Tractor Zoom was started in 2017 to help farmers and other decision makers have access to current equipment values and make empowered, data-driven decisions for buying, selling, financing, and insuring heavy equipment.
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.
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Episode Highlights
- The general oversupply of equipment is working through the market, but there are still a few categories where the supply is large and deals can be found.
- A better-than-expected 2024 harvest led to some year-end purchasing that was unexpected but welcome.
- Dealers are open to negotiation on price as well as other factors like extended warranties and favorable financing options.
- No longer do farmers have to settle for local equipment – dealers and auctioneers are set up to sell and transport machines hundreds, even thousands of miles to buyers.
- Dave and Andy talk about specific types of equipment and where the best deals can be found right now.
I think a better yield helped with better end of year net profit on the cash income side, and equipment goes where the money flows. So, I think that helped increase some end of year sales. Combines and row crop tractors, those ticked up a little bit in Q4.
Transcript
Please note: This transcript has not been edited.
I’d like to introduce our guest today, Andy Campbell, director of insights at Tractor Zoom in West Des Moines, Iowa.
Welcome to the podcast, Andy.
I remember when Kyle first came to me with this idea 7 years, 8 years ago?
Yeah, Tractor Zoom the inception was 2017.
I think, man, we are going on 8, barely on 8, but really from the time that, you know, we, we gathered an update and started to commercialize and sell a product that was about 2019, 2020.
So a solid five years of being out in the public atmosphere.
But when it comes to used equipment, especially auction,, listings, it has become the site.
How many auctioneers do you have now on your your list?
Man, I just 400 is this?
Oh, we’re, I think we’re well over 1000.
I wanna say, yes, yeah, I think we cover about 85% of the the US farm auction market from a data collection standpoint.
So that the place to go www.tractorZoom.com.
Yeah, TractorZoom.com is our farmer facing site just trying to make it easy for people to find the equipment that they’re looking for.
Yeah, it’s a great site to go to.
Go there and then you can catch up with Andy or one of our favorite columnists,, Ryan Roossinck writes some phenomenal stuff.
So it’s always fun to see what Ryan has to say.
But enough of Tractor Zoom.
What is going on with used equipment?
Oh my gosh, we, it is a buyer’s market, and I, that’s an understatement, right?
It is.
And so maybe it’s the, the antithesis of tractors, so because, you know, a couple years ago, the the tractors were literally flying off the dealer lot.
Oh yeah,, and not so much now,, but, you know, it, I was actually just at a massive dealer convention down in Orlando, America or the Association of Equipment distributors, and the, the general sentiment was.
Wow, it it’s actually it’s not as bad as what we were thinking it was going to be,, but if you would have asked me, you know, January through August of last year of 2024, I, I would have said it, you know, we’re going down and going down fast.
but, but, you know, it’s not unlike 12.
I remember 2012, 2013 we’re going, it it then it took a tank too at that same point and we’re kind of at that.
2014, 2015 timeline when things just bottomed out as far as sales of used equipment.
Yeah, yeah, from a history lesson standpoint, this is really interesting, especially to compare and contrast it back with 2012 and 2014, cause the, you know, the having ultra high prices and then have that, you know, script flip so fast, that part is a little similar,, but a few things are not, and that largely is on the supply side of the equipment.
You know, in 2012, 2013, there wasn’t a lot of brakes being pumped on the allocation from the manufacturers.
So they were making money and they were printing whatever color machine as fast as they could, but now, at least recently and if you think of 21 into 22.
You know, they could have put out machines or they wanted to maybe,, but they couldn’t it, yeah, they didn’t have the components exactly.
So yeah, the whole chip shortage that we dealt with, wire harness shortage, all those things actually probably helped to regulate this market a little bit, and so we didn’t have a massive bull whip effect.
And so yeah, there there’s just not the massive amount of oversupply now that there was back then.
Still oversupply, but it’s not to the degree that it was then.
We’ll talk a little bit about what you’re seeing in auctions.
Are there particular types of machines like the high horsepower tractors or sprayers or combines that are the better deals as guys are always looking for a deal, especially on the late model stuff, right?
