A Plethora of Planter Options

The massive amount of customization options available can make it difficult to compare planter models with exactly the same features. As the seasonal market for planters opens up through May, deals can be found both at dealerships and at auction, especially if you’re willing to expand your search geography. 

Andy Campbell and Dave Mowitz explore not only planters, but also air seeders and seed tenders in this episode. Spring will be here before we know it!

Meet Andy Campbell

Andy Campbell is director of insights at Tractor Zoom. As a past engineer, professor, and entrepreneur, Campbell is passionate about bridging the gap between data and action for farmers, dealers, auctioneers, and ag lenders. He continues to help operate his family farm in Iowa.

Tractor Zoom was started in 2017 to help farmers and other decision makers have access to current equipment values and make data-driven decisions about heavy equipment.

Meet Dave Mowitz

Dave Mowitz worked at Successful Farming from 1982 to 2022, covering equipment trends for Successful Farming magazine, the Successful Farming TV show, and the Ageless Iron Almanac. Although recently retired, he continues to serve as a contributing editor and now podcast host.

Mowitz was raised on a family farm in Nebraksa, of which he is now a part-owner.

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Episode Highlights

• Planters have high holding costs for dealerships so many are willing to make deals or send units to auction if they haven’t sold off the lot by May. 
• If you’re getting into a new planter this year, don’t wait to set up and learn the technology, because that takes time and is changing quickly.
• Don’t be afraid to look at equipment from outside your local area – shipping is easier than ever and can help you find exactly the features you are looking for at a good price.
• There are literally thousands of configurations for today’s planters, from number of rows to row spacing to down pressure and more. That makes it difficult to compare apples to apples and difficult for dealerships to value trades.

Transcript

Please note, this transcript has not been edited.

Dave Mowitz

Hello, I’m Dave Mowitz with Successful Farming Magazine. And again, with me today is Andy Campbell of TractorZoom, the ultimate Tractor auction listing site, and really a data site in the United States. That was something new that’s happened. Well, relatively new with TractorZoom. You guys are now, you are compressing the data and providing trend analysis, aren’t you, online?

Andy Campbell

Right. Yeah, we above anything else are a data company that’s just helping people in the ag space make decisions faster. And so we work with a ton of dealers all across the country, farm credits, ag lending banks, and farmers just to take the data that revolves around the equipment just to get to decisions a whole lot faster, whether it’s automated workflows or as we’ll probably talk today, a ton of valuations, supply, what’s in the market, what’s on your lot, and then how do you make decisions based on that.

Dave Mowitz

So this is all accessible, TractorZoom.com, as well as all the listings. You have over a thousand dealers that now list with you on inventory. And then…

Andy Campbell (10:24.783)

Yes. Yes. Yeah, we have roughly about 85 % of the North American auction market where farmers can go there and it’s just an aggregation of all the available auctions as well as dealer listings. And so think we have over 1400 dealer locations that are all on TractorZoom.com. Yeah.

Dave Mowitz

Yeah, 1400. Well, let’s talk planters. It’s that time of year. If guys are looking and they’re not going to buy new, or they maybe just as soon add a second planter, which is what we’re seeing some guys do is add a second planter to get over the acres or they’re farming further and further away from home, they go for that second planter and they’re buying some late model planter, 1775, 1770 and T deer.

Andy Campbell (10:47.505)

Okay.

Andy Campbell (10:59.153)

Mm-hmm, right.

Dave Mowitz

24 rows, four rows are usually popular. The good news is that, well, good news, bad news. Inventories have, it looks like they’ve been drawn down at the end of last year.

Andy Campbell (11:27.889)

have. Yes. Yeah. So I guess it always depends on which side of the buying cycle you’re on. Whether you want the deal. Exactly. Yeah. So it’s, you know, the whole story for all the equipment for the past two years has been over supply. planters have been a little different. And whether it was the timing of the year, or just the nature of the planter themselves, but they didn’t have the the massive increase in supply on dealership lots.

Dave Mowitz

If you’re trading in, this is good news, right?

Andy Campbell (11:55.141)

that we saw with combines and then we were seeing with tractors and sprayers now. They did increase. You know, we’re talking into 22 to 23, about 30%. And then from 23 into 24, maybe about another 10 % on the supply increase. But that’s, you know, it’s nothing compared with what we saw. And the other thing that we’ve noticed, it’s been very different with planters, as opposed to other machines. dealers have been a little more judicious on what they’re accepting on trade ins. You know, yeah, they just they’re

Dave Mowitz

Really? More picky at what they want to take on.

Andy Campbell (12:24.591)

dealers have exactly. Yeah, it’s not easy for them to take any planter that a farmer might cherish and then find another farmer who values it just the same way. mean, with all of the the raw options, it’s hard to find that exact fit. And then with the higher cost and planters these days, then you’ve got a higher interest rate cost higher holding cost for those dealerships. So there’s just a ton more risk. And so what we actually saw last March, so this would have been March in 24,

we recorded the highest number ever a planter sold at auction in one month period. Now, whether that was due to the economic period of the time, or the dealers not taking some of those trade-ins, probably a combination of both, but yeah, that’s one markable data point that we found last March.

Dave Mowitz

Well it had been March 2, dealers are trying to get rid of inventory going into the planting season, knowing that after May, that’s just dead weight until a year go by.

Andy Campbell (13:19.897)

Right? They don’t. It is. Yeah, heavy seasonal type of machine to sell. And so yes, they’ll, you know, usually, the dealers will continue to mark things down up until that March, April time period, just because you’re right, if they can’t sell it by then, it’s very likely to sit around for another eight months.

Dave Mowitz

Well here we are in February, so it’s prime planting buying time and selling time too that will be tied into your trade in more than likely unless you’re expanding your fleet. Now’s the time to go at it. Don’t wait until April 1st, right?

Andy Campbell (13:43.471)

It is.

