Spring is in the Air

With spring right around the corner, it’s time to think about tillage. With an abundance of options in the used marketplace, there are opportunities to find something that works for your operation at a variety of price points.

It’s also time to think about making a move in the sprayer market. Most sprayers sell in the February-April time frame, and dealers don’t want to hold inventory too long – so there may be deals out there.

Andy Campbell and Dave Mowitz discuss all this and more – including a search for a tractor that came into Andy’s family in an interesting way!

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

• Andy’s rule of thumb is that disks lose about 5% of their value every year, and after 10 years they are worth roughly half the price of new.
• Early data in 2025 seems to suggest market trends for equipment are holding steady with where they were in 2024.
• A wild card in 2025 will be when and if farmers receive government payments. USDA predicted several weeks ago that if that happens, this could be one of the highest farm income years on record.
• Self-propelled sprayers are risky for dealers to hold on their lots, but that could mean opportunities for buyers. There are benefits to buying from a dealer versus at auction, including technology support.

Transcript

Please note, this transcript has not been edited.

Dave Mowitz: Hello, I’m Dave Mowitz with Successful Farming Magazine and Andy Campbell with TractorZoom. We’re here to talk about used iron and we’re going to talk about high speed disks. Planting season is right around the corner. High speed disks are the hot thing in vertical tillage.

Andy, what are we seeing in this sphere? Because we had great sales on these things and then it kind of fell off. But when it came to the used market, the volume that’s out there is not that bad. I looked at Deere’s site at Machineryfinder.com and the listings were about 127 of their 2680Hs that are 30 to 35 feet wide. It’s not a bad amount. What are you finding over there?

Andy Campbell: Right. So with pretty much everything else, there was a little bit of a shortage in the post pandemic area with these high speed disks, obviously not due to chips as much as just supply strain or supply chain constraints. So that affected everything to some extent, but then there’s a little bit of this just inflationary pressure of, everything is going up. And so therefore it’s acceptable for everything else to kind of go up. And we really saw values peak in ‘23.

If you’re just looking at the years. It jumped quite a bit in ‘22 to ‘23 when you’re just looking on average at a 40 foot wide high speed disk. And then, like I said, though, in ‘23, it really kind of peaked. So we’re watching a bunch of different models. But on average, 40 foot disks, they dropped. Probably about 20% from ‘23 into ‘24. Some models even a little more steep than that.

And it’s what goes up must come down. And I think just a writing of the farm economy and obviously, a lower willingness to pay across the board for farmers right now.

DM: Well, you know, I understand how used prices on them can get depressed, certainly with age and number of acres they go over because you have a lot of disks to replace and that can be a substantial cost. But you’re saying the price has dropped as much as a third or at least a quarter on these things. So is this one of those best buys in agriculture? If you’ve always wanted to get a high speed disk, start looking now before you hit the fields this spring.

AC: Yeah, like a lot of other things too. I think we’ve hit a new normal within ag equipment. And so it’s not to say that, you know, it’ll immediately rebound back up there. I think it would probably take $7 corn again and some supply chain issues for that to happen. And typically what I saw across disks is this rule of thumb: they’re losing about 5% of value a year. So I looked on dealer listings by year. I looked at auction prices by year and in general, about after 10 years, they’re about half of their original value.

DM: Wow.

AC: From auction to auction, or from dealer list to dealer list. And so that’s, you know, to be taken. Right? Yes. But then last year is just that correction in the market of too many dollars  chasing too few goods boosted the inflationary value in ‘23. People chase that at auction. And now it’s just bringing back to the normal.

DM: That’s a fairly solid trend line across machinery.

I looked at asking prices on Deere high speeds, the 2680H. And I tracked it down. 30 foot was kind of a popular size. A brand new one is $170,000, $171,000. The 24 models ranged from $133,000 to $157,000 asking. And then when you got to 2021,

They were down to $79,000 to $120,000. So it does track where you’re saying on the losses, but you would think that if guys were looking to improve the technology of their tillage, this would be one of the ways they would do that. And that’s to shift to high speed disks. But right now everything’s kind of topsy turvy, isn’t it? There’s really no top or bottom or sure line that we know of, right?

AC: Right. Yeah, it is. And once you really start looking into these disks, I mean, we have so many different types of disks out there and in the widths that go with them, unlike your tractors, your combines, where you have three, four major players at the manufacturing level, you’ve got two to three times that many, at least with these. So that just that opens the door for a lot more players and a lot more variability within the data.

And good competition within the market which farmers love and it’s it’s great to have So that just makes it follow an exact trend lines a little bit more difficult. But with this as well, I think you’ve got both with vertical tillage and high speed disks you’ve got preferences and different soil types out there too and so with this, you know when we follow our high speed discs. I just got the 475 speed tiller out there from a data nut like me

That is probably the best one I like to track as far as pure volume goes. So it makes up about 15% of our entire database when I’m looking at just high speed disks. But that’s also because, you know, that particular model comes in many widths, whereas other manufacturers will distinctly like the RX 40, that is 40 feet wide. So the Case one covers many widths. But when I track that geographically, it is up and down the Mississippi River and then east in the Ohio Valley. And then with the exception going to the west in Nebraska. I mean, it’s, it’s straight up and down and then to Nebraska across the “I” states into Ohio. That’s where that one’s at and popularity where it’s used, where it’s sold is really where we track. 

DM: In popularity? Where it’s used then, right.

Now with the Deere I found a lot more listings up in the high plains, especially the northern high plains. Seemed to be quite a few up there. Illinois had its fair share too, so I think that all depends. They’re locked into a certain width, 30, 35, 40, I think is what they have up in that higher end. And that really comprised probably 70% of their machines right there that were on dealer lots right now.

Asking prices seem to be steady as opposed to a year ago when I looked at these. Whereas auction prices, they are still in flux because of the overages of iron that we have out there.