Yeah, I understand the high horsepower tractors, there’s a good inventory are those.
There is, yeah, essentially the higher the horsepower that you get.
the more of a year over year supply increase there was.
And, you know, and maybe that makes sense a little bit too, because obviously you’re going up there in dollar values, it’s a more significant purchase.
And so, you know, once you get up there, if you’re going to take on that cost, if you’re gonna finance it, you have to finance it at these higher interest rates.
So there’s maybe a reason why some of those are sticking around on the dealer lots for a little bit longer, but yeah, so let’s just take higher horsepower row crop tractors, so staying away from the four wheel drives right now.
What we are seeing is about a 50 to 60% increase in supply in those guys from the end of 23 to the end of 24.
so a significant jump in the overall supply in those,.
And yeah, and what that has done, and really a lot of that jump in supply had a negative effect on those auction values down somewhere around 16%,.
In the first three quarters of 2024.
But again, getting into the the conversation I was saying earlier that I had down in Orlando, that we saw things start to turn around a little bit post harvest.
So dealers purchases, right, you exactly stimulus right there, right.
Yes, and there’s a few different factors.
I don’t know if we can,, uniquely point it to one thing, but anecdotally dealers will say, hey, after the election, phones started ringing.
After farmers got done with harvest, they obviously knew that they were bringing some were bringing in 220, 250 bushel corn versus what maybe in August they’re anticipating, hopefully getting 200 if that,, in some of these I states.
So, I think a better yield helped with this better end of year net profit on the cash income side, and just more, you know, equipment goes where the money flows.
So, I think that helped increase some end of year sales.
So yeah, combines and row crop tractors like we’re talking about,, those ticked up a little bit in Q4.
Now we’re we’re kind of not in the winter doldrums necessarily, it’s always a strong time, especially for auctions.
The January through planting period of time.
Has it settled out?
Have prices settled down from what we saw at the year end?
I mean, we’re only a couple weeks into the the month, so couldn’t say for sure.
Exactly.
And and that’s been kind of one of the bigger surprises that,, you know, there hasn’t been a an unloading of equipment at auction, you know, I’d say if, if we’re going down,, a lot of dealers have incentive obviously to clear out their lots.
So they’ll have large dealer auctions that they’ll run.
And we haven’t seen the flurry of those right now that we did last spring.
part of that’s due to a lot more of the dealers that we work with are just being really proactive about managing their inventory.
Part of that’s due to what we talked about earlier of, you know, we’re not dealing with the massive amount of oversupply.
There’s, there’s oversupply for sure in tractors, but you gotta remember too, from a risk standpoint, you can sell a tractor pretty much 12 months out of the year,, off of a dealer lot.
you can’t do that necessarily with planters, sprayers, combines.
And so that, you know, the fact that you might sit on them for 6 more months and pay interest on them for 6 more months, that creates a bigger risk and a bigger incentive to kind of dump at one particular point in time.
So I think all those have contributed to a lot of these, you know, oversupply machines on the Roll Crop tractor side.
There’s been some that have hit dealer lots, but, but not a ton.
At least not just they’re moving out slowly and you’re right.
I mean, this maybe is a good segue before I go on to to sprayers, planters, tillage equipment on tractors of the high horsepower, are there particular tractors you’ve noticed that are bringing stronger prices or weaker prices if they’re a track tractor, for example, or if they have particular bells and whistles that come with the IVT transmissions or what have you.
are there buying opportunities there for someone that wants to trade up?
Yeah, it’s in general, so let’s talk big picture, like buying opportunities that you see out there with the row crop tractor.
I think there are buying opportunities right now.
So if, you know, if you’re trying to catch a falling knife, it’s tough to get it, you know, right on the way down and pinch it right where you want to.
But in general, yeah, the, the Rocrop tractor market valuations are depressed,.
You know, you might be able to find some gems at auction, but like I said, they’re not being dumped at auction now like maybe combines were last summer.