Andy Campbell (13:55.058)

if you’re looking for a planter, no, definitely do not. Plus, with all the new technology that’s on planners, if it’s a brand new to you planner, and it’s not just essentially a replacement, there’s going to be a lot of technology that needs to be set up. And so whether it’s a connectivity, whether it’s precision, row units, that it takes some time to get used to. And you’re going to want to have that all ironed out before you actually go to hit the field.

Dave Mowitz

This tells my age back in the day, 12-row planter was the same as the other 12-row planter down the road, same as the other one. Yeah, the accessorization and fitting of planters has made them so diverse out there. But you talked about the technology too. That’s a key aspect of the purchase of used planters, isn’t it? Yeah.

Andy Campbell (14:41.615)

It is it’s you know, when I look at use planners, we have a data scientist here on staff again, data company, it makes sense now. But with all of the auction data that we have on planners, he and I a couple years ago went down a path of trying to figure out what makes a planter valuable. And so we diced up every single planter that we had at auction. And then he used a little bit of AI to partition out which ones had bulk fill, which ones had liquid fertilizer, electric drive, what kind of downforce

Dave Mowitz

Mm-hmm.

Andy Campbell (15:11.203)

and then try to statistically reason out like, do some of these things make a difference? Or, you know, does some of it just kind of wash out and it’s really not statistically significant.

Dave Mowitz

Wow.

Dave Mowitz

Yeah. So it’s really a very specific piece of equipment when you’re going to look at it. But of course the cool thing, thanks to TractorZoom and the internet proceeding, was the fact that you can look far afield. Although transport gets to be a little dicey when you get into some planter sizes to get it on a bed. Yeah.

Andy Campbell (15:42.489)

It can be. Yeah. Yeah. Depending on how far you’re shipping it. I mean, you’re talking at least a few thousand dollars, maybe five, six, if you’re really going a significant ways across country. but a lot of people still do that if they can, you know, cause one of the things that we see in, we saw it back in 23 that the dealer premium, you know, what you can buy in a dealership lot versus what you can buy at auction. That’ll sit a lot of times around 20 % for a lot of types of machines. and then in 23, it was, you know, we are seeing some

Dave Mowitz

Right.

Dave Mowitz

Exactly.

Andy Campbell (16:11.185)

some models that were like that 30 % difference starting to together, but it’s grown even since then. And again, it’s hard when you put a lot of this extra value in a machine on pucks or like, you know, row upgrades, and you can’t necessarily get that back out of it, trading it into a dealer lot, they can just kind of pay you for the bare bones, what model it is, what row length. So then a lot of people will send that to auction.

Dave Mowitz

Really?

Andy Campbell (16:38.541)

And it just it creates a wider gap between the price at auction versus the price at dealer. So if you do find something that’s, you know, that fits your bill, it can pay to just, you know, call up a logistics company and have it shipped.

Dave Mowitz

have a ship then.

Yeah. Well, and it’s so much easier today than it was 10 years ago, than it was 20 years ago. There are people that, thanks to all the interstate commerce with used equipment now, used farm machinery, I think there’s far more haulers that are used to hauling farm machinery than used to be. So, or at least it seems from the anecdotal information I’m getting from companies like Big Iron and Sullivan, you know, the combination there and other people that…

interstate transport it’s easier to find haulers than it used to be. So, asking, that’s right, now asking prices have dipped. Is that what you’re hearing? That’s what I’ve heard.

Andy Campbell (17:26.447)

It is, yep, yep. And you have the buyer assurance.

you get in video.

Andy Campbell (17:35.953)

Yes, yes. So what we’ve seen in some recent analysis that we did is that the the auction, the strike price has dropped a little bit. Not a ton, but with other machines as well. A lot of this is driven by supply, oversupply, you know, things able to meet the demand. And because there hasn’t been an abundance of oversupply, we’ve seen the auction prices drop a little bit.

Dave Mowitz

Really?

Andy Campbell (18:04.027)

But again, not to the level that we’ve seen with rural crop tractors or combines last year.

Dave Mowitz

So tell me, unless it’s a dealer dispersal at auction, and we’re seeing a fair amount of that, are most late model planters going off dealer’s lots as opposed to auction? Or does it make any difference?

Andy Campbell (18:15.215)

Mm-hmm.

Andy Campbell (18:27.025)

You do. No, no, you still see, mean, most late model planners are going to be on the dealership lots. And so when we look at that, I mean, I just did a quick analysis on, um, you know, what’s sitting out on dealer lots right now. Uh, so, you know, deer deer still does dominate a lot of the market. Um, and they’ve got some, Oh, what are some of the models? mean, 1775, uh,

in 1770s, the DB 60s. Those are kind of dominating the dealer lots.

Dave Mowitz

Right, DB 60s. Those are the, right there is, I remember I went to machinefinder.com, Deere’s dealer site. That’s probably, those three models describes easily 80 % of the planters available in dealer slots today. That Deere listed. Late model, I’m sorry, not early, but say since 2022. That I looked at, fact, the 24 rows, 1775NTs,

Andy Campbell (19:12.431)

Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Mowitz

There were 225 that were available on dealer slots they have this morning and DB’s DB 60s the most common 79 were available. That’s more of a western thing but That’s lower numbers than we used to experience like three four years ago So they are keeping current then I’ve noticed we were running higher inventories like five years ago than we are now but so

Andy Campbell (19:52.721)

Yeah.

Dave Mowitz

Like I mentioned before asking prices auction prices are generally about the state about the same dropped a little bit

Andy Campbell (20:01.391)

The the the dealer list price. the asking price that it that has actually gone up just slightly. And you’ll see that year in year out. I mean, we saw that a ton in 22 and 23. Right. And so so you’ve got essentially a price drag with new models that come out the the new the cost of the new machine that will actually drag up. It’s like late model machines, machines that are one years old.

Dave Mowitz

Oh it has.

yeah, pre-planting. Right.