AC: Yeah, well, I’d say not in flux as much as dynamically in one direction. So we’ve seen ‘23 drop down to ‘24 levels. Now it’s way too early into ‘25 with the short volume that there are of high speed disks out there to definitively say where this market’s going this year. But if it tracks with other pieces of equipment that we’ve seen move so far in January and February, my guess is it’s probably holding steady with what we saw in late ‘24.

DM: But it’s a spring buy. You’re not going to be looking for these things come mid-May. If you’re on the hunt for it, you’re going to be hunting this month to get one before you hit the field. If it’s used, you want to go over it before you get out there to see what you need to do to get it up to speed. The purchase price will be a little bit more solid this month than I take it, as opposed to, say, May or summer.

AC: When we tracked actual sales volume. So August actually was a very big month from a dealership standpoint as well. Right. But exactly. Yeah, breaking up corn stalks prior to harvest. But when you look auction, that changes a little bit. December, and that’s no surprise. But March was the other big month and August was less of a significant month at auction. But dealer August was huge and auction March was the big one. 

DM: Really? They were using it for fall tillage. Okay.

Yeah. And on the side to this too, is we could expect, I’ve been told we can expect more dealer inventory reduction sales here before planting comes. And it may be the time to see if they have them listed, I suppose, if there ever is a time that they’ll come up. Talking about that, are we, have you heard the same thing? There’ll be some large dealer dispersals taking place in March into planting.

AC: We haven’t heard anything definitively yet of things that are on the books, but I imagine there will be. And I think that’s probably multifold that, you know, these higher interest rates are going to persist. There’s maybe a chance we might see a quarter point, maybe two quarter point reductions here in 2025. But I think seeing some inflationary stuff right now, that chance is getting less and less. So those dealerships, if they are holding excess inventory, they’ve got to think about ways to get it off the books.

And then the other piece to that equation is that tractor sales in January and February have actually been pretty decent. They’re almost too good considering the supply and the questionable ag economy. And so I know a little bit of dealers like, okay, we’ve got to take a little bit of advantage of this while it lasts because it’s not making a lot of sense right now. And so I think those things will spur some kind of a dealer liquidation auctions, maybe not massive, not I don’t think it’ll be what we saw last summer, but there’ll be some probably.

DM: I wanted to ask you about that because it runs contrary to everything that we talked about at year end. What all the trends from 24 showed. What inspired the sale of tractors? Was it just that things were not as bad as we thought farmers thought?

AC: Are you talking the sale of tractors in mid-24?

DM: Right. Yeah. I’m sorry. Mid 24. I know we’ve had a spurt at the first of the year in tractor sales, right?

AC: We have just recently and it’s not the volume The volume has kind of been trickling through so it’s not like there’s a mass unloading of tractors kind of like what we saw in the summer of ‘24. But it’s just been they’ve sold decently here in January and February row crop tractors There’s a few little shining moments out there where they’ll bring a record price, but in general, they’re just bringing respectable prices. 

Without getting off topic too much, you need a tractor to pull a disk. So we’re at least tangentially tied, right? My theory is that at least prior to this week we had decent corn prices and so that always makes somebody feel a little bit better and then at the end of last year I think we had a lot of farmers storing grain because we did not have good corn prices at harvest time last year so rather than take it to town you’re sticking as much as you can in the bin and for most areas around the country, you blew the top off that bin. And so now you had $5 corn, you’re unloading it, and that just makes people feel better. And they might even be anticipating some profits at the end of the year. So I think that just made enough people feel good. And there were decent auctions out there. So I think a few of them were willing to battle against each other for some of those tractors.

DM: Let’s just stay on tractors for a moment. Are we talking the spurt and sales was primarily large late model tractors?

AC: Not only. Yeah, there were some older ones, pre-DEF ones that are out there. And if you have anything that’s pre-DEF with less than 5,000 hours, it’s a sweet spot. And so that’s guaranteed to at least bring some eyeballs in and probably a little bit better value. But yeah, talking about John Deere’s 8Rs. So the 310 all the way up to the 410, essentially.

I just pulled data on that this morning because Ryan in our office and I were going back and forth like, this for real? Like, is this market turning or?

DM: Yeah, I was going to ask you about that because I noticed the same thing and I’m going, what is the deal? Pre-DEF. We saw the same thing with semi trucks, right? 2007 and before they just went nuts. Eventually the industry said, okay, we are where we’re at. We just have to accept this and go on. But that’s not true in tractors, is it?

AC: Right, right. Now if you can get those pre-DEFs, they’re a gold mine if you got one. But even the later model stuff, like I said, those 8Rs, they are tracking just spot on with where they were in late ‘24, which is a good thing for them. I mean, you always get a little bit of a bump end of year, especially with the profitability that we weren’t expecting last year. So that’s held.

I don’t think that it’s definitively said, say we’ve rebounded, but I think we’re pausing and we’re thinking about it at least.

DM: Well, I get to go to commodity classic here this coming week and Al Kluis is one of our speakers at the Successful Farming main stage. I love Al’s economic analysis. He’s only been doing it for 47 years and he’s pretty dead on. So I always ask Al the machinery question because if he knows where commodities are at he’s going to tell me when we’re going to have a spurt in sales. So next time we talk I’m going to get Al’s predictions as to market highs and then you and I can make some what seems like intelligent predictions on when to buy, you know, combines for harvest or grain tanks or four-wheel drive tractors for fall tillage.

AC: Well, I’ll be out at Commodity Classic, so I might, I’ll look up your schedule and then I’ll maybe be that secret shopper out in the audience, heckle them a little bit, and then I’ll ask them that question.

