Massey, Fendt or similar could really differentiate themself and take market share on the back of this I suspect.
Especially with online world having reached farmers as the dealer networks increasingly mean less when you can order equiptment and spares online so JD loses some of the strength they hold by their dominating physical presence alone.
My understanding is basically all high-capital machinery makes a _lot_ of money from support contracts and repairs.
I think there is an idea to do something like this anyways, but it legit feels like something that needs to happen out of the goodness of your heart because you _are_ just leaving money on the table.
Contract negotiations for newbuilds are cutthroat, the most important parameter being price, price and price. Hence margins are as you'd expect.
Except when it comes to service work, as service rates, parts cost &c are hardly ever touched upon in contracts, probably seeing as they will be relevant for the lifetime of the product, which may run for decades.
Hence the contract merely states that the supplier must _provide_ service and parts. Which we do. While we laugh all the way to the bank.
Of course, if you become too greedy, a customer is likely to start sourcing any parts not uniquely made by you elsewhere and try to have whoever they can find locally install them. Hence some sobriety is useful when determining service rates and parts markup, but the general principle is:
You do newbuilds so that you can get a large installed base to reap service income from. Newbuilds are sold at the slimmest of margins, sometimes even at a loss. You'll recoup it when they start using the gear, anyway.
And if that's the case can't a defector break from the DRM paradigm and offer tractors without DRM so they still make a lot of money at a minimum, but likely more due to picking up more customers?
Like to put it in other terms can't they make up for the difference with increased volume, which drives down per unit production costs and takes money from John Deere?
Like why can't someone be the Kirkland brand of tractors?
He had a team of highly-paid salesmen (and they were pretty much all men) driving around the countryside convincing school principals and the like that they needed new photocopiers.
The profit margin on the machines was basically zero.
But the salespeople earned their keep, because every large photocopier sold also had a service contract that charged a fee for every copy made.
The game was up by the early 2000s when the stand-alone photocopier was replaced with networked laser printers, but while it lasted it paid for a lot of salespeople’s fancy cars, boats, and overseas holidays.
https://cowboystatedaily.com/2023/03/20/big-bud-worlds-large...
Which means you need to get it off the ground without the help of the stock market or investors, all of which are greedy for that money on the table.
Check out Project Farm on YouTube to get a sense of what the average farmer is like in terms of engineering mindset.
They would love this.
Farmers are smart. When your combine breaks during harvest, you can't just grab another or wait a couple of days for the repair guy to show up -- you need it fixed now. That's not easy.
Not to mention, understanding your soil, your crops, the weather, how they interact, how to handle everything from planting up to post-harvest processing... it's not an easy job.
And this starts at a young age, because all the kids help out on the farm, too. You know why licenses for vehicles aren't required on private property? Farms. Early-teenagers need to be able to drive around a truck, then a tractor, etc.
Fortunately in the electronics world, we have Framework and Fairphone. And Nokia making noises around improving repairability. Google and even Samsung launching independent parts programs.
One of the ag manufacturers should break off and take the lead. It's not going to be Deere, or Case, or New Holland.
I love the idea. I wish that were a thing but I suspect that it would be seen as a lack of profit model and businesses are more competitive than ever now.
I have a 1947 Fordson 2n tractor and there is a large community of people that support it as well as a couple 3rd party parts manufacturers that make parts for many old tractors. I suspect that even if Ford wanted to manufacture parts there are not enough of us to make it profitable. Adding to that modern tractors are much more complicated and have many more parts.
It would be really cool if some college were to take on a project to build the "most capable" yet "simplest" tractors that could do everything the modern fancy computer driven tractors can do but using as few parts and as simple and generic parts as possible and then license everything in a way that businesses could not make it proprietary. Perhaps I have an odd fantasy. Open Source Hardware so to speak. If it were to become popular enough perhaps that college could fund their entire department making human and robotic driven simple and pragmatic tractors if for no other reason than bragging rights. "Our $100K tractor can do everything your $2M tractor can do and more." Bonus if it has some Easter-egg hardware like many hidden beer bottle openers.
Perhaps colleges could get DARPA and similar funding in the name of international and national security for each country to create something like this to Feed the World as food scarcity becomes more of a thing. Make farming profitable again.
The current situation is market driven and I guess "repairs will be more expensive/planned obsolescence" is more engaging than a higher price.
And I think that's where a government has to intervene. Even if the situation is the one that suit manufacturers and customers (even if they don't admit it), it is not the best for the environment and collectivity in general, so regulation is in order.
Of course, maybe they're just money grubbing capitalists.
But I think there's more factors than meets the eye, and this behavior is not without cause.
Otherwise, as you say, plenty of players should be clamoring to offer a fix-it-yourself brand that people would flock to and be loyal to.
Maybe sometimes there are real reasons for the way a market and a product are structured.
The people who care if you're allowed to flash the firmware on your bluetooth earbuds are few and far between, but the people who dislike the idea of some remote party being able to use math and law to turn off food production... That's pretty much everybody.