Andy Campbell (20:28.269)

you kind of have to price line those from a brand new machine, one year old machine and two year old machine have to just be slightly less but but then, you know, that high cost of a new machine kind of drags up a little bit, the relative cost of a one year old machine or a two year old machine. And so we actually see the average price on dealership lots for those really late model machines, especially ones with electric drive. We’re seeing that, you know, come up just slightly or at least stay steady, they’re not dropping as much

auction prices are falling. Just like I said, maybe about 10 % year over year, just not the precipitous drop that we saw last year with combines.

Dave Mowitz

Taking a chance of what you’d find at auction. Older machines in the marketplace, that’s almost a different market entirely by itself. Older, smaller planters. How do you get a feel for that?

Andy Campbell (21:19.853)

is. Yeah. So again, valuing any kind of planner is a bear just because like I said, you’ve got so many moving parts and variables. I was actually just talking to a really sharp guy at a case dealer up in the Dakotas and he was on the ground floor at case with the air seaters. And again, little different than the planners, but still he said that he ran numbers at one point in time and figured out that there was a potential

Dave Mowitz

Hahaha!

Dave Mowitz

Mm-hmm.

Dave Mowitz

Mm-hmm.

Andy Campbell (21:48.699)

for 50,000 different permutations of air cedars that were out there with all the different of air cedars. Right? Yep. But still with planters, I mean, you just have to do some quick math and say, okay, how many different rows can you have? What kind of spacing can you have with your rows? Now send it through your drives, your down pressures, closing units, trash whippers. you’re probably not far off of 50,000 different permutations there as well. Liquid fertilizer bulk fill.

Dave Mowitz

Air seeders, not roll planters.

Dave Mowitz

Yeah. Yeah.

Andy Campbell (22:18.253)

So to find a comparable unit that just is just like one versus the other for some of these new model planners, it’s tough. So you kind of have to generalize and statistically group things together to figure out what is happening. And so with some of these older planners, though, you know, if it doesn’t have electric drive on it, which again, a lot of the older planners do not, we are seeing those prices come down. The one anomaly that we saw

started to see this actually back in the pandemic and especially when the supply chain got tight post pandemic was 12 row planters were becoming more popular. Yeah, and again, I don’t have an answer. Possibly the small farms people wants things that they can work on. And that wasn’t just old model planters, people wanted they’re willing to pay for electric drives.

Dave Mowitz

Really? 12 row? Mid-sized to small farms? Well…

Andy Campbell (23:15.313)

they’re willing to pay for the precision capabilities on smaller planters. I mean, if you go from a 12 to a 24 row, now you’re doubling the number of drives, you’re doubling a lot of the expensive stuff. Like, they were fine having a smaller planter, as long as they knew they could put the seed in the ground, just how they wanted it. And, and they didn’t need to. Exactly. Yeah, the accuracy was better probably than just the speed of coverage. At least that’s the assumption that we’re making off the data.

Dave Mowitz

Yeah, as long as it offered the accuracy that was there then.

Dave Mowitz

But there are those spots in the country we know, certainly even outside of the Midwest, but even within the Midwest where 12-row planters are still to a certain size farm, under 1,000 acres, around 1,000 acres, 12-row planters, plenty to get stuff done.

Andy Campbell (24:03.791)

Right, right. And I was talking to one of my good dealer friends out in Pennsylvania at Hoover out there. And he was just talking about the differences in the fields, which again, I take for granted living here in Iowa, that everything’s one mile square and flat. And he’s like, so many of the fields just have fingers of trees and everything. And you need to curl in and out of it. And every time you curl that precision helps if you have a variable drive. So then you’re not

Dave Mowitz

yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Andy Campbell (24:31.771)

planning too tight or spacing too large, depend on, you know, your radius and your access there. So he was just touting like, you know, outside of the flat, you know, 80 acre field mentality that you have in Iowa. He’s like there, there’s a huge need for these good quality 12 row planters.

Dave Mowitz

Well, there’s a problem there, isn’t there? Because a lot of 12-roll planters have went south across the border, haven’t they? I mean, they were, at one time, extremely popular in Mexico. They would come up here and snag them. And you’d see them kind of going for a bit of a premium at auction as Hispanic buyers were snapping them up. Because that was the sweet spot of planters from Mexico. They went from six and just almost skipped over eight and went right to 12. And now I understand even 24-roll.

planters begin to beg for the larger farms in that area. So they’re always lurking around the auctions, aren’t they, to pick up good used iron?

Andy Campbell (25:29.406)

That’s what we’ve heard from auctioneers. I’ve never talked to anybody that’s exporting them directly there, but that does make sense.

Dave Mowitz

Yeah, it does. Yeah. Hey, you brought it up. This is on you. did air drills. Fill me in because I am just, it’s been a while since I’ve looked at air drills and what’s going on there. You have these air drills that are highly specialized because of the permeations of how they can be equipped. We’re still looking at high planes being the primary market of that oror we see the southeast with soybeans with air drills. Okay.

Andy Campbell (25:39.48)

Yeah.

Andy Campbell (26:06.853)

No. So I actually ran a heat map of all of the most popular air cedars. the John Deere’s 1890s, very popular across the United States. So I just took that model within our Tractor Zoom database and I threw a heat map up there. The two darkest states are North Dakota and Kansas, but essentially it’s a solid, my heat map is blue because it’s Tractor Zoom, but it is stacked from Texas.

to North Dakota, and all blue, and you go out barely into Missouri, Colorado, Montana, of course, a little bit in Minnesota, and then maybe a little bit up the Ohio River Valley. But I mean, it is it’s right, it’s weak country. It’s just right up and down that belt. Right.

Dave Mowitz

Mm-hmm.

When it comes to air cedars, that’s the sweet spot.

And all the way up in the Canada for that matter. And by the way, there’s no… Sometime we need to talk about or shouldn’t talk about that. Is when you get far enough north, the guys that are buying in Canada and vice versa as they play the markets as to what’s available. We should spend a little time about that because there’s opportunities going across the border.