DM: Yeah, it’s, it’s going to be interesting. There’s so much going on right now with trade wars and things like that. I think Al’s going to be pulling his hair out, but he has a full head of hair, which I don’t. So he has a lot more. Yeah. Well, you know, we’ve pulled our hair out. We took care of that task. Anything else with tillage? I know generally a good disk is going to sell well. A good field cultivator is going to sell well. And we’re looking in that 30 to 50 foot sweet spot in sizes, right? Well, not so much with disks.

AC: Yeah, yeah, for exactly 40 foot give or take a little bit is our most common variety that we see come through both on dealer lots now and even at auction. Auction tends to be a little bit smaller just because you have some of those way older models that drag that average down. But yeah, that 40 foot I see a lot of $129,000 to $159,000 for one to three year old models that are sitting at dealerships for those 40 foot lengths.

I think the main story there is we’ve come off of 2023 highs. So whether you’re buying or you’re trading, do not base your frame of reference off of whatever happened in ‘22 and definitely not ‘23. ‘24 adjusted us closer to the new normal. And so if you’re looking at comparables and talking trade-ins that’s the frame of reference that you need to go off of.

DM: I’ve got to ask you about that. Are we in a pretty solid trend line here? Of course, commodity prices will determine that, but ‘24, ‘25, maybe ‘26, we’re just going to kind of be here for a while, it feels like.

AC: I think so. Yeah, the wild card may be government payments this year, just because the USDA a few weeks ago came out with that prediction that the net farm income is actually going to be the second highest on record. But that’s, you know, that big fat little bar graph, there’s government payments. And so if that actually happens, it’ll happen later in the year. It’s a huge question mark right now if that’ll actually come through. If it comes through, I think the analogous year that we look at is 2020 and so in 2020 we had trade wars, we had a lot of stuff going on. Nothing was great until September when surprise you got this large government payment. I don’t think a lot of people were expecting it and what we saw with equipment values because they were suppressed through ‘16, ‘18, ‘19 all the way up and then all of a sudden around October of 2020 government payments had been issued they’ve been received and boom.

DM: Ohhhh yeah. Right.

AC: We started to see the combine and the row crop tractor market tick up. And I remember sitting at my desk at Tractor Zoom, because I was getting bored of constantly writing like, combines are down, tractors are down. I’m like, hey, wait, this is different. This is going to know. 

DM: Yeah, we’d like to report on up, don’t we? Except when it comes to good deals, of course. We always like to report on the good deals. But anyway, yeah, it kind of, it took a run there. We kind of are set up for that same thing right now. We could have that depending on what those payments are, but who knows where we’re going to be out on a drought or a lot of rain.

AC: Exactly.

DM: That always determines the amount of crop that’s there. Although the American farmer has the ability to be able to always out-produce. So, we’ll see.

AC: Right. Well, although the question now, it was a huge one out at the ag outlook forum out in Virginia was the trend line, the expected trend line, I think we haven’t hit trend line for corn in the last seven years. And so we’ve been below it. And so the big question is, even if we plant 194 million acres, those extra acres are likely going to be fringe acres or they’re going to be corn on corn. Are we going to pay for the amount of fertilizer required to get the bushels per acre back up there and so there’s a lot of skepticism whether or not the equation is going to be the same and are we going to possibly hit that trend line. A lot of skeptics out there which very founded.

DM: Yeah. well, why don’t you come over when Al speaks, Commodity Classic, then you and I will be smarter and have a great report the next time we get together. I got to ask you of the things, of the trends that surprised me the most. Well, I’m not, I guess in a way I’m not surprised by the fact that we were carrying a lot of used inventories in 2024 and the depressed prices. But the one that’s got me is self propelled sprayers. What is going on there.

AC: Yeah, that is not as simple as row crop tractors and high speed disks when you say, supply is up. So therefore, you know, prices must be down or vice versa. Because there’s a few extra economic variables that go into self propelled spayers. For one, there’s other substitutes. And so if you’re just talking about, you know, pre emergent spraying, and that kind of just broad broadcasting, you can have a pull behind spare for a fraction of the cost. And so you don’t necessarily have that.

DM: Yeah. I heard those Campbell’s that farm up in Northern Iowa like that, that pull type’s rare, don’t they?

AC: They might have one. It might even be for sale if somebody actually wants to contact them. If you can possibly contact them and you knew about it.

DM: Did you convince dad it was time to get a self-propelled?

AC: We’re talking about it. And in actuality, we will probably not get one, but we will certainly use it. Because the other piece of that puzzle is you can’t do everything with that pull behind sprayer because of fungicide. And that was one of the things that we actually tested out this year is, you know, it’s fungicide application and really putting it on thick, really blowing it down and significant yield improvements on fields that had it.

DM: With that timely application, it is a no-brainer when it comes to investment, isn’t it?

AC: Yes, I mean it was stark. And so I think, and also being able to apply it right at that level and blow it down in there versus when you do the aerial application. And I know drones are good and getting better. And it’s a changing technology. But man, just to be able to put, you know, whether it’s a Hagie or something with floaters on there and go right above it and push it down, makes a significant difference. And so from a farmer’s standpoint, you’re thinking ROI right away.

I want to have it. need to have it. And I can’t wait for a co-op to put it on. Cause if I get the timing wrong, you lose control of that. So there’s that piece of it. but like I said, there’s substitutes to it as well. And then on the other side though, that a lot of farmers don’t necessarily think about is this thing. I mean, they certainly think about the fact that it is costly now. The prices have gone up pretty significantly in the last couple of years, with the self-propelled sprayers. There’s a lot more technology on them. They’re getting fairly advanced. At least most of the brands are.