And so what we’re hearing both from the dealer side and from farmer conversations are that people are finding, you know, satisfactory deals by approaching the dealership and then just negotiating an offer,, like the, the dealers that I talked to said, You know, the phone is not ringing off the hook, but they’re still having good conversations of serious buyers, and they may be negotiating a little bit more now than, you know, you had to 2 years ago when you had such limited supply, but they’re coming into a price point that’s making everybody happy.
And so, we’re seeing that with the data too, that a lot more of these deals are happening at a dealership after negotiation or two and after kind of talking about mutual goals that they’re trying to reach.
so outside incentivifying them with price, are they doing what we saw in the tens about about 1314, 2013, 2014 2015 where they threw on extended warranty coverage?
Mhm.
Yeah, so we’re hearing warranty coverage,, some financing deals.
Now the programs from the large OEMs may change month to month, and so in a lot of times that’ll that’ll cover new, but from a You know, incentive warranties are a big thing, and I was actually just talking to a couple secondary warranty providers down at this conference as well,, and they’re very busy,, with, you know, finding the warranties to supply these machines.
Especially, I think the warranties are, are a hot topic for them right now, because if you look at the overall supply of tractors, combines probably as well fit in this category, but it’s not evenly distributed.
You, you can go to a dealership lot and you can’t, you know, 10% isn’t the 1% with low hours and then, you know, not evenly distributed up to the high hour tractors.
It is a crowded party sitting below 500 hours on a lot of these ro crop tractors, and uncomfortably tight crowded party,, especially from the dealer side and then those from a dealership business model standpoint represent such a challenge because if you think about it, if he’s got a tractor that’s 250 hours sitting on your lot, you know, hasn’t been used much, maybe a season.
And the,, you know, it was paid top dollar for, so you wouldn’t expect it to depreciate much after a season, so they probably traded a farmer for it and gave him decent money.
So the dealership’s got a lot of money in it.
Well, now comes along the OEM and offers a brand new tractor, just like it may be priced higher, but hey, with that brand new tractor, they can offer 0% financing for, you know, 72 months or longer.
Now all of a sudden, from a farmer standpoint, you know, I could have You know, a brand new tractor, financed at a sweet 0% deal for a period of time, or it can have something that’s already been used and not financed as well, maybe at a little bit lower dollar, but you pencil out the numbers, and all of a sudden that slightly used one becomes not so attractive.
And, and that’s a sticking point on dealer lots, and it, I guess it would be with any kind of business, but especially I think those ag dealers feel that that those are tough.
They’re they’re tough to move and they are, they’re pretty set on lots, but they, they weigh down with that interest cost pretty heavily.
I’ve noticed on the dealer lots, Central Iowa, that I’ve I’ve been driving around,.
We had absolutely cleared out lots several years ago.
They just started repopulating them.
I suppose this is this downturn has probably led to more and more machines on the lots, and that’s putting more downward pressure or pressure on dealers, I should say, to keep inventory clean because they, they have their floor plan that they’ve committed to to the manufacturer.
Yes, those machines are coming in.
So they’re moving them out.
Is it somewhere a farmer ought to watch what’s going on in his favorite dealership?
When he sees new tractors coming in, he sees light model with low hours that he’s been looking at that dealership to go in and maybe say, hey, you want to strike a deal, get rid of that tractor.
Right, right, and I think that’s the best thing, best thing for a farmer, cause, you know, upgrading in horsepower just can help you out in your operation.
Yeah, and your capabilities, there, there’s a lot of benefits there, plus, if you, you know, move up 5 years to a newer newer model, hopefully your repairs are significantly less than they hopefully should be.
And now if you can enter a new conversation with that dealer and find a price that that fits your budget, the, the dealer’s got in set up too, and they want to have that conversation.
if they haven’t reached out to you already, they should be, and.
And entering into that conversation can really help out both parties, because I think a lot of farmers may have seen this, you know, the, the massive increase in prices on equipment the last couple of years, and be looking at, you know, let’s just say an AR,, John Deere roll crop tractors say, I know what those things were priced out of my league, like, not gonna take on any debt.
It might not be as much as what they had previously thought,, so I think it’s worth entering into those conversations, then you at least know.