Andy Campbell (27:17.193)

there can be again, it depends on if you’re the buyer, the seller, and the essentially the trade of, you know, the Canadian versus the US currency. That really makes a huge difference.

Dave Mowitz

makes a huge difference. You see, in that time when it’s in favor of the dollar, it always was fun to go to the Steffas auctions up in Fargo and see all the Canadians coming down and buying equipment, starting hauling it home and vice versa the other way around, especially when it came to tractors. So I can’t remember the port of entries at Grand Forks or north of there, and there’d be these line of tractors going across from a big Steffas auction.

Andy Campbell (27:40.228)

Yep. Coming up.

Mm-hmm.

Dave Mowitz

going home, you know, towards Winnipeg when that was that way. anyway, air drills, the marketplace is fairly flat. It sounds like not much difference.

Andy Campbell (28:08.273)

Yeah. Yeah. That right. It actually, when I looked at planters versus air seeders, I had to double check that I had my toggle on, right? Because the supply change year over year, pretty much the same. And so, yeah, I mean, they have kind of a tight allocation. One of the big things with air seeders are, you know, you’re selling into, you know, wheat farmers, right? And so from a commodity standpoint, it’s not as profitable as corn. It’s still highly volatile.

Dave Mowitz

Dead on the same.

Andy Campbell (28:37.713)

And so you still have a ton of the risk, less of the reward. And so you don’t have and didn’t have the huge shoot up in potential profitability. And really ever since that spike early in the Ukraine war, wheat prices have continued to fall. And so from an air cedar standpoint, there’s just not a ton of profitability out there to, you know, engender wide market swings.

Dave Mowitz

Not that much inventory. Yeah.

Dave Mowitz

No, it’s been that, yeah, the small grains market has been so flat for that reason. I’m guessing you just don’t see air drills sitting on dealers’ lots for starters. And even when you look at some of the auctions, there’s not that many of them.

Andy Campbell (29:20.625)

Yeah, the volume just isn’t isn’t quite there. You do see some sitting on dealer lots in certain areas. So again, you go up to the Dakotas and you’ll see some that are sitting up there and some of those suckers are expensive. I mean, they’re they’re massive behemoths. But you can easily you can find an air cedar followed by a cart 60 foot in length for $800,000. Now not many operations can use those, but there are a few.

Dave Mowitz

Yeah. I ran across one of those a couple years at auction. was just dumbfounded because I hadn’t tracked air cedars for a long time. And then I came across that one. I thought, is combine prices. It’s more than combine prices, but they’re quite a machine. And they cover a lot of acres in a big, hurry. Yeah.

Andy Campbell (29:56.741)

Mm-hmm. Right. Mm-hmm.

Andy Campbell (30:05.463)

can. But again, it’s helpful if you’re up in the Dakotas, if you’re in Canada, if you’re in Montana, you’ve got a lot of flat ground that you can cover and that you need to cover.

Dave Mowitz

So do you ever look, and I’m putting you on the spot here, and we can edit this out since this isn’t live, supporting equipment, seed tenders, do you ever have a feel for that? Because when I’ve looked at it several times in the magazine, it was a tough thing to ever figure out a trend. I don’t know if guys were just buying them then en masse, then being two, three years ago and holding onto them for so long.

Andy Campbell (30:17.393)

Mm-hmm.

Andy Campbell (30:24.763)

Hmm. yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Dave Mowitz

when it came to the used ones.

Andy Campbell (30:47.025)

You actually will get people that will trade in seed tenders. So I actually just did a recent analysis on seed tenders and the biggest determinant in price is going to be your auger length. And so you can go from a typical auger length of maybe like 18 feet to an XL, which will break, you know, essentially three extra feet. And so if you upgrade planters, you depending on how the new planter is structured, you almost need

Dave Mowitz

Yeah.

Andy Campbell (31:15.387)

to upgrade your seat tender, just have that extra length to reach the center fill. So that’ll be one thing that is an automatic you need to upgrade just so you can actually be able to utilize it. Then after you get off that, the the companies, whether it was just by innovation or strategic, you know, brilliance on their part, they’ve got a lot of bells and whistles. And so essentially, it’s the remote what

Dave Mowitz

Andy, is there anything in agriculture that doesn’t have bells and whistles with it? The accessorization of even ATVs is stunning. Anyway, seed tenders got accessorized.

Andy Campbell (31:47.313)

I right.

Andy Campbell (31:51.543)

it. That is it. Yep. See tenders they do they’re all blinged out now. So you’ve got essentially a remote that could be wired or now it’s remote completely remote control. And how many functions does it have on it? And so roll tarp, you know, opening the great talc, can you add in talc extra as a different compartment and

When you think about it from a functionality standpoint, though a lot of it does make sense that if you’ve upgraded a planter to be precision with the bulk fill, one person can plant and one person can cover a ton of acres without really having to be serviced. Where back in the old days, you know, I was driving the pickup with bags of seed to fill up my dad at the end of the rows. And as the farmers aged, I was the seed tender, I have gotten replaced.

Dave Mowitz

back then Andy you were the seed tender by the way as as I was too so

Andy Campbell (32:46.607)

Yes, and chasing those bags in the wind and I’m fine being replaced.

Dave Mowitz

Did you ever have to fill feardan boxes or insecticide boxes in the wind? I grew up in Nebraska. I still have. I walk into a shed with feardan, if you can find it anymore, my eyes will dilate because I got so much of it in the wind I now have a reaction to the substance. Anyway, I deviated from…

Andy Campbell (32:54.913)

yes.

Andy Campbell (33:07.803)

Mm-hmm.

Dave Mowitz

if they go up a plant or they’re going to probably get a better tender.

Andy Campbell (33:19.281)

Correct. Yeah, especially again, if it’s a larger planner, you’ve got to be able to reach the center fill. And so a lot of times that’ll just necessitate an extra or a longer logger. You also can go wider on the auger. So most augers might be running like a six inch belt in there. Well, if you go up to an eight inch belt, it actually almost doubles the capacity of the unload speed. And so then again, you’re just planting faster, you’re unloading faster, less

Dave Mowitz

Right.