But they, from a dealer standpoint, even when those prices rise, that creates a ton more risk at the dealership. And it’s not like a tractor where a farmer’s coming by every month to look at this machine. It’s got its seasonality baked in. And so if you don’t sell it, similar to a combine, during a certain period, you’re going to have to wait a little while while you’re sitting, just eating that holding cost and it’s burning a hole in your pocket. And so they create a lot of risks with that. And given the volatility of these things because in some farmers eyes, it’s a nice to have, it’s a great to have, but it’s not a need to have like a tractor. That creates more uncertainty or volatility with these and a little bit more on the risk side. And so I don’t know if I mentioned this last podcast we did, but in December I held a meeting with some of the best used equipment managers around the country that we work with. And we kind of had a meeting of the minds together and I asked them, I said, of all categories that you work with, what is the most concerning?

And by far, they said self-propelled sprayers. Inventory wise, yep, that was most concerning.

DM: I mean inventory wise. So we have a bunch of the sprayers sitting out in the countryside.

AC: We do but honestly, it’s not even from a growth rate of supply. It wasn’t as much as row crop tractors. It wasn’t as much and it’s not as much as large four wheel drives have grown. It’s just the nature of the beast makes it a high risk item. Similar to how combines are.

DM: It sells between January and March or April, and probably February to April, February. And then that’s it. Bam.

AC: It does very tight timeframe. Yep. And then you got August again, where where you might sell some, there’s quite a few that’ll go through in August and then in December, you’ll get some at year end. And then there is the cotton country, which is a massive component to go on cotton. But now you’re talking a lot of shipping if you’re moving it from north to south. And so there’s just a lot of limitations in there with self propelled sprayers that make it a high risk item for these dealers.

DM: Well, we certainly see where the new have dropped off to the point where John Deere has laid people off at their Ankeny plant, which builds the self propelleds . So they’re responding to that. And I know some of Case IH with their Patriot has done the same thing. They’ve pared it back. So we need, we know the sales have dropped off, but do you think one of the reasons why that happened too is we were selling these things at a rapid pace for the last 15 years? That we stock up the market to the point to where guys are just kind of writing it for a while, getting all the good out of the machine they have, or buying some good used.

AC: Yeah, yeah, I think we definitely did when I was working in other industries, we’d see that often is if you put out too big of a promotion, people would buy forward and so they would stock up whether if it’s food, they’re stocking it up, they’re throwing it in their freezer for, you know, for times when it’s going to be needed. And essentially, in equipment, you’ve got buyers, you got your first buyer who’s buying a brand new equipment or they’re maybe leasing it, but they’re going to trade it in after one or two years, you’ve got your second buyer, your third, your fourth and your fifth and people naturally fit into those categories.

But man, when times are good, a lot of those second buyers, the times were really good and they could have bought a used piece, but they also could have bought a brand new and they did. and they kind of jumped ahead, bought new and now they’re okay handling a four or five year old piece of equipment. And so they’re going to wait. If they’re sitting on that piece of equipment, they’re going to wait, continue to use it. They can maintain it. they’re good at those types of things and they’re not to their period yet where they need to trade in. And so there’s an absence of those second buyers in the market right now that create a disruption in this typical natural flow of equipment.

DM: And also before then too, even more so than tractors and combines, sprayer technology just kept cutting edge all the time. And then that just, it seemed to hold off a little bit. I think they reached the point with carbon booms and the spot spraying and nozzle control. There really hasn’t been anything big come out with self-propelled sprayers in the last couple of years to inspire that technology buy, right?

AC: Yeah, I mean, I think the biggest technology is with the vision technology that’s out there and now that’s bolt-on, which is fantastic. I think AGCO’s got options. Deere’s got See & Spray and Case’s got the Raven options, but your sprayer has to be new enough to be able to accept that type. And so then that I think from a 2018 model, at least I know that’s the case with Deere. I’m not sure with the other manufacturers. It has to be at least that new. So it’ll be interesting to see how that all plays out because now you have a couple other variables and you have technology that can be bolted on. If it’s traded, can it be bolted off? You know, similar to RTK receivers and you know, so you’ve got those questions in the market and we haven’t really seen that technology come through the auction market yet from a used standpoint.

DM: No, no, it’s so new it hasn’t laundered through that we see it. But also because of the price point that they’re asking for, and the fact is that we’re not rolling in money in the countryside. It’s sometimes that can be a hard buy to make during these times, because you got to look at the ROI of that with point row and accuracy of spraying and automatic operation that sprayers offered, along with more and more capacity, bigger tanks, wider booms, you could see a return fast but the See & Spray does offer a lot of great things. We’ll see especially with fungicides too but particularly with weed control that’s kind of tough guys are just they’re not holding off on technology right now i just think they’re looking at they’re waiting for profits to return.

AC: Yeah, yeah, I think so. Paying for a subscription can be a hard pill to swallow for a lot of farmers. I know when I talked to my dad, he’s like, it’s something that they haven’t really had to experience before. But they’re very, they’re savvy, and they’re running the numbers on the ROI analysis. And so I think there are a lot of farmers that have experienced the reduction in chemical costs, especially with inputs being higher. Now, they’re watching that and a lot of the technologies is really good. But if you’re going to broadcast spray anyway, then it’s not helping you. And so then the set of costs, is it worth it? And I know Deere has adjusted their SaaS, their service revenue model a little bit and their pricing, because it’s tough to figure out what you should charge for a service out in the industry. It’s not as easy as a tangible good. So it takes a little bit of adjustment and adaption.

DM: Right. Yeah. There’s no hard metal to sell. They’re used down the road either. I did look at numbers. I was looking at numbers. Deere’s website, machine finder.com had 2,500 self propelled units in the market and there were 450 model year, 2024, which was kind of surprising. And then it fell off from there.

The biggest numbers there were 240, 20, 23, 246, 20, 20s, 20, 20 twos. mean, 151, 20, 21s. So there was a good supply out there in the marketplace. And this is another one of these things that the others are looking at because these are sitting on dealers lots and they would like to move them and they got to get them moved before planting starts basically. So now is the time to go looking if you want to buy.