These are always that and and then all the years that I’ve followed the machinery industry, we’ve seen the ups, seen the downs, see the ups and downs, the killer opportunities that come during a down period for an up period in inventories, I mean, but a down period as far as sales are concerned is,, especially these days that farmers have the opportunity to look around using the internet across.
Not counties, not states, but a geographic area that they should be spending some serious time.
Farmers should probably be spending some serious time on the internet searching.
And looking for tractors, cause we know dealers are more than happy to ship in a tractor from another dealership if you find it.
And probably also looking at auctions that are a little further afield to get that good deal.
Yeah, yeah, we actually had to kind of instruct people on tractorZoom.com, so we built the site, you know, 4 or 5 years ago,, and the default setting is, you know, I want to see everything in a 250 mile radius.
And so people will get on there and realize like, oh, this is all the equipment that’s out there, but But in actuality now, you’re, you can easily look at a 1000 mile radius and and pay for that shipping cost, and if you can get it in the the right locale,, it makes it worth your while just to set up a, you know, logistics company to bring that back to your farm.
We’ll probably set combines aside, talk about planters.
And, but unless we’ve played out tractors, cause I know tractors are always the, the high point.
04 wheel drive tractors.
Is there much difference there or is that an overburdened market as well?
No, big difference, you know, it’s, I, I hate to say that it’s just more of the same, but, you know, as I mentioned on the rocrop tractors, as you go up and horsepower, the, the supply issue seems to be more pronounced and a little more her burdened.
Well, you go up into that 425 plus horsepower range on those 4 wheel drives, the articulating and, you know, whether it’s track or wheels, it is a much bigger supply issue.
and so we’re seeing that supply growth continue to rise on the four wheel drives.
Now there, there’s a couple of historical things that are leading to this that in the, you know, the production woes of 21 and 22, 4 wheel drives are larger machines, they’re more complex.
There’s a lot more that goes into them.
And so, when OEMs manufacturers could produce, they, they did not start producing those things right away.
There’s other priorities, but they did eventually, and so we saw the supply enter into the market a little bit later than what we did in the row crop and the combine side.
so they’re a little late to the party, and then it seems to have extended longer, till just about last December, December of 23.
They’re still producing more and more of these large 4 wheel drive tractors, according to the AED data,, that’s out there.
So, later to the party, probably later to shut off that faucet,, but those,, there’s been quite a few of those that have sold just this last month, and, And again, it, I’ve talked to dealers about this, and it’s not their number one concern.
Sprayers are actually their biggest concern of the used equipment managers I talked to, but yeah, last month, I mean, we had some Steiger 640 sell for over half a million.
some 9 RX 640s from John Deere start to sell, and so I think we’re now we’re starting to see some of those massive high horsepower models that, you know, are hitting the auction market for the first time.
So it’ll be interesting to gather that data in and I think some more of those are gonna probably be auctioned off yet this spring.
So if you are looking for a really high horsepower, 4 wheel drive, there’s gonna be more opportunities.
There’s obviously opportunities on dealer lots, the supply is up almost 70% every year.
but there’s gonna be more opportunities at auction too,, if you’re looking.
Let’s talk planters because we’re getting into the planters or buying plant season.
And inventories of planners even in 2012, 2013, 2014, really weren’t that large, if I remember right, going of auctions and looking at dealer’s lots, but that’s not the case here.
I see that our inventories are really strong with planters.
was that a high turnover in the last couple of years that dumped a lot of planters on the marketplace?
So the, the planners have been interesting.
If you look historically, you know, like a You almost have to go make model specific when you do analysis on planters, just because of the variability.
I mean, with once you hit rows and then even if you go into options on rows and and everything, it gets pretty messy in the data.
But when we look at John Deere planters that have been produced, they certainly peaked in 12 and 13, and so there’s still a lot of, you know, 1775s and and everything that have been produced then, that are residual stills set out in the market right now, and then it dipped back down in the the higher teens.
in terms of production numbers.
But when you look just in aggregate of all the planters that are on the market, and I’ve done this analysis on planters and also air cedars,, separately, we’re only about 10 to 15% more supply right now than we were at this time last year.
And so it’s, they’re out there,, and obviously some dealers want to move them, but with a lot of the dealer partners that we’re working with,, some more have been,, judicious might be the right word on.
