Anone deal with Ag-Pro dealerships????

JD Seller

Well-known Member
A family member told me that JD equipment, of Ohio/KY/MI, was selling their ten stores to Ag-Pro Companies effective Dec. 12th, 2018. This Ag-pro already has 60 some dealerships. Have any of you dealt with this Ag-Pro any???? I had never heard of them. Look like a southern company that has been buying up JD stores for the last forty years or so.

Looks like JD is stepping up the move to their dream of only having a few dealership chains for the entire US. In the early 1990s JD corporate people almost would cream their jeans, when they would compare JD to Cat. At the time JD had over 2600 dealerships/ownerships in the US. Cat had under 200 and sold twice the dollars of equipment as JD did. That JD corporate attitude was a real kick in the pants to the dealership owners that just had survived the 1980s. With the majority of them taking their own personal money to keep the JD stores open and JD paid. I asked one of these JD fellows at a meeting what he thought of the increase risk by having fewer owners to weather tough times. He looked at me like I was from Mars. JD has been insulated from many down turns by a healthy independent dealer network. JD corporate has been crushing that dealership network into a few owners that have the supposed holy grail of "economics of scale".

What they do not give much thought to is this "economics of scale" works both ways. If a tough time like the 1980s comes along again, it is going to take massive amounts of money to keep stores open. Both dealership owners I worked for told me point blank that they had taken over $250k out of their person wealth, to keep each store open in the 1980s. Adjust that into 2018 dollars and that makes it $577K per store. Take that times 71 stores that A-Pro will now have. That comes out to just under 41 MILLION dollars. Think that Ag-pro has that kind of money laying around????? If they go broke it effects dealerships in multiple states.

Look at how Titan Equipment stock was at junk bond level just a few years ago. CNH was worried that that single entity could torpedo CNH North American.

In a lot of ways I hope JD gets smacked down by some other company. Then a bunch of corporate types get fired. Let them start over like they are forcing many JD dealership owners to do. I know a lot of single store JD dealers got hammered when they sold their stores. JD told them only this store can buy you. Then that store gave pennies on the dollar for the store. Personally I know where one dealer had his store valued by JD, at $2 million. Then two years later when JD forced him out they told him it was only worth $750,000 to the "new" chain store buyer.

The US really needs the monopoly laws applied to great segments of the corporate world in the US. Walmart and JD should be be two of the first ones smacked down. Then Bayer and foreign ownership of these corporations needs looked at hard. I know it will never happen with the best politicians money can buy in Washington. A guy can dream. LOL
 

I think John Deere as a company is headed for a very bumpy road. I can't understand how having so many dealership locations owned by 1 conglomerate isn't considered a MONOPOLY
 
It is true Ag-Pro did buy all the JD Equipment stores. I don't know anything about the new owners,,but it can't be any worse that it was..

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I don't know if I want JD to take too hard of a beating because there is a chance there would be no rescue leaving lots of farmers and others hanging for support. Otherwise, I agree with the tone of your post.
 
Got one near here. I know the parts guys and they have been very helpful to me and my son.
Got me some Bush Hog 105 mower parts for a reasonable price and got them in a couple of days.
Son buys JD oil and combine parts there.
Richard in NW SC
 
You're correct. Ewing Implement was only a mile from my place; now the closest dealer is in Indianola or Madrid, both in Iowa. John Deere Ankeny Works (factory) stopped using the railroad when they found faster (not cheaper) delivery by long haul trucks. Of course, getting steel and other material INTO the plant is another story. Now the tracks are gone and Ankeny is just another town without rail service--truck companies can get together and set their own rates, as there isn't competition.
 
What gets me is that 1 branch will have a part but the corresponding part that a fellow needs to complete the repair is in another branch 100 miles away.
 
"The choice to sell JD Equipment was not an easy decision." I suppose it became easier when Mother Deere said "Do it or else".
 
Tim, what a nice letter .... almost a love letter one might get on February 14th, hopefully it's not a "Deere John" letter ..... ha!!!
 
Tim I will agree in that Mitchell/JD Eq. was not great to do business with. I met Don a time or two at product intros and he is an arrogant person. The trouble was the JD corporate types fell down fawning over him. His personal attitude carried over down the ladder. I dealt with the store a time or two on transfers. Not fun.

A funny story about Don Mitchell. In around 1996-97 he got caught messing around with another woman. His wife started divorce proceedings. She must have had a sharp lawyer. They shut the stores down for an entire day while her legal team did a complete story inventory. Within a few weeks after that I guess the wife looked better than the girl friend and the divorce was dropped. LOL
 
I would say there has been trouble in Paradise,,for the past month you had to pre-pay when you ordered parts.
 
I have also heard that they are trying to buy Shearer Equipment to the north of me..I am not sure how many stores are involved with that company.
 
