Another AGCO dealer out

I heard J & J Sales in Glasgow Ky is not AGCO any more. They were an old AC and Gleaner dealer from way back. Our closest Massey dealer is about an hour away I heard they were getting dropped the first of the year. How can they expect to sell anything without dealers. Deere has dealers all around here and they sell a lot of equipment.JP 

My closest agco dealer got pushed out of the agco franchise recently, too. Darrel

I guess im pretty lucky around here we got all brands within 25 miles and within 50 miles we got almost 2 dealers of each brand!!

After trying to do business with AGCO I don't have much faith in them. The local dealers are good if they can stay open. They have bent over backwards to satisfy their customer. AGCO prefers to do business with large chain operations such as Butler Implement headquartered out of Fargo at the expense of smaller family owned dealerships, some they would just as soon leave the industry. It has caused a lot of hard feelings in our area. AGCO,s equipment is good. Their relationship with customers is not. You kind of get that take it or leave it feeling from AGCO management. My local dealers have expressed to me that same sentiment with their dealings with AGCO. Will I be a customer of AGCO for future machinery needs? Probably not. How I long for the day's of Allis Chalmers.

This is the corporate way anymore and unfortunately, considered standard. Shareholders come first so this means making numbers to show each quarter better than the last (or else . . .), unless someone puts forth something as a general consensus to explain a flat line or decrease in numbers for the overall industry. Season, overall end product pricing, dollar value against the Euro, etc. are all used to explain profit loss in the short term. Behind the scenes it is a vastly different story as the shareholder pricing has to be maintained at all cost, plus the company image must be maintained, even at the point of saying everything is rosie when in fact the downward spiral has begun. This is also done to keep everyone on Wall Street confused plus moving the numbers to show fat where it does not exist in the case where the company is to be broken up or outright sold.
I worked for a major corporation for many years, oil and gas industry based and worldwide. When you have rapid growth, the above scenario becomes a very slippery slope even more. Outsiders with no experience promoted up, young folks used to "fill a hole" as we called it, even though they did not have a clue what to do without someone holding their hand. I was one of the "hand holders" (under protest) and I was an account manager with a number of oil and gas operators with work in the DFW area, northeast and the Bakken in ND.
One of my accounts attributed to 48% of the company revenue overall and was still growing. I used to say it was a wonder we never killed anybody as we ran at a pace that should not have worked and eventually it came unwound. This happened after the start of the current slowdown and that large customer booted the major corp. as a vendor. I had removed myself from the account as NOBODY in management wanted to believe there was a problem, let alone knowing how to fix it back in 2012. I left the company a year later only to find all manufacturers/service providers of this type operated under pretty much the same model.
I was watching as that company came unwound and is now being sold to the French. Bases (stores) were closed rapidly after the loss of the large account and they realized the size of the losses as they would have been required to maintain that customer during the downturn.
They thought they had cleared the worst recently as the price of oil has been bouncing and the general consensus is it is sitting at the "new bottom" and will slowly inch up through 2017.
Low and behold, because the pending "merger" is to be finalized this fall, word came from up top just last week that additional MAJOR employee reductions are now required immediately so as to make the books look better before both sides vote the merger through (US Government has already approved this merger).
When you forget who really pays the bills, something has to give and it usually ends up being the customer, the guy that paid the bills in the first place.

I was just making conversation. I had forgot about Whayne Supply being an AGCO dealer but people tell me they don't usually know a lot about farm stuff. Jerry at J & J did pass away recently but he had been sick for quite some time.JP

What is the franchise fee? I've heard it cost dealers 1000 a month just to sell parts,,is this correct? Most around here that's the only contract they have,,,,,a couple sell MF tractors

I'd say,,, I have some numbers for you Dale on that 6080 bushing, I'll post it to the post and send you them to your in box,,,

Dan Hauter wrote: After talking to AGCO people at their exhibit at the Farm Progress Show I walked away with the impression that AGCO only wants to do business with the largest farmers and wants to do everything over the internet.  Need a part?  Get on the website, create an account for yourself, figure out how you're going to pay for it, order the part, and wait for delivery.  God help you if you need actual brick and mortar shop, partsman / mechanic support.

Poor way to do business if they want to supply the largest farmers. They often need SAME DAY or NEXT DAY parts just as anyone else does.

Try setting up one of those agco parts accounts. I tried 3 times they alway tell you to contact your local agco dealer first and any agco dealer I contacted told me they couldn't setup an account for me that I should just call them with the part number. So what I have to go to agco parts figure out just what parts I need then call the dealer and pay a dealer markup for a service they didn't provide??? Agco parts suck to buy and if I didn't love the AC tractors I wouldn't deal with them.

That AGCO website is terrible. If you like to chase your tail in circles
it is the place to be. It all goes wrong at the "Find a Dealer" stage.
Terrible. They should have an interactive map of all AGCO dealers, then have a filter by product line. I guess mostly the problem is finding
dealers for heritage tractors parts (A/C, Oliver...) None of them are mentioned at the Find a Dealer selection. It is a great fishing expedition- I need a part for my Oliver, so lets enter the, MF or maybe Valtra.... backout and try again. Crazy.

So AGCO, your agriculture company, specializes in AG equipment.
Isn't it great after driving 200 miles to your local AGCO dealer that you don't have to walk around that industrial and construction equipment? Hey large or small farm, I NEVER saw a skid steer, backhoe or excavator on a farm, have you?

Well we did have a skid steer they are handy. But yes I get your point. Heck I can drive 2 hours to my closet agco dealer who happens to be a MF dealer. Here is a true story for you. I drove 2 hours to the dealership. 3 people in the showroom. Asked then about ordering about $600 worth of AC parts and was told my nephew is the only one who knows how to order those parts even if you have part numbers he might come in tomorrow if you want to come in then he typically works Wednesday.   The other dealer near me lost their agco dealership a few years ago. So with service like that why is it they can't stay open?