AC: Yes, absolutely. If a farmer is looking to buy a sprayer, and there’s a lot of benefit from buying a sprayer from a dealer, from the technology standpoint, from getting things hooked up, I mean, that’s a bit of a different beast than just buying a tractor at auction. Having a dealer as your partner is a huge benefit. And then from a timing standpoint, absolutely. Right now, and dealers are, they’re looking for those kinds of conversations, and they would love to kind of engage it. At least all the dealers that we work with are more than willing to engage in those conversations. And when I pull up the data, when I just look at the the amount of sprayers like you kind of mentioned that are available now versus last year, it is that less than 1000 hour sprayer that is exactly and that there’s man from a percentage standpoint, doing rough math of my numbers here less than 1000 hours, there appears to be about 10 to 15, almost 20% more of those type of spares in the market now than there were last year. And that’s again, just compared to those less than 1000 hours. But it’s those low hour models, which gets back to the conversation we had about those second buyers kind of being absent the market, that I think it’s a chance. If that’s the type of sprayer that you want in your operation, that they’re there. And the technology is fantastic. And I think the dealer is willing to pick up the phone.

DM: So tell me you’re having this conversation with your dad and brother, Yeah, mostly your dad. Now, by the way, is your brother farm with him or helps?

AC: My brother’s actually, he’s a vet, but he understands where the money is, and so he is putting cats back together and not cattle.

DM:I know, but he’s bringing the money to the farm in other words. So yeah, you’re having this conversation with dad, right? I’m coming back and helping your farm. I want a self-propelled sprayer, right? I’m tired of that pull behind sprayer. Yeah?

AC: Yes. I don’t know. I live down here in Frugal town and I am known for being overly frugal. So if anybody hears this and they know me, they’re like, no, he’s not going to spend any extra money on a He’s going to pull that pull behind sprayer myself. But that might just be a me problem.

DM: You’re not saying your dad’s that frugal?

AC: No, not as frugal as I am. I don’t know what happened. Skipped a generation.

DM: Okay. That seems a little bit now. How old is he?

AC: He’s 73, 74 here in a couple months.

DM: So yeah, we share, we share about the same age. Yeah. I haven’t gotten frugal either, so I got to stop buying tractors, but we’re not going to get into my problems here. So, is there any particular area of the country that’s better to be looking if you want to buy? Because today you can buy sprayers most anywhere and get them transported fairly simple. should you be looking at auctions out West because it’s been kind of tough time for some of those guys out there or certainly the South, it’s always problematic because of rust problems and so on and so forth. Are there sweet spots?

AC: Yeah, with sprayers, it’s unique, like I mentioned earlier, because of cotton. And so there’s a lot of sprayers down south. Now, again, if you go really far to the south and to the east, closer to the Gulf of Mexico, then you’ve got rust and you got salt and everything like that. Texas, again, you, you want to know kind of the dealer and have a good reputation or a good rapport with them. But there’s a lot of good sprayers and if they’re shedded, even better. So there’s opportunity there. When I look across the entire map though, Iowa is thickening them.

There’s a ton in Iowa and I know and great friends with Agrivision and Prair land partners and they they have a deal with a lot of their co-ops and so they’ll have sprayers and then the sprayers are used by their kind of their co-op arm of their business and so they tend to be one of the dealerships at least a Deere dealership that has a ton of great well taken care of sprayers But yeah, when I’m looking at the map, it’s Iowa, Illinois. But then Kansas and Texas there’s where I see the most.

I see a pretty heavy dot down in Georgia, which gets down to cotton country. And then down even into the panhandle of Florida for the same reasons. And so, if you’re looking for deals, they’re going to be all over the United States. And like I said, I know some dealers down in Texas that do take really good care of their equipment and they do. They have some sprayers that

DM: Really? Southern Georgia as opposed to Northern Georgia.

AC: They could travel north and that’s not typical for the flow of equipment. It usually flows north to south. Sprayers might be that exception.

DM: Midwest equipment always brings top dollar when it comes to auctions. But you’re right. You know, there’s that area, the high plains, Amarillo and North, that it’s so Midwest like an operation, drier climate, but the equipment is well taken care of. These are farmers that are proud of what they drive and their iron. So, it would be a great place to look down there. So it may be the time to look at it.

Any particular other advice? Are some sprayers selling? Are they all 100 foot booms that are selling? Or is it more popular to get the 80s?

AC: Yeah, I actually just pulled that up prior to talk with you and between a 80, 100 and 120 again at dealerships. They’re about evenly split right now from our dealer partners. But again, that’s at dealerships. Soon as you go to auction, you’ve got your average pulled pretty far down by some older model sprayers and, and some things that have seen, seen a lot of action. But yeah, I think it’s those larger booms now.

DM: Oh, they’re predominate. The ones that I had, the 616R, the 412R, the 410R, predominantly 100 and 120 foot booms. Very few, I mean, it was rare to find 80. They almost don’t exist anymore unless you get into older sprayers.

AC: Right. And again, you’re going to run out of your capacity fairly quickly with that tank. But if you think about the benefits, I mean, in the limited resources on farms, and again, I’m talking on average across the United States, labor, labor is one of the tightest resources and your time is huge. And then I think there’s a lot more studies coming out now. And, and it’s certainly not any kind of voodoo science is the soil compaction. And so you can cover an extra 20 feet, an extra 40 feet on a boom, and you can follow certain paths, then you’re reducing the amount of tracks in general across your field. So there’s a lot of thought going into that.

DM: But also if you’re going in with fungicide control, that wide boom gives you the opportunity to be more timely, doesn’t it? Because timeliness can be everything in fungicide application. If you get it in that sweet spot that week, the efficacy of the product goes way up. I know that some guys, they’re getting more and more research to show that, how much more effective it is if you can get it right when the emergence happens.