Just read an interesting book on this sort of thing and more. Titled "The Makers and Takers", by Rana Foroorhar (2016). Don't know whether to call it good, or bad. Extremely well written and very readable, but I was either angry, or falling into depression over the revelations. Either way it was an eye-opener. I would bet that if enough of the people who always end up bearing the brunt of the fallout when things blow up as they did in 2008 knew the reality, they'd bring the guillotine out of storage!
 
Deere is getting more like cat. The multi-franchise cat dealer around me is advertising heavily on tv, radio,and pop up ads on the computer,selling skid steers,mini x's, larger equipment and attachments. All their ads end by saying "territory restrictions apply" I guess if you want some new yellow iron, you deal with the local franchise dealer if you want after sale service or repairs. I can see deere following suite... the local 60 store mega dealership sets the price, with their "take it or leave it" attitude. So if you go out of "territory" and save $20,000 on a new $300,000 tractor, they will cover the warranty work,and repairs, but will stick it to you for the 180 mile round trip service call since you bought "out of territory"
 
MSM: JD does a more insidious thing to stop you from buying form another dealership. List and dealer cost do not have much meaning. It is all in the sales programs in effect for the piece of equipment. So what JD does is make certain discounts only be for customers in that dealer's "area of responsibility" or prior customers. So the odds of finding a new piece of equipment costing a lot less away form home is rare unless there is a trade-in effect the trade price.

I ran into this when I was shopping for a skid steer loader years ago. JD had came out with a lot better cab. I had been running Bobcat skid steers. I wanted a JD 332. I was buying straight out. I found one down in IL that had been on a dealer's lot for over a year. They wanted to sell it pretty bad. I went to pick it up and they could not give me the price quoted because JD would not honor the cash discount of $3500 since I was buying out of my area. I stopped on the way home and bought a low houred Bobcat 873. At that time the JD skid steers had a much more limited dealership list than the Ag equipment. They have brought out some newer JD models for us to try. I tell them to knock the $3500 off like they should have back then and I might buy one. LOL
 
Our local dealership was bought out by ag-pro a few years ago and it went down hill. If it wasn't for the store manager being a local guy it would probably be worse. But I guess it is part of the changing times.
 
I know you Bruce. I am in Oakway and retired from Clemson 17 years ago. I think you have been to our place years ago. I know where you are off 187 if you are still there.
Richard
 
Ag-Pro came thru and bought out all the dealerships in central Tx. They kept the same personnel in the location I deal with. The only thing that is noticeable is the price drop on their tractors. Their 40-75 hp. tractors have been marked WAY down.
 
I said almost the exact same thing last week!

Years ago, in Virginia, there were two Caterpillar dealerships owned by brothers named Carter. Eastern VA was covered by VA Tractor, and Western VA was covered by Carter Machinery. The brother that owned VA Tractor became terminally ill, and wanted to sell to his brother. Cat wanted it for a corporate owned store, offered a fraction of what it was worth, wouldn't approve the sale to anyone else. A lawsuit ensued, Cat lost, and ended up buying BOTH brothers out! They got what they wanted, but had to pay through the nose to get it!

Somebody needs to put these bid corporations in their place. They are creating monopolies, for the sole purpose of suppresing competition, in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act. I wonder what would hair a bunch of Agricultural Organizations, such as the American Farm Bureau Federation petitioned the Justice Department to investigate. Probably not much. Those folks in DC are too busy looking for boogie men! They don't have time to do their jobs!
 
They bought up most of the south Texas dealerships a few years ago. Last I heard was 12-15 stores. Parts wise I think they are ok but there is no competition on new equipment. My son buys a lot of parts from them for his mechanic business. Tony
 
Ag-Pro is all over Georgia, don't care for them myself, guess its the wave of the future
 
I know that Harley Davidson was pulling the same "territory" stunt as John Deere in the past. My buddy, who grew up around Mansfield, OH, and always dealt with a dealer in the area, had moved to Michigan. He went back to Mansfield and bought a new Harley, and a factory Harley guy called him up and chewed him a new ask hull. Terry told the guy to p up a rope, he was going to buy from whoever he wanted to. Terry couldn't believe what a jerk the guy was. This was probably 10 years ago, I don't know their current policy.
 
Shearer has 7 locations listed. This year they don't have any jd calendars. I don't think they ordered any last year either.
 
The company I work for has added Ag Pro to our list of dealers who sell our equipment. I get plenty of customer complaints about Ag Pro when trying to refer people to them as they are now the dealer in their area. Many of the parts people I've talked to from them are not impressive to say the least. Had some similar issues with the JD dealers we had before too.
JD Seller: You and I and several others are not liking the way John Deere dealers network is going ! They are not alone though as many other businesses are going this route.
 