Andy Campbell (33:48.599)

know, sit time at the ends, which again with planting windows now, if you’ve already spent the money to have a faster planner, why not toss in an extra 10 to $15,000 and get a slightly faster seed tender. So you can see how that mentality works for a lot of people on on upgrading that but but really back to the remotes. You know, if you’re a single person planting, and you don’t have to climb up to the top of the seed tender, roll a tarp back over

unroll it, open the grate at the bottom. And also, depending on you know, your age, can you really crank a wheel? Can you climb a ladder? Can you roll a tarp? Or, you know, can you just simply use a remote? And now all of a sudden, you don’t have any physical limitations to planting. You’re certainly not carrying a 50 pound bag anymore. So take away the other Yes.

Dave Mowitz

And again, speed, it’s all about speed and those remotes can actually cut enough time and refill that it makes a big, big difference then.

Andy Campbell (34:45.455)

Yeah. Yeah. So with that, mean, there are certainly brands out there that dominate the C tender market. You know what we actually see at auction, and I’m probably going to butcher their name. I live in Dutch country and it looks like a Dutch name, but freezing, freezing. Yeah. So that’s actually the most prolific brand that we see still at auction, even though Meridian bought them back, maybe rebranded back in

Dave Mowitz

yeah, freezing. Yes.

Dave Mowitz

wait, it’s been quite a while, right?

Andy Campbell (35:15.153)

2007, right, but we still see mostly freezing brands at auction, and then followed by unreferred, then Meridian, of course, we’ll see some J &M’s convoys. So yeah.

Dave Mowitz

assortment of other manufacturers. Are they showing up at auction? Is that the primary source of the dispersal of used tenders? They don’t go back to dealer’s lot that often, do they? they can’t if they’re really dolled up.

Andy Campbell (35:43.739)

they they can. But again, like, yeah, yeah, they can. But a lot of times, especially with other short line things, what we tend to see is they’ll just go straight to auction, at least more so than what you would with a, you know, tractor combine sprayer. Yeah, we see plenty of those at auction. I think of all of our auction data, I have 31 mil at tractors. I suppose not me. But tractors got $31 million in auction data on

close to 3000 seed tenders in our database. So there’s there’s a fair amount out there. What’s that?

Dave Mowitz

Good gravy. the numbers have come up. Yeah, the last time I did an analysis two, three years ago, it wasn’t near that number then. Of course, it was a different time then. I’m saying two, three years ago was a different time, but the machinery industry has gone through a lot of fluctuations, hasn’t it? There is no norm, is there? Are we reaching one these days?

Andy Campbell (36:37.262)

It has.

I think we’re reaching a new normal for sure. But it makes it so hard to say, well, hey, compared to last year, because last year was not normal. And two years, three years before that was not normal. So I’m having to compare things to 2018, which then all of a sudden, that’s a lifetime ago. So yes, there’s there’s most things are not normal. But when you take the data into consideration and kind of flatten things out for anomalies,

Dave Mowitz

No!

Andy Campbell (37:07.567)

You do see some patterns like with seed tenders. We’re just talking about. There’s like there’s a definite pattern on seed tenders of when to buy and when to sell, which you don’t always get with tractors.

Dave Mowitz

there is, so it’s not like planters. You gotta get them bought or sold by March or April.

Andy Campbell (37:23.075)

Yeah, yeah. Well, with with seed tenders, you if you’re going to sell them, usually February, March, those your two highest, at auction, those will bring the highest prices. But you just wait a few months and you go to July, almost always and I looked through the 10 most popular models. And the bottom for each one of those models almost always hit in July.

Dave Mowitz

Golly, it’s like corn prices. The summer doldrums. But you can understand why. mean, nobody’s looking. It’s still one of those seasonal products. Tractors and combines, as you and I have talked about before, they’re no longer really seasonal, are they? Yeah, there’s some spikes with combines, but certainly not tractors.

Andy Campbell (37:49.497)

Right, right. Exactly. Yes. Yep. No one to hold no one to sell.

Right. Exactly.

Andy Campbell (38:04.049)

Rip. Yeah, but with tractors, yeah, right. Most of the seasonality is taken out of it for the most part.

Dave Mowitz

Right. Well, and that was that started with new when we saw so much pre-ordering taking place or planting we’d get done and you’d order your next tractor and planters were that way as well. I have to ask, is there one piece of air drills, air seeders, I’m sorry, grow planters, seed tenders, what is the best deal out there right now? Are there deals?

Andy Campbell (38:38.085)

Hmm. that’s a question.

Dave Mowitz

Or is it still pretty tight little market? It’d be tough to say, boy, you better buy up your seed tender this year.

Andy Campbell (38:43.249)

Mm-hmm.

Andy Campbell (38:48.401)

You know, if seed tenders is hard, just like I said, with wheat being a large commodity, you just don’t have the fluctuations on seed tenders. So if I’m going to give you a deal or something, it’s not going to be on seed tenders just because I don’t think that you’re going to find that out there. I will say on our statistical analysis that we did of all the planters that we had, know, a few of the things that were surprising to me is bulk fill.

Dave Mowitz

brought more than planters without bulk fill. And that’s not the surprising part. But I mean, statistically, it showed it brought considerably more, you know, 30 to 40 % more for planters that had bulk fill versus ones that didn’t. And again, a lot of planters that have bulk fill are just, you know, they’re more likely going to be electric drives. And, you know, they’re going to be more advanced, but liquid fertilizer was not that way. So didn’t make any difference.

Andy Campbell (39:44.943)

we did the same analysis across all of our planters and liquid fertilizer just looks like a mess like the the ones with liquid fertilizer versus the ones planters without just it kind of blends into the middle and there’s no distinguishable one is worth more than the other.

