price of farming

i went to the friendly john deere dealer. got 2 boxes about 12x10x16 deep 2 large paper bags filled all with john deere parts. total amount is double the price i paid for my 91 ram 150 8 years ago.
went up the road 2 miles n got 1 little 3x4 box n from the nice new holland dealer it was $125.
brand dont matter prices are bad.
i say your friendly or nice dealer cause they are so nice when you buy something. come in to mention some machine isnt built rite for the job the friendly grows uglyy

The price of farming is why we exited beef last spring. Fuel x2 costs, same with fertilizer and barley. My income for raising them was going to stay the same.

I know all those places have considerable mark up, because at one time I worked at a Ford dealership in the service department.

Anyways, the last time I went to an implement dealer to pick up a couple of things, my bill was racked up to 3 or 4 hundred dollars. While there, I priced something (a wear item). Of course I knew they was going to shoot me a price that included a bunch of mark up. When they shot me the price, I asked if the price would be the same if I bought 18 of them (hinting at a volume discount). I got a big NOPE, SAME PRICE. I walked out with the 2 small things I went in there for, and reminding myself on the way out (that's why you don't come in here for parts unless you absolutely have to).

I know a place has got to keep the lights on, but gosh. Do you have to gouge a guy by the book 18 times, every single time, and all at the same time and on the same day?? I don't mind being guoged a little on a single item. But I sure don't need to be propped up in front of it, and having it pitched at me all day, like one of those automatic pitching machines that throws baseballs at you during batting practice. Because that's sure what it seems like when they won't give you a break. Just going to rip you off as much as we can. No matter how much of it you need, we'll use the opportunity.

One local dealer has quit inflating the list price for parts, but another still does it. There's no standard for it either. With some on line shopping the suggested list price for a part can usually be determined. But with this one dealer you never know whether it will be a 2%, 5%, 10%, or even more penalty on top of list price!

I am trying to avoid buying parts by hiring some work done by custom operator. All the custom operators are competing for business and prices are about the same. I let them invest the capital in equipment and buy the parts, and I just pay their bill. I take the cost of planting, fertilizer and spray application, harvesting and trucking, add them up and subtract the total from my crop sales price. And it still looks cheaper than owning the equipment and doing it myself

20 years ago I bought 3 super duty pickups for what 1 costs now. Fuel is 4-5 times. And I have been offered contracts with 2000 prices. I of course turn the project down. So dont think that farming has a monopoly on high input prices. My company talked to a local Ford dealer to order some new Super Duty pickups to replace our old high mileage ones. Guess what, everything is sold out until 2024 and they are not taking orders for 2024 yet. We are rapidly becoming a third world country.

My solution has been to keep running the older tractors and equipment and buy up broken parts machines of the same brands and models,not uncommon to pull off one needed part that would have cost far more new than the parts machine cost.Plus having the parts on hand.Still have to buy some new but not much.

I needed a part for my John Deere so I looked it up online. While I could find it cheaper at a out of state dealer my local dealer had the part in stock and I needed it today. So I decided to just go to the dealership on my way home from work.

To my surprise when I tried to buy the part over the counter it was more than the online price at this same dealership. When I asked about it they said that was the online price and refused to lower the counter price to match. I told them you can keep it then and walked out.

I went home and ordered the part online from the same dealership different location about 20 miles away and picked it up there for the online price.

While it was only a few dollars difference and I most likely spent more in gasoline and my time to travel to the other dealer location it was the principal of the matter to me.

While I might still buy things I have to have today from my local dealer if I can wait I order everything I need from out of state dealers.

I think one of the things we often forget is that the lineups at the cashier at a tractor or auto dealer parts counter isn't exactly like what you experience at Wally World or Costco. Not making excuses for them but just sayin' .....

Well, yes, parts are high, but relatively speaking, haven't they always been? I don't know your state of mind when you wrote that. It might be tongue in cheek, but without some perspective, some folks are going to take it wrong and think, once again, that us farmers have it rough.

Would you want to go back to the 70s? I remember one day in the spring, probably 1975 or so, I honestly had to make the conscious decision whether to buy three plow points of buy groceries. In 76, I saved all summer to buy a new pair of 15.5 38 tires. If I needed a pair of them today, I'd call the tire guy and have him come out to put them on. I wouldn't think any more about writing the check than I would about the wife going grocery shopping.

You can't just tell one side of the story. I remember being at an auction in the mid 70s. We were all standing around commiserating about how the price of gas had doubled to 60 cents a gallon. Somebody said it was supposed to be a dollar by the end of the year, I said I'd have to quit, there was no way I could farm if it went that high. We all know it did, but milk went up just as fast, so it covered it.