On what they’re willing to trade for and and and they just have, you know, ultimatums from higher up in their dealership of like, hey, we can’t accept a planter that may be, you know, model year older than 2018.
and so then the farmer, if they do wanna, you know, offload that planter, then they’re looking at auction, you know, auctioning it themselves or through one of the auctioneering groups.
So the time to look for a used planter, a late model used planner would be in the next.
Probably 60 days or even less, yes, yeah, when I look at the other words, yes, yes, you should get looking if you, if you think you want to find that gem out at auction, you should be looking right now.
that’s one of the things that we do at tractorZoom.com is just to save search or say, I want a planter that fits these specs, so then you email me when something hits, but that’s because some of these auctions, you know, and the auctioneer companies have a lot going on, they might just post what’s coming up at auction, and then it’s sold within a week, maybe 2 weeks, hopefully.
hard to comb all the sites that are out there, so you have a good awareness of what’s there every two weeks.
I, I barely have enough time to keep my own stuff straight.
I, I don’t have enough time to to search everything else out there.
So, so yes, if you want to jam at auction, you, you gotta be on top of the ball.
But from a dealer lot too.
especially different make models,, I think they’ve done production differently.
Some allocated a little tighter over the last couple of years off of a lower early orders that are out there versus some other dealerships that we’ve or even OEMs that we’ve talked to,, have a bit more production that’s sitting out in the lots and, you know, whether it’s at the facility or the dealership lots.
So there are some, but yeah, if you’re looking at a planter, you know, the prime buying season is towards the end of January, up to later in March, especially as you go further north, that’s the time.
So is this true also of tillage equipment when we’re looking at field finishers as well.
They’re almost tied in with planters when it comes to inventory, aren’t they?
Yes, yeah, so tillage equipment, yes,, in terms of a time to buy, we don’t see the, the price fluctuation as much on tillage equipment just because, you know, you don’t have the obsolescence on tillage equipment of, you know, the tech isn’t gonna age a ton, and so then there’s not as much pressure to to absolutely get it off of the lot this year like there might be with a planter.
But you know, tillage equipment always is one of those things where you can ship a tractor, a combine sprayer, even a planter, fairly easy if you’re going across states to get it tillage equipment.
It’s a whole different dog because you don’t want to take that apart, put it on a semi, and haul it.
So it’s more of a locally traded item if you’re looking at used tillage equipment.
We don’t have insight into the logistics of of tillage equipment, but just knowing from our operation too.
I mean, if you’re, if the margin on selling a piece of tillage equipment is minimal, you don’t want to give that up on either either buyer or the seller,, by, you know, paying $5000 to ship it across the state.
So it’s just it’s just harder to ship as it is because these machines are and to be able to make the clearances when you’re going down the road.
I do know that it’s just a tough thing.
I just noticed at auctions usually the tillage equipment sells to farmers within a 100 mile radius, and that’s about it.
And we’re seeing combines and tractors going 56 states away in some, right?
Yes, yeah, we are.
And so yeah, I think that’s a component of the price and the margin that you might get in it.
The other thing is that soils are different and so you have pieces of different pieces of tillage equipment with different soils where, you know, it might work in one area, but it’s not gonna have a lot of benefit in another.
Sprayers, however, are easy to transport, and we have a bit of a quandary going on with sprayers, don’t we, in the market?
We do.
quandaries might be like a non-go or a good non four letter word to call it for for dealerships.
heck of a mess, yes, yeah, and it was funny when I first started doing the analysis on them, you know, the the year over year supply that I’m seeing with the self-propelled sprayers out there isn’t as significant as, you know, 4 wheel drive tractors or even roll crop tractors.
so I, at first glance, I’m like, OK, it’s an issue, but it’s not the issue.
Yeah, for for a downturn in the marketplace, you’d expect some inventory pickup and everything.
Yeah, but no, when I,, when I pulled the used equipment managers and we have a great collection of part people that partner and work with us at on our tractorsoom Pro side of our dealership business.
The number one concern by far with these self-propelled sprays, and, you know, part of it is the supply that being up 42% year over year, that’s an issue.
