All of us wanting the "cheapest" deal is creating a much worst local business climate. WE all want the cheapest we can find in the whole wide world. THANK YOU Internet!!! We give lip service to quality but in reality too many of us look at price only.
Take this web site. ( I am not bashing this site. I like this site I am just using it as a example) You can look at their business several ways:
1) If you order here you are moving your money away from a more local supplier. Now in this case it is still in the US. Too many times it is out of the country. IT still is changing the economic flow if your local community. Many of us that live in the rural area complain about there not being any stores left in our towns. Guess who caused this??? US!!!!! It started out as the bigger grocery store had meat a nickle a pound cheap, Lowes lumber 10% cheaper than the local lumber yard, and etc. Businesses will still service customers if they will pay enough for them to make a profit.
2) This site provides this forum for many of us old tractor guys for no charge. I hope we try to do business with them to help them stay in business. I wonder if a similar site had the same exact products BUT at 5% less in price. How many would still buy here???? I will say that rural people cut their own throat too many times. We are raised from birth to save and seek out the best deal. What we forget is the the best deal is not always the cheapest one. I often buy my hardware items at the local lumber yard/hardware store. Yes I pay more but I want them to still be there when I don"t want to drive sixty miles round trip for some small item. YOU HAVE to give them more business than just the little stuff or they will not be there in the future. I do not want Home Depo and Lowes to be the only place that I can get things. Try to get the washers for a fifty year old water hydrant at Home Depo some time.
We complain that the America of today is not the same as the one we grew up in. That is a correct statement. The problem is that we made the changes that we don"t like. We started going to the other stores because they where cheaper. All of the time thinking to our selves "It would not hurt anything. It was just this little thing. Plus everyone else will still buy locally" Well too many of us thought that way. So the local guy goes out of business.
I want each of you to think about the following situation. I worked at a Implement dealer. We where old school. We tried to keep what we sold in stock, not just order it when ever someone wanted one. One of the pieces of equipment was Buffalo TMR wagons. We kept one of each model in stock. That tied up about $150,000 in inventory. We had another dealer about fifteen miles away that did not stock any new feeder wagons. He kept a few parts but not one new wagon. I had a farmer call me and wanted to try out one of the TMR wagons, his was broken down and was a different brand. So I dropped everything and ran him down a wagon so he could do his evening feeding. He called me two days later. He really liked the Buffalo TMR wagon and wanted a price to trade. I figured up a price. I was making a $2000 dollar profit on a $30,000 wagon. HE waited for two more day to call me back. So he had been using a brand new TMW wagon for four days for free. He said to just leave the wagon at his farm. He was going to buy it off of the other dealer??????? WTF He said the other dealer was $1000 dollars cheaper. That dealer told him he would just transfer the wagon from us and sell it to him. I bet he would, $1000 profit and no inventory or setup cost. Well I jumped in the dealership"s roll back truck and went straight down to the farmer"s place. I walked right up to the TMR wagon and unhooked it. He was trying to load it. I just put the jack down and pulled the hoses/PTO off. I told him he had had better move his tractor or I would drag it out of the way. I hooked up to the wagon. He was yelling at me that I could not take "his" wagon. He had already paid the other dealer. I said that was between him and the other dealer. We owned this one not the other dealer. Plus it was up to us not Buffalo whether we transfered a piece of equipment. I also told him I knew that Buffalo had a eight week back log on getting a new TMR wagon. I wished him luck getting his money/wagon out of the other dealer in time to feed the rest of his cattle that day. So he was trying to "save" $1000 on a wagon that We had paid for and let him Demo for free. I guess making a 7-8% profit was too high for him.
What many of you don"t know is that with many short line companies the dealer must pay for the equipment/parts within 10 days of invoice to get the deal discount. We sold a manure spreader line that we would have to pay for the spreaders we had not even gotten yet because they had shipped but where in transit. Plus very few short line companies floor plan new equipment any more.
That dealership slowly quit keeping new short line equipment because of farmers like the one I told you about. So is it the dealership"s fault when the farmer refuses let him make enough of a profit to stock it???? How many of you just have to save that three cents on a gallon of gas but then complain that the local service station quits selling gas??? Sound familiar???
I want to hear what you think on this. I just had to order some sweeper parts from a thousand miles away because the local dealer we bought ours from is no longer in business. He said everyone was just buying the cheap junk at Wally World and getting a new one every few years. No one would pay the extra money to get one that would last. So I ordered $5.95 of parts and paid $6.25 to get it shipped. I would have gladly have given the local guy $20.00 just to have it fixed today.
