In this episode of Farm Equipment’s Used Equipment Remarketing Roadmaps podcast, hosts Casey Seymour and Aaron Fintel of Moving Iron LLC sit down to discuss tillage trends, including an increase it growers buying new tillage tools, a slowdown in high-speed tillage buying.
They also discuss the reconditioning needs on used tillage equipment, and how it can vary significantly from customer to customer depending how they are using the tool.
Watch the VIDEO REPLAY of this podcast.
Full Transcript
Kim Schmidt
Hi, I'm Kim Schmidt, executive editor of Farm Equipment. Welcome to Farm Equipment's Used Equipment Remarketing Roadmaps Podcast. In this episode, host Casey Seymour and Aaron Fintel of Moving Iron LLC talk tillage and how tillage trends have shifted over the years. Let's jump in on their conversation now.
Casey Seymour
This week, Aaron and I are going to sit down and talk about probably one of the one ... We don't talk about it near enough. I don't think people in the industry talk about it near enough. It's just one of those things that just happens.
Aaron Fintel
It's talked about real hot and heavy for a week in November and a week in March.
Casey Seymour
Yeah. And there's two things that come along with it. We're going to talk about fall tillage obviously. Fall tillage has two big components. Well, obviously the tillage piece and, two, the tractor that comes with it, right?
Aaron Fintel
Correct.
Casey Seymour
So, are you doing some deep ripping? Are you doing just some light and just knocking the corn stalks down and doing some residue management? Whatever you're doing in the fall, you putting in hydros down, you put, whatever, strip-tilling, whatever you're doing in the fall, that requires a level of horsepower.
Aaron Fintel
Exactly.
Casey Seymour
And each one of those things has a different level of horsepower. So, one thing that we will do here is that when you hear Easy-E.
Easy-E
You are now about to witness the strength of street knowledge.
Casey Seymour
I love the soundboard there. So, once you hear Easy-E come on-
Aaron Fintel
I love him on it just a little bit.
Casey Seymour
So, when you hear Easy-E come on, we're going to lay down what we think is what's going on in the industry. So, Aaron, if you were to take a hard look at tillage practices and how they've changed from the time you started in this business to where we're at now, what's one of the biggest things you've seen change in the fall?
Aaron Fintel
This would be more, I guess, my experience would be Western Corn Belt in that, holy shit, 20 something years. But what I have seen the most of is it happening?
Casey Seymour
Yeah.
Aaron Fintel
There used to be very little activity in the fall-
Casey Seymour
Right.
Aaron Fintel
... mainly, other than ... I can remember you had certain parts of Kansas, Nebraska, little bit Dakota, Iowa guys doing a lot of fall gas and hydras.
Casey Seymour
Yeah. Yep.
Aaron Fintel
That's always been kind of a thing. Always been in certain parts of the world, but in other areas, it used to be ... Of course, you look back 20 years, there's less farmers but bigger farmers and less diversification. So, 20, 25 years ago, you had guys that you had more of the 500 to thousand guy that had cows and he needs them stocks. Or, even this 2,000-acre guy, he don't have cows, but the neighbor does and the neighbor needs stock. So, that has a big impact on it, fall stock grays. And if you're in that part of the world, certain parts of the world, there are other parts of the world, that just does not exist. Never going to and hasn't for half a century probably.
Casey Seymour
Yeah. Yeah.
Aaron Fintel
So, it just kind of depends. Something you and I have talked about on here a lot is the fads of tillage. So, I can remember when I first started and I was in Central Nebraska and there's nothing more fad-related in agriculture than tillage.
Casey Seymour
Right.
Aaron Fintel
Oh, yeah. It's the devil. It's the best thing.
Casey Seymour
Right.
Aaron Fintel
You got to do shallow, you got to do deep, you got to go slow, you got to blaze across. It just depends on what is hot that day, right?
Casey Seymour
The way you finish is really important.
Aaron Fintel
Yeah.
Casey Seymour
You get the crumbler or don't you have the crumbler.
Aaron Fintel
Right. Exactly.
Casey Seymour
You got a harrow behind it?
Aaron Fintel
Not only that, is it a flat bar crumbler or a round bar?
Casey Seymour
Right. Do you have a harrow?
Aaron Fintel
Yeah.
Casey Seymour
A harrow. You know what I mean? Two different things.
