Combines Out with it

Go to a Cat dealer who sells lexions and find out for yourself. Better yet, visit the lexion plant in Omaha, NE. A plant built to that magnitude isn't left to sit idle. However, on this entire site, an awful lot of idle chatter goes on by many who haven't the working knowledge to support their comments!!!

I have been to the plant, and yes it is a huge investment, but lets not kid ourselves - they could and will leave it sit empty rather than lose money every year. They have not hit near the sales level they were hoping for, and that is why Cat left the arrangement. Don't get me wrong, I love the combine. I have never been able to put a combine through the conditions we did this past year without sacrificing the acres we cover every hour. A very efficient combine can not alone be justification for a company to keep losing money. They are on an uphill battle. The combine is very pricey in an ag economy going nowhere fast (although you can cover more acres_combine, but that is tough to tell farmers),PlUS they have a poor network of dealers. Our dealer is great - I have phoned at 2am many times to have them out by 3am and fixed by 4am - and I have never had that kind of support from any other dealer. But there are alot of Cat dealerships who think they can merge there construction line with their ag line - AND IT DOESNT WORK. The sooner they realize this, the better off they are. But, it is also not possible to have a dealership entirely structured to service and sell combines - it just is not economical. Once you throw in a bit of uncertainty, what farmer would invest that money in something that may in 3 or 4 years have NO dealer service, let alone no resale valueIJ If they want farmers to commit, maybe they should rethink things a little further. First - start with the custom combine run.

Go to a Cat dealer and find outIJIJ That seems to be the problem around here. Our Cat and JD dealer are in the same town about 110 miles away. However, the reason why we buy JD is because they come to us. The Cat salespeople don't. We are not going to drive 110 miles just to do paper work on a new piece of machinery when the other guy is willing to come out to our farm. I know that there are good dealerships and bad dealership for all makes. We are fortunate to have a good dealership. The lexion combines made a big splash in our area when they first came out. They were at the local farm shows for about 3 years but I haven't seen one for at least 2 years. I have looked at them closely and they look to be a impressive combine. But that doesn't matter if the dealership won't make an effort to sell them. last year was the first year I actually saw a lexion in the field. But then I looked across the road and there was 3 new JD STS combine going. These combines I saw were about 3 miles out of the town that has the Cat and JD dealers. I think the Cat dealers around here and maybe else where too need to put more effort into there sales pitch.

If your parents didn't tell you already, you have to give more than you take. So how about you share some of your combine experiences from last summer first and maybe then somebody else will pitch in.

I work for a cat dealer, not in the ag department but the truck engine side, and what I know from them is that when the person(s)go looking for a combine in my area, if the JD dealer knows that they are looking at a Cat lexion the they automatically drop 15 to 25,000 dollars off at that moment. The friend that I have in our company have even showed me the paper work on these very things. What makes it worse is the fact is that Cat knows this goes on and doesn't seem to want to make the effort to make an attempt to do something similar, but what has been siad id that they know that there product is better and they don't need to. My company does go out and meet with the different farmers, this I do know.

What you say is true. I speak from personnel experiance. J.D. wants the deal and will play 'dirty' to get it done. It's their proagrative, even though it seems unfair. Sure creates hard feelings between neighbors and their dealers. How would you feel when you found out your neighbor paid 25,000.00 less for a identical machine as yoursIJ It has been said that with fewer brands to choose from the farmers lose. Maybe not, maybe it gives us more leverage.

There are some very evident and justifiable reasons why other combine manufacturers do not play the game that Deere does. One, and probably the most important, these so called "bounty" programs are not extended to those who currently own JD combines, they go to those who own competitive combines, who are being pursuaded to switch to Deere. The JD combine owner still pays the regularly negotiated retail price. Secondly, once you have received such a magnificent incentive to buy, you must remember that the incentive is always taken in lieu of something else...what was your opportunity costIJ Recently, these bounty incentives that Deere offered did nothing more than flood the market with used combines, lowering their trade-in values, at a down turn in the ag economy.

John Deere has just done this in Australia, before harvest some dealers were giving an extra $20,000 trade on the non green trade if you had brought the trade new, and some would throw in a JD ride on. And when the harvest was finished JD had a yard full of new machines in there stock control yard so they cut the price to move them, bet that makes to owners that paid full price before harvest feel real happy.

The 1st thing I remember about last summer is changing a rear feeder chain drive shaft in 95% humidty and 100 degree temps. No fun. 2nd changing a header drive jackshaft and after getting it all together realizing they left out the hole to screw the brush holder in. It must have been made on a friday afternoon. We had one the next morning thanks to unsurpassable support.

We replaced four feedchains last summer. One of them saw nothing but corn and still broke. How did your machine perform in cornIJ We either ran it out the back or had a poor sample and nobody could fix it.