Cummins did the same thing to Onan. When they bought Onan. Forced all the Onan people out. Destroyed the dealership net work. Tried to
make their own people generator mechanics.Now it is good luck getting help from them.
 
Never heard of them! In my area we have 5 jd dealerships, I don't know how many years ago but they all became one, Hudson River Tractor. I only have 1 piece of jd equipment, a 346 baler, Iv rebuilt a lot of things on it, whatever they dident stock they were able to get, Iv never had any problems with them, western NY has some big dealers too, I never did business with them but have driven by them. I worked at a outdoor power equipment place 10 years ago that sold jd lawn equipment, for some reason jd pulled out having us sell there equipment, I can't remember the reason,may have had something to do with the other consoladation.
 
Western NY is all Land Pro from the marriage of Zahm to Lakeland. Rumor has been for years that Deere wants one organization for all of NY and now the talk is one dealer for all of the NE. My glimmer of hope is that state attorney generals love running for higher offices so they no doubt are watching for huge price increases to take anti-trust action. Tough to prove when it is one dealer under the corporate thumb but these massive moves I hope would be easier to take action on.
 
I forgot about Lakeland, I don't get the country folks paper anymore, I was think of Cazenovia, I guess that's the trend make everything one.
 
MikeM JD does not want any one with common sense selling their products. LOL You have to drink the GREEN Kool-Aid daily and believe any BS corporate JD tells you. LOL

JD does not want any short line products sold by "their" dealers. So I do not know what your involved with but any time you fool with JD and most of the dealership chains, expect to get screwed over.
 
Car builders are, and have, done the same. Ford dealer down the road sold out to the Mercury dealer across the river, and then the Mercury dealer sold out to the big Ford dealer across the river. All in six months.
What I am surprised about is the JD Equipment dealer is still in business, and the JD Farm dealer is just 6 miles away, with mini excavators and skid loaders on the front row.
 
They took over local dealership here in northwest Georgia. Very few parts in stock. When ordering parts slow to get them into the store. Service department is slow on repairs.
 
(quoted from post at 13:11:12 12/09/18) Ag-Pro came thru and bought out all the dealerships in central Tx. They kept the same personnel in the location I deal with. The only thing that is noticeable is the price drop on their tractors. Their 40-75 hp. tractors have been marked WAY down.



Ewald Tractor has been slowly taking over Kubota dealers in central Texas. Looks like "mega dealers" are the wave of the future.
 
Nearby, we have probably the only independent JD dealer in MN. Family owned since 1947. Just announced they are dropping JD next June. My son has been wrenching there for over 20 years. Will be out of a job- gonna concentrate on just toys...Polaris, and a new snowmobile company. Says they can"t compete with JD stores that get better volume prices.
 
Hi,
Here in central Pa.Land Pro group just bought the 6 Valley Ag.stores. They now have around 20 stores there plans are to have 40/50 by the end of next year. A couple of the parts guy ask me if I was hiring,No I'm not

Marlin
 
John Deere defiantly give a big discount to high volume buys made by the larger Mega Dealers, and this makes it impossible for a little 1 or 2 store company's to compete..just another way Of Deere forcing the little guys out. John Deere is loosing it's customer Loyalty , I see it all around me here, and it don't seem to matter how many doughnuts they have in the parts room...
 
I don't want to mention our company. But I too am surprised Deere is letting any of their dealers sell other stuff.
 
There are other brands of farm equipment besides John Deere. Deere is just one brand, far from a monopoly. How one company runs its dealer network and franchises is their business.

How many full line farm equipment manufactures are still US owned? Farm equipment is now a global market and manufacturers are gearing up to compete globally.

$41 million sounds like a lot of money for one individual, but that is a drop in the bucket for any investment fund. That same $41 million would only buy 5500 acres of $7,500 per acre farmland, about 1/3 of one six mile square township. There are a lot of farms that run far more acres than that today. Farms are now using investor's money to fund expansion too.

US farms are also consolidating fast. What will the US farm situation look like in another 20 to 30 years? Probably the majority of production will come from large farms running 10,000s of acres and more, with a smaller remaining portion coming from one person weekend farms running 1,000 acres or less. How should manufactures structure themselves to service those MEGA-farms?

I don't think it is practical to restrict the maximum size of dealer networks anymore than it is practical to restrict the maximum size of farms to 160 or 320 acres, 25 dairy cows or one semi load of feeder cattle.
 

JD Equip. is our local dealer. I have a couple John Deere garden tractors and have only had limited contact with them. They have been here many years so it will have some effect on the community, maybe for better... or worse.
 
Richard great to talk to you yesterday. My cell number is 864-933-5073. It was just by chance you caught me in the house yesterday. Next time I head to Oakway I will give you a call.
 

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