AC: Yes.

DM: And I think that’s true also with insecticide application as well. If you’re looking at corn borer and you’re using the sprayer for that, if you can get that first brood and knock it out early, then you can really do a far better job than you can otherwise. So 120 foot boom, yeah, does make for fun. Other advice in self-propelled sprayers, older or better when it comes to price, new, does it make any difference?

AC: No, when I look at our most popular sprayers that we have in our database, you know, the R4038 is kind of the old golden child, but, you know, Case’s Patriot 4440 is kind of sitting in that same boat where there’s just a lot of them out there. Those two are price-pointed really close. And then of course you got Hagie’s, so you can’t necessarily compare a Hagie to anything else just because of the, you know, you’re right, it is. Yep.

DM: The Cadillac. Yeah.

AC: So you’ve got that, and then one of the big wild cards that we’re going to be looking forward to seeing in the auction and seeing how it’s received in the market are the Fendt Rogators. And I know that, I mean, those aren’t really hitting the auction market yet. I’ve been able to sit in some and see the technology, talk to our friends over at Ziegler who are kind of showcasing some and they’re fancy. They are nice. And again, they’re bringing, think, I don’t know if it’s in the machines yet or if it will be in the machines after they’ve had a chance to kind of run them through the manufacturing facility, but the joystick control and a few other other bells and whistles that they have over at AGCO. So excited to see that stuff come out.

DM: Well, talk about applicators. brings us to best buy, worst buy. What the heck were they thinking buy? And I got a great one. Oh my gosh. I found an Agchem Terragator 1603 self-propelled floater sprayer. Big tires, right? It sold February 26th, just a little while ago. $3000 bucks. Just 2200 hours on it. No kidding. $3000 bucks. Now I know it’s a terragator. I get that. Big tires and all that. But if you’ve got to spray anything, broadcast spray, for 2200 hours, I wasn’t quite sure. I looked at it, it was fairly well equipped. Had a 65 foot wide boom. Okay, it had a 10 speed manual transmission. But still, had, you know, it could still get the job done.

AC: Did I hear you right? How much did you say it went for?

DM: $3000. Yeah, it was running. And it had 55 bids. So there were a bunch of guys interested in it. So yeah, that would kind of surprise. Sold out in Western Nebraska, Fort Calhoun. I was just thinking to myself, you know, if you bought that and you just use it to run fluid around anything, that would be, yeah. Oh my gosh. That would put your dad into a sprayer except to couldn’t use it after the crop was up. 

Yeah, I’m not sure what was going on there. And then the other thing was, now that would be on the, my gosh, why, how did that sell that well? There was a 2012 Sunflower Multifinisher. This was a 37 foot Multifinisher. Had the Spike Tooth Harrow on it, which is, you know, now we’ve gone to a lot of rolling baskets and other things. And it looked to be in pristine shape.

The shovels on it were, I looked at the images of course, this was a South Dakota listing, and that sold for $26,000. For a 37-foot multi-finisher, that was a fairly decent price. So we haven’t seen run-ups in auction prices yet this winter. Have you found anything that were good buys?

AC: Hmm. You know, now they mentioned it. I just kind of pull them up because whenever I get these, I default immediately to our TractorZoom Pro website because I can pull them up instantly. It’s a definite cheat code on my side. So it’s a double edged sword because then I never commit anything to memory. I’m like, why would I try to remember all these auction results? Because I can pull it up in a second and see everything. Yeah.

DM: You’re the man to know. Tractor Zoom’s the place to go to get this information is what you’re saying, right?

AC: Hey, it does help unless you have to actually commit this stuff to memory and then it backfires on you. But no, mean, there’s a few of them out there that, you know, the… which one was I just looking at?

There’s a Landoll 7822 that just looked sharp, I mean almost new and this thing sold at auction for $40,000. It’s just I don’t know exactly what it retails for but looking through it

DM: 7822, what’s the width on… That’s not 22 foot, no. That is say…

AC: No, no. it as I’m flipping through here, I don’t know if the auctioneer definitely listed it. But essentially, I think this probably sat in a shed for a couple of years. It’s 2021. But the feel bad for the seller because it probably only had one year in the field. But whoever bought it got a right. 

DM: Got away with a like new machine. Yeah. And those are the fun ones to find. No, I did run into a sunflower, a 50, 35, 35 foot field cultivator. And that looked really nice too. Had a full, another four bar arrow on that. And the shovels were in really good shape. That was $32,000. That was in Texas. One of those high plains panhandle tillage pieces of equipment. For $32,000 on a field cove, a 35 foot field cove elevator. It, not bad, mid-sized farms certainly could use one of those. But again, it was in fairly good shape. Not like yours though, it must have been bought, used one year, the guy retired, didn’t get around to selling it. And now did that sell on a general auction or did he have a retirement sale?

AC: It looks like it sold on a general consignment auction.

DM: Yeah, which is where most things are going down the way. Hey, I found something for your dad. Best Buy pull type sprayer. This was a Red Ball 570. Now don’t, don’t tell him this because then he’ll want to stay with the pull type sprayer. Or is that you the one? 1200 gallon tank, 80 foot booms, 20 inch spacing, triple nozzle bodies, clean water rinse tank sold with a raven controller, can bus system, rate flow sprayer controller.

320/90 R46 tires pretty sweet $2,800 Yeah for you could have two pull types sprayers. 

AC: That’s exactly where that argument would end.

DM: Good for planting, but yeah, doesn’t help you with the fungicide, does it?

AC: No, no, but it, mean, it is pretty stark. When I look down at all of the auction results for our pull behind sprayers, and everything that we had that sold in January, everything that at auction that sold in February, I mean, you’re looking at everything from $5,000 for small Hardys, uh, all the way, you know, to $33,000, uh, for some larger ones, but that’s where it caps. And then you move to the self-propelled sprayer and you’re 10x almost on average with everything. I mean, that’s significant investment. Again, it can do so much more.