If anybody had told me at any time in my life, that it would ever cost me as much to plant a corn crop as it did last year, without telling me first what my income would be, I would have hung it up before I had to dump that much money in the ground, but, I made a lot selling cattle over the winter leading up to it. I wrote checks and paid for inputs just like every year, and all the big cattle checks from selling the rest of the year went right in the bank and piled up fast.

Compare that to just three years ago when everybody wants to use as a comparison. Gas at the pump dropped to a dollar five here in town for a short time. Big deal. Cattle prices got so low that for the first time in my memory, maybe for the first time since the New Deal in the 30s, the government cut checks to cattle producers. It wasn't enough to stick in your eye, but even the government could see that it was so bad, that it had to be done. It barely gave me two nickles to rub together, but at least it gave me two nickles.

So ya, we can always cherry pick facts and come up with things to complain about all in fun, but people can take it the wrong way if you don't throw in both sides of the equation for perspective.

John,
I needed a 3 inch idler pulley for my JD mower.
JD dealer wanted $30 for the plastic pulley.
Amazon wanted $10 for the same pulley except their pulley was metal.
Want to guess what pulley I bought?

Before I over pay for parts, I'll check out Amazon.

Sometimes Amazon is the only place I can find what I want.

Love free returns if what I buy doens't fit.

Redforlife, when we install privacy fences it's common for several neighbors in fancy garden home communities to do fencing all at one time. They always ask if we will cut them a deal because we are doing 3 in a row. I tell them no!! Why should I cut my price? I load all my tools up and go home every night. No reason to cut a deal. It's not saving me anything by staying in one place for a week. I can install 3 fences in 3 different neighborhoods or 3 in a row, takes the same time, cost me the same in labor, fuel, permits...... Some folks understand, some don't.

Today you can get an expensive 15.5 X 38 tire without getting a good one. A couple tractors here (not everyday workers) could each stand a new pair but I got the tire dealer to admit the brand XYZ tire is not going to last close to what the traditional brands will last.

You are paying for the convenience of getting the parts that day. For many busy farm operations time savings or reduced down time is more than worth that extra cost for the dealer parts. Carrying a large parts inventory is expensive for the dealers too.

Now-a-days we have the option to skip the middleman and do the work ourselves: search online, purchase the parts and have them shipped to your shop.

$6.50 corn, $14.00 soybeans, $70.00 hogs and $170 cattle led the inflation run up before other items were increasing. I hope farmers banked those early profits.

I'm gonna say that rrlund has got it figured out. Nice to have a voice of reason on here. ( There are a couple others, Bruce comes to mind)

There is a very interesting show on Amazon prime that is really an eye opening look at farming. It's about this beautiful farm in England and all the hoops farmers have to go thru to satisfy gov. regulations. Jeremy Clarkson is the owner & it's called Clarkson Farm. Entertaining & I think most of you would enjoy.

We can make the choice to complain constantly, be the little boy who cried wolf and not be taken seriously when times really are bad, or we can admit and appreciate the good times when we have them.

Same way with being excluded from polite society by letting ourselves be stereotyped as rude, crude and socially unexceptable just because of where we live and what we do for a living. I know how to be grateful when times are good just the same as I know how to act in social situations.

i buy some herb- fungicides and compare some prices i have several dealers that i call regular including one outstate the outstate one has a person there that is very helpful with info is owned corporate with one closer ,, call both and get different prices ,, product comes from the same warehouse ,, i still buy from the outstate one if he helps me with info ,, relationships still matter but gets harder these days

I get what your saying. But installing fence is a service. Even if your providing the materials, the installing part of it (the service) is really what your selling. What your business really is. Right? Otherwise you'd be telling people what you primarily do, is run a lumber yard.

Throwing service in on this for comparison, is kind of like comparing oranges to apples. Sure there is service also at the dealership. But they have a healthy mark up on that also.

Me and original poster are talking about over the counter, and out the door parts. No service at all, other than them stocking and selling the parts (running a parts department).

Think of it as you going to the big box stores and buying your 2X4's at discount prices, instead of just installing the fence. Or going to a small town lumber yard, and they are throwing you a deal because you are buying all of your supplies there. Think of it in terms of that, rather than what you charge for your labor.

Be kind of like somebody buying the materials from you to build a fence, but don't want you to actually build it. Just stop by your place some day, and pick up what they are going to need. You don't even have to go over to thier place. And they of course are paying you double the price of what the materials cost you for doing that. You'd say, heck ya, to doing that. Perhaps even do it for less than double. Wouldn't ya?? That's what I'm talking about.