Take this web site. ( I am not bashing this site. I like this site I am just using it as a example) You can look at their business several ways:
1) If you order here you are moving your money away from a more local supplier. Now in this case it is still in the US. Too many times it is out of the country. IT still is changing the economic flow if your local community. Many of us that live in the rural area complain about there not being any stores left in our towns. Guess who caused this??? US!!!!! It started out as the bigger grocery store had meat a nickle a pound cheap, Lowes lumber 10% cheaper than the local lumber yard, and etc. Businesses will still service customers if they will pay enough for them to make a profit.
2) This site provides this forum for many of us old tractor guys for no charge. I hope we try to do business with them to help them stay in business. I wonder if a similar site had the same exact products BUT at 5% less in price. How many would still buy here???? I will say that rural people cut their own throat too many times. We are raised from birth to save and seek out the best deal. What we forget is the the best deal is not always the cheapest one. I often buy my hardware items at the local lumber yard/hardware store. Yes I pay more but I want them to still be there when I don"t want to drive sixty miles round trip for some small item. YOU HAVE to give them more business than just the little stuff or they will not be there in the future. I do not want Home Depo and Lowes to be the only place that I can get things. Try to get the washers for a fifty year old water hydrant at Home Depo some time.
We complain that the America of today is not the same as the one we grew up in. That is a correct statement. The problem is that we made the changes that we don"t like. We started going to the other stores because they where cheaper. All of the time thinking to our selves "It would not hurt anything. It was just this little thing. Plus everyone else will still buy locally" Well too many of us thought that way. So the local guy goes out of business.
I want each of you to think about the following situation. I worked at a Implement dealer. We where old school. We tried to keep what we sold in stock, not just order it when ever someone wanted one. One of the pieces of equipment was Buffalo TMR wagons. We kept one of each model in stock. That tied up about $150,000 in inventory. We had another dealer about fifteen miles away that did not stock any new feeder wagons. He kept a few parts but not one new wagon. I had a farmer call me and wanted to try out one of the TMR wagons, his was broken down and was a different brand. So I dropped everything and ran him down a wagon so he could do his evening feeding. He called me two days later. He really liked the Buffalo TMR wagon and wanted a price to trade. I figured up a price. I was making a $2000 dollar profit on a $30,000 wagon. HE waited for two more day to call me back. So he had been using a brand new TMW wagon for four days for free. He said to just leave the wagon at his farm. He was going to buy it off of the other dealer??????? WTF He said the other dealer was $1000 dollars cheaper. That dealer told him he would just transfer the wagon from us and sell it to him. I bet he would, $1000 profit and no inventory or setup cost. Well I jumped in the dealership"s roll back truck and went straight down to the farmer"s place. I walked right up to the TMR wagon and unhooked it. He was trying to load it. I just put the jack down and pulled the hoses/PTO off. I told him he had had better move his tractor or I would drag it out of the way. I hooked up to the wagon. He was yelling at me that I could not take "his" wagon. He had already paid the other dealer. I said that was between him and the other dealer. We owned this one not the other dealer. Plus it was up to us not Buffalo whether we transfered a piece of equipment. I also told him I knew that Buffalo had a eight week back log on getting a new TMR wagon. I wished him luck getting his money/wagon out of the other dealer in time to feed the rest of his cattle that day. So he was trying to "save" $1000 on a wagon that We had paid for and let him Demo for free. I guess making a 7-8% profit was too high for him.
What many of you don"t know is that with many short line companies the dealer must pay for the equipment/parts within 10 days of invoice to get the deal discount. We sold a manure spreader line that we would have to pay for the spreaders we had not even gotten yet because they had shipped but where in transit. Plus very few short line companies floor plan new equipment any more.
That dealership slowly quit keeping new short line equipment because of farmers like the one I told you about. So is it the dealership"s fault when the farmer refuses let him make enough of a profit to stock it???? How many of you just have to save that three cents on a gallon of gas but then complain that the local service station quits selling gas??? Sound familiar???
I want to hear what you think on this. I just had to order some sweeper parts from a thousand miles away because the local dealer we bought ours from is no longer in business. He said everyone was just buying the cheap junk at Wally World and getting a new one every few years. No one would pay the extra money to get one that would last. So I ordered $5.95 of parts and paid $6.25 to get it shipped. I would have gladly have given the local guy $20.00 just to have it fixed today.