So they're all money grubbing capitalists. But as money grubbing capitalists go, these are among the bigger threats.
Like Apple's repair kits mentioned in another comment, I suspect their strategy will involve providing tools that cost nearly as much to rent as it would take to buy a new machine. Then, only the most well-capitalized farmers will be able to afford to lock up the extraordinary amounts of cash required to perform their own repairs.
Without legislation that absolutely eviscerates their monopolistic business practices, I would be shocked if anything changes for the average farmer.
There's nothing malicious compliance about it... it's just a pain in the ass to repair modern ultra-light and ultra-efficient phones the "right" way.
The repair shops can figure out how to glue a screen to a housing on their own. The problem is they can't buy new parts, and they can't swap used parts because of software locks.
Apple very much found a way to allow repairs while preventing it from being profitable, and it's likely John Deere will (try to) do the same.
That reminds me of how much things have changed since the "good old days". I have some service manuals for mid-century equipment that don't need much in the way of special tools, and where one is needed or would be helpful, they tell you how to make one.
The Farm Bureau should be ashamed for its part in this, and this caused them to lose my own trust that they will represent farmers in other important matters. It actually makes me embarrassed to be a member.
Naming and shaming individuals (besides a CEO) within a company is unnecessary, and can cause destruction to lives, families, and communities that have nothing to do with the problem. It also overestimates the individual agency these people hold over what is most often a cultural and policy issue at a company.
Why would you give them that kind of free advertising?
Do you think the people that hire them don't want them to behave in that way?
It's like trying to shame a door-to-door salesperson for being too pushy. All you're doing is advertising that he's really good at his job.
'Name and shame' is a feel-good knee-jerk to social problems that need to be solved by legislature. There's always going to be assholes who will try to turn a quick buck by burning their reputation for a profit.
“Apple shipped me a 79-pound iPhone repair kit to fix a 1.1-ounce battery”
https://www.theverge.com/2022/5/21/23079058/apple-self-servi...
“I’m starting to think Apple doesn’t want us to repair them”
Designed to be difficult or impossible to repair. Such strategies should be heavily punished.
I don’t mind that Apple does this if anyone is allowed to make their own repair rig as well.
What the author of that article doesn’t realize is that all of Apple’s modern phones are waterproof. To achieve that factory seal against liquid ingress requires fancy adhesives. You can’t open these things with a jeweller’s screwdriver. It takes highly specialized equipment to open the device and then reseal it when you’re done replacing the battery.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwgpTDluufY
Or is there a more recent video where he changes his mind?
Yeah it’s heavy. But you don’t buy it, it’s lent to you (via a hold on your credit card).
I know people complain about this but should they send the battery in an envelope and say “good luck”?
Even if they design the phones to be more repairable (which I know many hope for), nothing can change the design of the phone you bought 2 years ago. And what Apple is doing is miles better than what they were doing before.
[1] https://www.theverge.com/2022/12/29/23530733/right-to-repair...
* In CO, the Governor can't mess with the bill like NY, only sign or veto it
* Gov Polis is very good on tech issues, and has signalled to us (the coalition) that he will sign it
The second one is nice to hear though.
My guess is that Polis likely helped shepard this bill along.
EDIT:
Gov. Polis also signed the first right to repair law for wheelchairs in 2022.
https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/sta...
Surely this particular piece of well-intended regulation will go work out exactly as hoped for, and won't have any unintended consequences that stifle things in the longer run.
If there's some other regulation standing in the way of making that useful, perhaps we should dismantle that one, instead of adding more?
As HBR put it,
“Will manufacturers follow a margin strategy and raise new product prices to capitalize on easier repair? Will manufacturers follow a volume strategy and cut new product prices to lure consumers into replacing instead of repairing a glitchy product?”
Or, in places without it, will farmers resort to crudely deleting emissions-control because it interferes in the long-term?
"Last year, they passed the first US Right to Repair bill since 2012, protecting Coloradans’ right to fix their own powered wheelchairs"
This is absurd. They need to pass comprehensive right-to-repair legislation and then amend it as problems and loopholes emerge.
To wit, humans have invented invisibility, and now we must deal with a wide range of surprising repurcussions of this technology.
Now, we don't have real invisibility, but we do have functional invisibility. Every chip, and and every piece of software, is invisible to the user. This is entirely novel and could not have been anticipated by the framers - who very much cared about innovation and invention, given that the patent system is described in the Constitution. But the invention of invisibility changes the calculus of product creation and distribution profoundly, to the point that it may require an Amendment to address fully. I suggest something along the lines of "If you sell an Invisibly Small Good, then you Must provide to the buyer a Microscope also".)
"50k repair manuals for most vehicles 1982-2013", https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35491294
Comparisons with Apple hardware are not very good because Apple is primarily a consumer brand. Apple does in a sense sell fleets to companies and schools, but most rely on other companies to configure and maintain their computing gear. The market for laptops is very different from the market for large tractors.
