory rep about that, he would just shrug his 
shoulders and say "I hear you, but there is nothing I can do".

After being burned by Ford, when they handled the horrible Gilson line 
of lawn equipment, my boss wouldn't touch anything smaller than a 4WD 
diesel compact tractor - he wasn't going to try to compete with 
Wal-Mart, Home Depot, and Lowes and make pennies. We sold very few farm 
tractors as a result of the interstate competition, but we did OK with 
selling compact diesels in the 18-45 hp range to small horse farms and 
landscapers. We also moved a lot of skid steer loaders (plus trailers 
and accessories) to the same kind of customers. It was nice to be able 
to sell a quality product line that customers would be happy with.

Mike

Larry D. Goss wrote:

> 
> The problem is different for the agricultural products.  The really big
> stuff gets serviced in a completely different way and it may as well be
> under a different management.  The Case-IH dealership I worked for is
> physically located in the lower Ohio valley, but the service and sales
> region extends all the way from central Pennsylvania, to Florida, to
> Montana.  If you're a big operator and have a fleet of tractors and
> equipment that is all one brand, it makes sense to have "two men and a
> truck" come on-site and service it all over a three or four day period
> or to ship units on a low-boy several hundred miles.  Let's face it,
> nobody drives a quad-track back to the dealership for an oil change or a
> transmission rebuild, or to troubleshoot the electronics on the
> programmable hydraulics and the GPS.
> 
> Larry
> 

-- 
Mike Sloane
Allamuchy NJ
mikesloane at verizon.net
Website: <www.geocities.com/mikesloane>
Images: <www.fotki.com/mikesloane>

The most certain test by which we can judge whether a country is really
free is the amount of security enjoyed by minorities. -Lord Acton (John
Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton), historian (1834-1902)


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