Dave Mowitz

Well, that’s interesting because typically a farmer will make a major decision to have liquid fertilizer in a planter. They’re going to want to have liquid fertilizer in a planter in the future with the new one or a used one they’re buying. It also involves investment for openers to go on the planter as well. would think that there would be pretty, yeah, I think that always fetch a higher price for the planter that’s equipped with liquid fertilizer, but you’re not seeing that.

Andy Campbell (40:07.536)

Right.

Andy Campbell (40:27.557)

right. And, and to note this is auction data. So maybe what would the initial person valued is not, you know, valued by the auction buyer, possibly because of those extra costs liquid fertilizer also. Exactly. Exactly. And and all the other, you know, pieces that go along with it, it does add a lot of weight under the center. But I don’t know all the reasons. But that was one of our big findings that on auction on the resale.

Dave Mowitz

Yeah. He’s going to take it off after he buys that planter because he doesn’t want to have it on there.

Andy Campbell (40:56.997)

the liquid fertilizer did not show any kind of extra value.

Dave Mowitz

Do as well.

George, how are we doing on time? About 20 minutes in. We’re 20 minutes in? Other planting equipment? I’m trying to think. We’ve done seed tenders. did you get a chance to pick out a price buster or a great deal or anything like that that sold recently on market? We could deal with that. Talk a little bit about that. Like the price buster, the one that sold for too much.

Andy Campbell (41:33.061)

Yes. So…

Dave Mowitz

So I’ll do like a little, just say, so Andy, did you come across a Price Buster recently?

Andy Campbell (41:40.561)

Okay, well, you got to give me a second here while my database uploads because I actually had our business analyst build me a special sheet for this. Now. Yeah, well, whether or not

Dave Mowitz

Okay.

Dave Mowitz

Oh, no kidding. While you’re bringing it up, I’ll talk about mine. So I found a 2013 DB120, big planter, yeah, 48 row, 30 on western Nebraska. Sold for, now it’s a 2013, had 13, 14,000 acres on it, and sold for $269,000. And yeah.

Andy Campbell (41:54.448)

Yes.

Andy Campbell (41:57.881)

OK, big, yeah, very big.

Dave Mowitz

There was another guy that wanted himself a 48-row planter pretty badly to have gone out of his way. That would be, first of all, kind of fun to transport.

Andy Campbell (42:27.515)

Yeah.

Dave Mowitz

unless you’re taking it down the road and you were, but for over a quarter million dollars. And it was pretty plain Jane. wasn’t, electric. It was a 2013, oh, I should have checked to see if it was electric drive or not. I didn’t get the stats on it. But that was at an auction. I think that was, oh, that was a big iron auction that that sold. That seemed a little high to me. Am I wrong?

Andy Campbell (42:43.427)

I it had to be.

Andy Campbell (42:53.329)

It definitely seems high. said, how much did they go for?

Dave Mowitz

Yeah.

269,000.

Andy Campbell (43:00.443)

for how many rows?

Dave Mowitz

Uh, 48 row 30. Yeah. lot of rows, but it had 15,000 acres on it. So you’re getting into a major rebuild. We’re talking about double disc openers, depth gauge wheels, packer wheels, um, a lot of wear and tear on the, uh, pivot points. That’s probably elongating. You might have to replace some parallel linkage in there. Um, of course, I don’t know. couldn’t.

Andy Campbell (43:05.083)

Yeah?

Andy Campbell (43:12.624)

Yes.

Dave Mowitz

I should have looked, checked to see what it was going for. But that may have been just one of those things where another large farmer in the area wanted to have another 48-row planter. Yeah, that was a DB 120 that sold. So I can kind of see.

Andy Campbell (43:42.374)

Right.

Andy Campbell (43:48.913)

You know, the, the one thing on that, doesn’t surprise me a ton is I’ve seen a couple pair of those that were on dealer lots here in Iowa, that were retailing for half a million. And so again, they didn’t have those acreages on them, but from a mentality standpoint, if you’re thinking I can buy this for half at auction, what I could get at retail again, not an exact comparable, but I could see how somebody might start to justify that.

Dave Mowitz

really?

Dave Mowitz

Yeah, a lily.

Andy Campbell (44:18.33)

I’m getting a deal.

Dave Mowitz

Oh, I can see. Yeah, I agree with you. If it were 20, 20 or 21, 22, 23. But you know that I haven’t checked on, I haven’t run the prices of a rebuild on a row unit. But boy, you can go through a thousand bucks, 2,000 bucks a row fast in just mechanical bits and pieces, not getting into anything outside of that. So.

Andy Campbell (44:38.161)

easily. Right.

Andy Campbell (44:44.271)

Yeah, yeah, if you’re going electrical on an exact merge, any kind of precision type, you could be looking at five on a row rebuild. So

Dave Mowitz

Yeah. yeah. So on this planter, if he’s in a rebuild with that many acres, of course, you know, 48 rows, that many acres, the row unit isn’t going over as many acres as it would be. always remember Vern Hoffman at NDSU North Dakota State University said, Dave, you always got to look at the size of the planter and realize that row unit. It may be going in for 5,000 acres as a 24 row. It’s not as much as if it were 12 row, the row units go over.

Andy Campbell (45:19.259)

Right.

Dave Mowitz

farm or land. But even then, I bet they’re looking at a $50,000 to $75,000 bill to bring that planter up to snuff, and accuracy is key. anyway, did you run across the price buster?

Andy Campbell (45:29.883)

Yes.

Andy Campbell (45:34.129)

Yeah, so when I look at, just pulled up our Tractor Zoom Pro database, which our dealers use, and I looked at the planners that sold within the past year, and for the highest price. The funny thing is the first two are 36 rows before I even get to like a 47 row. again, yeah, so but it’s the details on the row. So I mean, these are all exact emerge. But it’s

Dave Mowitz

Mm-hmm.

Dave Mowitz

36.

