John Deere’s Crumbs for Farmers (Second Request)

You know, obviously, one issue here could be just more competition from independent repair shops.

How many repair options are there for your typical farm? You know, how many, you know, h- how much competition is there for a dealer or repair options, either dealer repair or independent repair shops?

Yeah.

One of the things that's happened over the last couple of decades is Deere dealerships have started to, um, uh, m- uh, be, uh, get sold and are now larger chains.

Uh, so a deal- you know, used to be maybe a, a dealer owned one or two stores in, you know, this town and then the next one over.

Uh, and a farmer could go from one dealership owner to another, you know, without m- many miles in between.

But for example, in Montana, there is two John Deere dealers, maybe three.

Um, and so you, y- if you're in the middle of Montana, you only really have one dealership chain that you can go to.

And if you try to go to another dealership chain, um, people have been getting blocked, uh, and saying, "Oh, no, no, you're not part of our...

You, you haven't been assigned to us, uh, as a customer.

You belong to such and so chain." A- and we've got some very specific examples of people, um, who have tried to purchase a new piece of John Deere equipment from two different John Deere dealers, and one dealer saying, "Nope, can't buy it from me.

You have to buy it from the other one." So there really...

There's no way to get, if you will, a competitive price between John Deere dealers.

Um, and that's been, that's been a particularly, um, troublesome piece for pe- for some people who are trying to get some new equipment at a good price.

So there's collusion among the dealers.

What about, are there any independent repair shops? I mean, I know a lot of independent repair has gone away as, you know, technology has locked in the software for specific parts and vehicles and things like that.

Is that happening in the John Deere market?

Um, it, there are independents.

Uh, and they are crafty, capable people.

Uh, you know, not every repair is about electronic repair, and not every repair needs an electronic tool to repair it, but certainly a significant number do, and certainly the more costly repairs are electronically controlled.

Um, so, uh, you know, and I've talked to many of those guys.

Uh, [laughs] they are very skittish about w- what they do, how they do it, uh, 'cause they just don't want that cut off, uh, by John Deere.

So there are, there are repair guys around.

But as this, as these technologies come out, it becomes more and more of a specialty repair process, and there's an interesting parallel in the car market where you have a specialist in a kind of repair.

Let's call it brake, uh, brakes.