The other part of it is they’ve been getting more and more expensive and so, you know, where before you might have to finance a $300,000 spur in your life.
Now you’re having to finance a bunch of $500,000 spurs, so that’s significant.
Then you’ve got an added wrinkle in there for some of them that, you know, what is it with John Deere Cing sprays at 28 the models 2018 and newer can be upgraded.
The ones that, you know, are older than 2018 cannot, and so does that put them at a disadvantage where some farmers might not consider those anymore.
So there’s that little bit of a nuance, but the, the seasonality is the, the big kicker of if you can’t get them gone here between now and say March, March,, then you, you’re maybe shipping them,, that that chance might not come back around, especially some of these northern states,, that it’s, you know, the sale season isn’t every single month of the year like it is for a Rocrop tractor.
So if you miss it, you’re, you’re waiting a few months and you’re paying inventory costs for those months.
so it’s tough.
The other unique thing about sprays, and this doesn’t necessarily make it good or bad,, but it’s very unique to sprayers.
They are, utilized probably better and, and more so in the south than they are up here in the north.
So when we track equipment, we typically see a flow.
It goes from You know, essentially the epicenter of these manufacturers in Racine, Wisconsin, you know, Dubuque, Waterloo,, your states, the Dakotas, and then it flows south and it it flows east and then it’s south, and then it goes to the Gulf of Mexico and it does not come back up.
Now, but self-propelled sprayers, they’ve got a huge,, use in cotton, and they’re vital to cotton production.
And so when you see things produced, you know,, coming down 35 and 163 in Iowa from the John Deere plant, it’s going down to the southeast to start its life.
increased use of fungicides as well as the herbicides that they have, especially it’s cotton being what it is,.
You, you do have a great population down there, but those are trailers that get used pretty hard.
They do, yeah, yeah, they’re used a lot more than what we typically use them for up here,, constantly, they might not be shedded like ours,, and so,, they go through a rough life.
They go through, yeah, they, I mean, they go down to the southern part of Texas.
They’ve got a lot of uses down there, then they also face hurricanes.
So you’re seeing iron exports have slowed down, which is doing.
It’s back in the pipeline up into North America.
Exactly.
Yeah, I always think about the the US farm machinery market as a bucket, you know, we’ve got the OEMs, the early orders that are filling it,, you’ve got your usage and things flow kind of high or low hour, high value from the top to the bottom and and you need things to leave the market,, whether it’s burning up in the field or whether it’s, you know, rusting down south or ideally being exported to somebody else that can use it.
and that’s, it, it hasn’t dried up completely, but it’s slowed down, and that’s causing some ripple effects back upstream.
So, Good time to buy a sprayer is now.
I’d say start looking.
Yes, yeah, it’s now I don’t know how long this supply issue will last with these, if this will go longer than 6 months, but if you need one for this year, and especially, you know, now that we’re talking profitable corn,, not wildly profitable, but we’re above break even, it’s money, you know, exactly, it’s something better than what it was, right?
And if you look at the ROI on fungicide.
I know for our farm that it’s been one of the easiest decisions we’ve made of applying our own,, fungicide in terms of,, increasing the yield base.
And so I think a lot of more, a lot more farmers are seeing that, and they’re realizing the value, and I was, you know, 4 or 5 years ago, I was a proponent,, against self-propelled spurs.
I just didn’t like them, because you could get such a Another type of machine that would pull behind, you already have a tractor, it’s much cheaper.
Why would you want an expensive machine that’s, you know, you have to maintain and all these things, it depreciates fairly fast.
But, but now you can’t do a self-propelled or a pole behind sprayer and apply fungicide.
And so when you start to look at those RI numbers, eating was another thing we saw.
Get taken up by a lot of farmers using the self-propelled sprayer for foliar feeding that split shot application in June hitting it then and seeing the response because they’re going over with fungicides, just roll through a little in on that crop while you’re at it.
So right at that time
can make a difference.
And so, just having the ability to do that on a on a farm level.