DM: Yeah, that makes a big difference. Hey, I found something for Ryan Roossinck. And if the listeners ever get an opportunity, you should read Ryan’s column in agriculture.com. I mean, I’m a tractor historian. put out a little publication called the ageless iron almanac love tractor history, but Ryan’s got tractor histories that are way behind the scenes. And he’s an ardent tractor puller and just a great guy. Anyway, I found him a classic out on Western Nebraska. was a 1947 Ford 59 C pickup. Boy, this thing was rust free. Honest to God out there, as you know, in the high plains, you park something and it’s going to pretty much just get a little rust on it just sit there for 50 years and look the same way. So that pickup had all the style, the stylish nose and everything sold for just $799 bucks. Yeah.

AC: Wow.

DM: It was sitting outdoors. That’s true. the sale bill did state that the pickup was not operational the day of the sale because it was missing an engine and tranny, but you know, Hey, just 7,000 hours. That’s what it listed showing that is of course, tell Ryan, he blew it there. should have gotten on that one.

AC: Well he could have had a, had a gem, but talking about that, I mean, just the power. I, again, I don’t know if this is tractors necessarily, or if this just is the power of stories and nostalgia, or probably the Venn diagram of where they cross over. But Ryan, sent a message to our crew this morning that he got an email from a guy about a case 10 90 tractor that a story that he had written. He wrote the story four years ago and the guy emailed him today. And, and we said, talk about a kind of a long tail. But I think that’s when you talk about evergreen content and you talk about, you how do these stories last? And you look back into any farmer shed. mean, you look at we have a lot of are not lot. We’ve got two old John Deere Bs sitting in our shed that I think the equipment obviously does a functional job now. But it has such a deep story and an emotional tie to it that that that kind of persists and and it makes it more than just a hunk iron.

DM: Well, it’s interesting too, is that a lot of Ryan’s really good at late model histories, on the muscle tractors that we saw and coming out in the late sixties on the end of the seventies. And, I’ve been writing a lot more history. In fact, I just, in that area too, I just did a thing on the 56 series internationals. That’s of course the thing that’s collectible now, but if you have any love of old iron, the sweetest deals, I think, in all used iron, the whole big world of used iron now, is those tractors of your fathers, or maybe our early era, John Deere A’s, Farmall C’s, M’s, all of which are selling often restored for not even the price of the paint that took to paint that tractor. Because the interest in that has fallen way off as guys have gone for 1960s and 70s tractors.

So if you’re looking to add those to your fleet, now’s the time to buy them. Because there’s estate sales going on where guys would have 50, 60 tractors and they’d sell them all off, all restored. And if you are looking for a sweet deal, that’s the place to find them.

AC: But I think you hit on that the head it’s it’s that nostalgic piece of essentially what did my what did I grow up and my dad drove And there’s a massive piece to that and then but it’s it’s those Pieces that their dad drove that are coming up talks now that their interest is in you know when I look back at her beats my grandpa drove it And so I don’t I have no recollection. We’re still gonna keep it and try to clean it up But but I don’t ever remember him driving it

DM: So what are you looking to buy? What’d you grow up with? 4020?

AC: No, 4040, 4440. An interesting story, I was talking to my dad about John Deere, because we have green tractors on the farm, and he doesn’t necessarily have an affinity necessarily to the green, it’s just he has green. But it started because we…

DM: He doesn’t, in other words, he does not wear green underwear. No. Okay.

AC: No, no does not. So I’m sorry to, you know, Adam Norby up there is selling them the stuff, but, but no, but what it started at was actually the eighties and we barely skimmed out through the eighties by like minutes and seconds of, you know, land payments and everything. And so, and I was just a tiny kid at this point, but, he was telling me that I think it was an 84 or five, kind of coming out the back end of it. John Deere had excess inventory.

DM: Yeah.

AC: At the time, they didn’t have allocations then like they do now. And they didn’t have great metrics on the supply chain. And they just had way too much and they fire saled a ton of equipment. And he just said it was a point in his farming career that he’s like, I know this will never happen again. And he bought a tractor and along with a few other pieces of equipment at pennies on the dollar. And that’s how it started.

DM: I was a cub reporter at Successful Farming Magazine covering this. It was so painful to see the number of dealers in just about a three or four year period fall in half. But we went to go shoot a cover for the magazine about Greenfield, which was the holding lot in Waterloo for the tractors. And we got apprehended by security.

The photographer and I were there and we crossed over the fence into their property. But I remember standing there looking at this 160 plus acres that were just covered with tractors. And we also shot the same thing up at Racine, Case IH. And there’s this field of red. And you’re right, farmers were buying tractors. It was not unusual.

I talked to guys that were buying, if they had the money and their banker was going to go with them, they were buying it 30%, 40% in that area, especially if he bought a collection of stuff from the dealer, because the dealer was desperate to get rid of them. it was a, I don’t want to remember times like that, even being apprehended on Deere’s dealer lot. So I was, but I was forced to take a tour of the tractor factory. So it wasn’t so bad. That was my, that was my penalty for doing that. 

They’d have thrown lunch in, I’d felt lucky. Hey, I wanted to ask you about old tractors. Have you had any success on the farm? All did you get any information? This is the poker chip, the poker game farm all that your great grandfather, right? Or grandfather, God, you got to tell the story again. So this is a, this typical Northern Iowa farmers, by the way, listeners. Yeah.

AC: Yeah, so I’ll put out I mean the if anybody knows the metropolis Rudd, this is where it went down in what is now tanks bar and grill But it was in the back corner in my my grandfather who I never met he passed away from cancer But well before I was born But he was a very sharp guy and prolific card player But yeah much to the chagrin of my grandma, but he would find himself up there and I think some of these card games got fairly serious to where

DM: Well, went, probably in winter, right? And they were trying to pick up some extra money for seed corn buys, right? About this time of year, okay.