Andy Campbell (46:03.119)

You can easily have a, you know, my fourth highest one is a 24 row planner that just sold here in December. So less than two months ago, 24 row beat out many 36, you know, 48 row planners. so it just kind of depends on what materials they have on there.

Dave Mowitz

Well, but the 24 rows are, I mean 36th row are a little unusual in some regards as opposed to the 24, the tried and true.

Andy Campbell (46:27.472)

Right.

Correct. Yeah, the 24 and this is a DB 60, which it, if I’m going to have to pick though, it is, this was sold December 10th up in Minnesota, this DB 60 24 row. And again, the reason why I’m picking it is because we have a DB 60 on our farm that I would pray would go for a $375,000. I don’t, I don’t think it’s going to, but just to give you an idea of what

Dave Mowitz

Mm-hmm.

Dave Mowitz

yeah.

Dave Mowitz

No.

Andy Campbell (46:59.109)

row of the value on this thing. 24 row DB 60. It only had one year planting on it. So it’s a 20, 20, 23. But it’s Yeah, when I look at everything it’s got it, the big thing is the electric drive exact emerge on it. It’s got some other nice things like fancy copperhead spiked closing wheels. It does have that liquid fertilizer piece, which we kind of talked about.

could or could not add value. But yeah, it’s, it’s really when you’re looking at what’s going to drive the most value, it’s that electric drive and then the precision exact emerge piece on there.

Dave Mowitz

Now would you consider that they paid too much for it or was that a great deal that they got?

Andy Campbell (47:47.841)

I think the seller got a great deal.

Dave Mowitz

I think so too for the price. I did find a great deal. This was a 2018 1775. is 24 row 30. That’s the standard planter anymore with fertilizer. It was loaded. I mean it you could go on and that sold it did have 15,000 acres on it. Again, cost to rebuild and you’re gonna buy a planter like that. You’re gonna rebuild.

Andy Campbell (47:53.626)

Yes.

Dave Mowitz

350 hours showing, it was $126,000 in Kansas. That’s not bad if you’re medium-sized farmer and want to get up into a 24-hour row of 30 with exact emerge. That was a good deal, I think.

Andy Campbell (48:27.654)

No.

Andy Campbell (48:36.251)

Right? Yeah. Right. Yeah. If you’ve got an electric drive on that and you’re getting it for that price.

Dave Mowitz

You’re getting into the technology now pretty reasonably, right?

Andy Campbell (48:47.089)

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And I’ve, mean, I can go through and find a couple other ones that, um, that are close. Another 1775 it’s a 2015, but it does have an electric drive and it only went for 92,000. Uh, yeah. 28,000 acres. So you’ve got, so only 92,000 sold in Bridgewater, Iowa, but yeah, that’s not bad. But again,

Dave Mowitz

Whoa, seriously?

Dave Mowitz

Only 20

There we go. That’s the great deal so far.

Andy Campbell (49:15.569)

28,000 acres on this thing, but

Dave Mowitz

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. More rebuild. Well, it all depends. If you’re, if you don’t have anything better to do during the winter, you buy it in December, you know, and then you can, you can ask for parts for Christmas presents, right? From your relatives. I need 20, I need 24 furrow openers for Christmas. That’s my wish list.

Andy Campbell (49:23.376)

or rebuild.

Andy Campbell (49:27.329)

Mm Right. Yes, have a project.

Andy Campbell (49:37.371)

See how much capital you have, yes.

Andy Campbell (49:43.173)

Yeah.

Dave Mowitz

That would be a do-do. Another one that I thought was a great deal was a 2010 John Deere 1590. This is a 20-foot grain drill. Almost brand new. It didn’t have acres on it. It sold at Sullivan Auction here in December. Sullivan has that big sale they do out of Hamilton. Well, now different locations. And 74 bids brought $23,500.

Andy Campbell (50:16.901)

okay.

Dave Mowitz

It’s a 20 foot grain, I know it’s a standard grain drill, but with CRP, with waterways, with just you need a drill to go sock in some oats someplace, $23,000 is not that much to pay for what a like new, a 2010, 1590, but there’s no technology in a drill like that, not to speak of, yeah.

Andy Campbell (50:42.053)

Right? There’s not but but those type of drills, the the essentially short width drills like the the ones that aren’t as wide. There. I wouldn’t want to say they’re a dime a dozen, but they’re they’re goodbye.

Dave Mowitz

Right.

Dave Mowitz

Highly used.

Well, there used to be. There’s far few. One thing I noticed, there’s far fewer of those around now. I think there was the changeover as guys retired and as these drills went out of vogue and it laundered its way in the previous decade or 15 years. I just went back and checked. I couldn’t find that many other drills like this that had sold the 1590s. That’s maybe I just didn’t track them as well as I should have. But I was looking at it saying,

You know, I’d pay that for that drill. And I’m a poor iron farmer. So I buy rust. That’s kind of the way Dave gets by. But just for something to knock around if you’re running a fairly good sized farm, yeah, you park it in the shed, get it out once every two to three years to go do that dab of this and dab of that. But it would be kind of a cool deal. I don’t know, do you find any other good deals that you ran across?

Andy Campbell (51:53.883)

mean, I just looked at the auction database that’s out there. So of all of our air cedars, we have about 2000 on the air cedar side at auction. Of those that are 20 foot or less, potentially, about 10 % or more, 28 % are 24 or less. So you’re right, there’s not nearly as many now is what there were at one point in time. And so I mean, there’s a

Dave Mowitz

Wow.

Dave Mowitz

I when…

Andy Campbell (52:23.897)

Right. So wide variety of quality to there’s some that go for for plenty 60 $70,000 and some that that might just go straight to the junkyard.

Dave Mowitz

Well, this one was described as like new and it got 74 bids. So there was interest in it, a couple of guys out there, but for $23,000, that would be, yes, that’s something you don’t even have to ask the banker about, I don’t think. You write the check and take it home. And then talk about the enduring value of John Deere 4020s. I know we’re talking about planners, but I gotta get this thing in. This was…

Andy Campbell (52:50.597)

Right? Yep.