Obviously you can contract it out for the local co op,, but timing also makes a big difference, and having it when you need to have it helps,, not for all farms, not for all operations, but,, if it fits your bill,, it’s a quick calculation that you can figure out if it’s gonna pay or not.
So I’m gonna put you on the spot.
One thing that I always love tracking semi trucks because we know from the time when I started covering farms way back 40 years ago till now, the preponderance of semi trucks is, is gone to first the guy that had 1, then he had 3, now he’s got 5.
we know that they’re ubiquitous.
In fact, I love going to auctions and watching straight trucks with maybe 15,000 miles on himself for little or nothing, still with this train.
Are you hearing much from that side of the marketplace?
Are we in another inventory problem with semi trucks, late model semi trucks?
Hmm.
I’m glad you put me on the spot.
I’m gonna have to look at that one.
it’s always fun.
I, yeah, love the guys love talking about trucks, so right.
Well, and I think one of the things with trucks too,, and, you know, I don’t know about the straight trucks, but the, you know, if you’re gonna throw a, you know, a 53 ft trailer behind it, a hopper bottom,, that the need is more for a lot of operations because if you think about the farming operation, large, you know, row crops, especially corn right now.
as you have these combines that can just eat up fields, that that always used to be the bottleneck.
Maybe a dryer, depending on the moisture, but, but your bottleneck was your combine, and from a process standpoint, that makes sense cause then everybody else just kind of keeps up with it, if your bottleneck is in front of your process.
well, with a massive X9 or what cases got coming up here,, with some AFs that You’ve moved that bottleneck, cause that it’s putting out so much grain that you have a bigger,, you know, grain wagon now, and can that grain wagon move fast enough, incentivizes a little bit of automation there if if needed.
But then the bottleneck potentially moves down to the trucks.
So depending on how far away your field is from your storage operation, then That very well could be your bottleneck, and if you can solve that bottleneck, if you’re a large enough farm, but if you have an X9, you probably are a large enough farm.
You, you can afford an extra truck and a trailer if now all of a sudden that’s not your bottleneck anymore,, to keep your dryer full or coop or wherever you’re taking it.
And certainly the way that farmers are moving grain further from the farm to market.
A way to meet ethanol plant demand or a river market,, price surge.
when commodities are prices are low, we see a lot more aggressive pricing by farmers and willing.
to move grain 50 miles, 60 miles, 100 miles to pick up that extra 345 cents.
And I know farmers that will just wait until the ethanol plant calls and say we’re running short because they know they’re going to pick up an extra nickel or a dime.
And that’s where the semi truck and the, and the trailers come in handy.
but I know the semi trucks become so ubiquitous, especially with the flatbeds as a nurse vehicle in the spring.
And for doing some custom hauling,, in the summer that farms just seem to be increasing the number of trucks that they have on.
I, I did catch you, and here’s what the deal is.
We’re going to get together in February, and I’ll do some research.
You poke around and see what the auctioneers are telling you about late model used trucks.
And let’s, it’s getting to be truck buying time.
Guys like to do that in late spring.
So we’ll follow up in about a month.
listeners can join us and we’ll, we’ll get into some semi trucks, and then of course, every month we’ll pick something that we’re gonna do a deep dive on and see what we can discover.
So, really appreciate the opportunity.
Hm, yeah, they’ll edit this down, luckily, so it’s gonna be that the late model used trucks will be good too because, you know, when they’re talking just our farming operation that has been about the bane of our existence, that it is absolutely necessary to have a truck.
Now whether it starts or whether you can find the parts to fix it,, I mean, it’s,, the Peterbilt we have has got plenty of hours on it,, but heater, yeah, but you need it,.
Yeah, it’s your craziest price you’ve heard given for a Peter belt at auction, and I’ll, I’ll dig around and see what I can find out too because Peter belts are always one of those trucks.
You’re going along and you’re saying, well, yeah, 30 $40,000 for a truck that has 750,000 miles, that guy’s nuts, and then you hear somebody give a price even more than that.
There’s just a steak with Peterbilts, and farmers love Peterbilts.
Well, thanks Andy.
Join us next month and Andy and I are going to take on trucks and maybe some other weird and wonderful equipment just for fun, right?
That’ll be great.