AC: you know, once the cash went out, the pile would.

Yes. Mm-hmm. Yep. And I think also I’d hear it during harvest time because people would go line up with the tractors and there was only one co-op. And again, you weren’t taking trucks up there, just tractors and wagons. And you’d park it and then go wait in line and in the bar and pull out cards. Mm-hmm. Exactly. And so through that time that he spent there, I think one of the poker games got serious and the pile in the middle grew to the point where keys started being dropped in the middle.

DM: Yeah? Ha ha ha!

AC: And yeah, and somebody’s tractor keys found themselves in the middle of the pot and my grandpa came out on the other side. So that was one of his first tractors. I believe so. That’s what we’re still looking for pictures to find out exactly what it was. And we had it for a while. And so I’ve got to go back and do the digging to figure out first of all, what exactly was it? And do we have any kind of specs on it? And where it’s at now.

DM: well if you could find out when when it’s sold it’s so that he have an auction when he passed or did you sell it through a trade in do you remember

AC: sold it, we believe sold it through a trade-in. And so it wasn’t an auction because my dad acquired most of the equipment from that point and then had it for a little while. But then, yeah, now it’s, it’s somewhere out there. I just need to do a little more digging to find this thing. We do.

DM: Well, we need to find this for you. So this is North Central Iowa. The hometown is Rudd, Iowa, R-U-D-D.

AC: Are you I’m surprised that not all your listeners know where red is like you don’t need to spell it out. Yes.

DML I, well, just in case, know, Nebraska, Nebraskans like me can be a little dense, but I’ve actually been to Rudd before, so I know right where it’s at. But Northern Iowa, central, but around Mason City, and it’s so, it would have very likely stayed in that area then.

AC: Yeah, that’s that’s kind what we think. And so again, I live down here closer to Southern Iowa right now. So I don’t have the I’ll go back up every once in a while or or fairly often, but not, you know, when I’m up there, I’m not driving the countryside looking so.

DM: Well, you won’t find poker game tractors down here because we’re just a little more dutiful down here.

AC: That is true. In my neck of woods there is no poker being played. It’s a yes.

DM: Now, the difference in the winter between here and Northern Iowa is so severe I can understand why they had to pass their time playing games.

AC: Exactly. It’s pure survival.

DM: See if you can find a serial number. You can find even a date that it’s sold, some information. We’ll put the word out, we’re gonna find this tractor. That would be kind of fun. Bet your dad would get a gas out of that then. He would think that’s pretty cool. By the way, was there any Best Buy, Least Buy, Dumb Buy that you ran into this week?

AC: Well, I don’t know if I’d go as far as the the dumb buy but no.

DM: Yeah. I got the good one, the interrogator. That was pretty cool. Wasn’t it? Yeah.

AC: Yeah, one of the ones that caught my eye John Deere’s 612R and again when I look at data I’m looking at thousands of these data points. So I look for outliers and there’s one that went for just under a quarter of a million dollars. So hundred and forty five thousand dollars It had a fair amount of hours on it for just a 2023. So it’s you know that that price for a 2023

DM: Really?

AC: is significantly less. there’s a 2022 that went for $420,000 just at the end of the year and this one sold about a week ago. So $245,000 up in Washington. not a bad price Washington State. And so again you’re not in an epicenter there I don’t know if the little bit of lack of competition brought the price down.

DM: And how much again?

AC: But that was one that certainly caught my eye. It’s one of the lower prices for these sprayers that I’ve seen in a little while.

DM: Yeah. I would say considering its age and what technology it has, that was, and it wouldn’t have been that hard to load it up on a truck and necessarily bring it back to the Midwest if you were buying here or Texas, if you’re a farmer down there looking to buy. So, yeah, I bet that must’ve been Western Washington state. There’s a couple of big auctions in that area houses that, work in. sure. Yeah. They do have, in fact, I know.

AC: Altopia, Washington, which again, I’m.

DM: Bookers’ name runs a great auction out there, consignment auction, that I’ve always wanted to go to sometime.

AC: and it was from Booker Consignment Auction. There you go.

DM: it was. Okay. Yeah. Neat guy. I really enjoyed working with him. here’s what we’ll do. We take a family vacation. We’ll go to Washington and go to one of his sales and then we’ll broadcast from there. That’ll be fun. We’ll cover the auction. He would, he would love having us. Anything else you’d discover?

AC: Yeah, that’s really what I’m looking at right now because a lot of our dealer partners are I mean I’m watching sprayers all the the sizes of row crop tractors and then four-wheel drive tractors because it those I think are kind of on the precipice of have we hit a bottom and are we rebounding or is this a momentary pause and so that’s where I’m looking

DM: I kind of wonder, but if you are going to make a buy, March is going to be the time to do it, likely. Not only because you’re going to be in the field, but if there’s a time to do it, the prices are probably the best right now.

AC: Yeah, yep, they’ve certainly leveled off. We’ve had this new normal like I said don’t necessarily Judge your trade-ins or your expectations off of ‘22 and ‘23 because that just wasn’t real and But ‘24 was more of a normal type of market at least in the auction world

DM: Okay, well we’re going to get together in a couple of weeks and then we’ll compare notes at that time as we get right on top of planting and see what’s going to take place. So thanks for your time, it was a lot of fun. And we’ll see you again in another Iron Review with Andy and myself.

AC: That sounds good. I’ll see you at Commodity Classic.

DM: Take care.

We did, my gosh, we know how to talk, 58 minutes. Good deal. Is that what you like? You like 30 to 50? No, up to an hour is great. See, I got them all excited with that terragator.