Dave Mowitz

A sale in Illinois, I failed to write down the auctioneer that sold this. A 1967 4020 with a cab showing 3,062 hours. maybe not actual hours. That’s a 58 year old tractor which is 3,000, sold for $8,000 at this auction. So that’s either a collector, that’s not a chore tractor. Well, would be for some people like me.

Andy Campbell (53:31.365)

Huh?

Yeah, for, so for $8,000. Yeah.

Dave Mowitz

Eight thousand bucks. Would that be a crossover to a collector tractor? Had the coffin cab on it, I always called it, because after you were in the thing all day in dust, you’d be coughing all day. So it was not a factory cab, I don’t think. I should have checked that out. It would have added value for a collector if it were a factory cab.

but a lot of those didn’t have air conditioning. I’m sure this one didn’t. Get hotter than the hubs of hell at certain times of the day in that cab. It looked, the pictures showed it to be fairly decent. I didn’t look, I think it looked to me like one of those tractors that dad had it and didn’t use it very much and then son got it and just kept using it to run augers and bang around the place.

Andy Campbell (54:08.753)

Was it good quality? Did you see the condition?

Dave Mowitz

Sheet metal, always indicator of old tractors, how bad they’ve been abused, was solid, didn’t show a lot of dings, and the paint of course was faded. Not a lot of scratching. But it would have been cool to be sitting there and start the thing up. That’s the, know, the rubber hits the road, is to see, is it burning oil, it burning a lot of diesel, is it leaking here and there, but…

It looked pretty darn clean. So is this one of those deals where it’s just sitting in the back of the shed and they brought it out because of an estate auction or should have I should have really looked into that to see what the it’s just that eight thousand bucks for a 4020 if it’s not a rare collector tractor that seems a bit much doesn’t it.

Andy Campbell (55:10.981)

Yeah, yeah, it’d be in.

although

Andy Campbell (55:20.017)

It does. It does. Cause I’m looking across a lot of ours. Uh, you know, that just happened here in the last, just in the last two, one week, uh, there was one that’s a little bit more in the collector’s side that went for 13,000. Uh, but as $2,400, but then after that it’s 5,000. One’s nine, one’s five, 6,000 for one that is pretty rough shape. So 6,000, 6,000, 7,000. So almost all these 40 20s I’m seeing.

Dave Mowitz

Yeah.

Andy Campbell (55:49.489)

that have hit an auction in the last month are somewhere between $5,000 to $8,000 with a few outliers.

Dave Mowitz)

So this one’s eight.

Dave Mowitz

Thousand times. So it just always amazes me. I know at one time prices on 4020s were crazy-go-nuts. This had been maybe 20 years ago. My gosh, you’d have the decent 4020 at auction. That guy just had to buy it and they were paying stupid prices for them. But even now, 58-year-old tractor bringing $8,000, unless it’s a collector that is desiring them.

Andy Campbell (56:13.136)

Mm.

Dave Mowitz

But it wasn’t like 4020s were a scarce tractor when it comes to collecting. And that usually determines like a 1206, international 1206. They made them for two years and not that many. So those things even beat up or bringing still stunning prices. Everybody wants a 1206, don’t they, these days?

Andy Campbell (56:31.174)

Right.

Andy Campbell (56:50.374)

Right.

Dave Mowitz

Do you guys, I never asked this before, does your dad have a collection started?

Andy Campbell (56:58.577)

We don’t we have a couple old bees. We’ve got an 1800 Oliver. And we have one tractor. We don’t have this anymore. We had a tractor that’s one that I learned to drive on that my grandpa won in a poker match. Yeah, my grandma was not happy about it. Because you can obviously imagine the stakes that went on in the back of that bar that day. But that not Dutch country, I’m in Dutch country now, which I don’t think poker would have been allowed.

Dave Mowitz

This is up with Dutch country and Iowa, right? Pretty… you are. No, I shouldn’t say so.

Andy Campbell (57:28.465)

down here. But no, I live up in North sent grew up in our farms in North central Iowa. And so definitely not Dutch country poker was, yeah, it was promoted and it was par for the course up there with the Heathens. But yeah, so he won this. Oh, it was a farm all and I don’t know where it’s at now. I’d have to talk to my dad to see where we auctioned it or what what happened to it. But yes, so that would be a nice one to have.

Dave Mowitz

Ha ha!

would that be cool?

You should track that down. It went someplace. Let’s do, we’ll put the word out and start looking. Was it an An old farm wall? It was, yeah. Well, you know, John, I remember John Kinzabal once told about, with Kinzie Manufacturing, how he tracked down his farm wall that he grew up on, that his dad had long since, he saw it in a photograph at a 4-H contest at a county fair he’d never go to.

Andy Campbell (57:59.323)

It

Andy Campbell (58:05.007)

Yes, I believe it was.

Dave Mowitz

It was in one county fair over. And it got driven into the photo display by a rainstorm. And he was looking at the pictures trying to kill time until it stopped raining to go look at the cattle. And he saw this picture. And with the silhouette of the sunlight coming through this far more, he saw the wooden block his dad had put on the clutch so he could drive it as a little boy. It’s quite a story. It really is neat. And John disreveled in telling that.

Andy Campbell (58:37.393)

Mm-hmm.

Andy Campbell (58:47.353)

my gosh. Huh?

Dave Mowitz

So anyway, I think we’re, have we talked enough? We’re at good 45, okay. Well, we’ll just kill it right there. Do I need to do an ending outro or no? I would just say thanks for joining me today and we’ll see you next month. Okay, yeah, that’d be cool. Well, Andy, it’s always a pleasure. We’re gonna have fun. Thanks for joining me today and we’ll get together again in another month, talk about iron again.

Andy Campbell (59:19.761)

Fantastic Dave thanks for having us.