Aaron Fintel
That's right. Very different. They just look the same. But I can remember in late '90s, early 2000s, ridge till was still hanging on in big areas. So, that was the anti-fall tillage, that world, because we got to save them ridges. But different products like the rolling choppers, they were the hot shit back then. And there would be some guys that would do that in the fall. They don't work very good in the fall because the corn's too tough yet, needs the winter to decomp. But there'd be some of that, there'd be some guys doing them stump pullers.
Casey Seymour
Sure.
Aaron Fintel
You know? Them V-shaped disc blade deals.
Casey Seymour
Mm-hmm.
Aaron Fintel
So, I've seen a lot of different stuff in the last 20, 25 years. But fall, I would say for darn sure, Western Corn Belt. We don't do the ice state thing so much, the disk ripper and get out there and heave it all up, mix it up, and flip it over.
In this part of the world, it seems like we do a lot of fall ripping, in-line, just in-line rippers and right done. There's a slit in the ground. That's all we did. So, I don't know. There's a little bit of everything, but I have seen that fall turn it black, slowly move west, slowly move out of the rain country just to try and handle residue. We're talking 25 years ago, 200 was right on. Now it better be three.
So, you're doing a 50% bump in yield production, you get more residue with that, populations increase, all that stuff. So, there's a lot of trash to handle. Yep.
Casey Seymour
I think the one part of the tillage discussion out here in our neck of the woods where we're at is that we do fall tilling. I'm not saying that we don't do fall tillage, but so much of that corn stock is one of two things. One, they just come through and swath it and windrow it and bale it and leave the root stubble into the ground yet. And then, they come back in the fall or the spring and turn it over and do what they're going to do. Then, right before they go into plant or they come in with a vertical till or something like that where they're trying to-
Aaron Fintel
Mix it.
Casey Seymour
... mix it up as much as they can, but cut that stock just big enough that hopefully it stays between the rows.
Aaron Fintel
Right.
Casey Seymour
Now, most people that made a VT tool, I want you to come out here to Western Nebraska in the wintertime and I want you to stand in the field in January when the wind's blowing 50 miles an hour and tell me how much of that corn stock is staying where it needs to stay. You know what I mean?
Aaron Fintel
Right! Not much.
Casey Seymour
Not very much. So, it's one of those things where there's different schools of thought on what we're doing. Now, typically, in a normal year, we have a lot more snow cover to keep stuff in place, a lot more moisture to keep stuff in place longer, but-
Aaron Fintel
Once upon a time.
Casey Seymour
Once upon a time. Last couple of winters have been pretty rough.
Aaron Fintel
Now, we get our snow cover to keep it in place right before we plant.
Casey Seymour
Right before we plant. Yeah.
Aaron Fintel
Oh, that's our pre-plant snow.
Casey Seymour
So, hopefully we'll see a little bit of that change just this winter that we get some more of that snow pack to kind of keep things in place and in check. But, all that being said-
Aaron Fintel
Ooh! Not snow pack. We don't want snow pack. Snow cover.
Casey Seymour
Snow cover, pack, whatever.
Aaron Fintel
I don't need no damn snow pack or you bring a shovel.
Casey Seymour
Just during, how many snow pack for is during pheasant season and then they can melt it all away.
Aaron Fintel
No. Nobody cares. People have livestock. We got shit to do.
Casey Seymour
Well, you got sheep. Does that count as livestock?
Aaron Fintel
Yes.
Casey Seymour
Okay. I didn't know, man.
Aaron Fintel
It's the other red meat.
Casey Seymour
I'm new to this.
Aaron Fintel
Eat lamb.
Casey Seymour
I don't-
Aaron Fintel
#EatLamb.
Casey Seymour
New to this whole thing. I didn't know what it was. But, anyway.
Aaron Fintel
Oh, goodness.
Casey Seymour
So, watching that transformation come across. Now, the other side of that, too, is just, you made a good point. As operations have gotten bigger or tillage practices have changed, your 350 horsepower row crop tractor has a limitation to how big of an in-line ripper it can [inaudible 00:08:59], right?
Aaron Fintel
Absolutely.
Casey Seymour
How big of a VT can move, I mean. So, they start looking at the birth of the four-wheel drive to me. And this is where you and I have had this conversation on here a lot about four-wheel drives and what's that look like? Is that the new row crop tractor? And I think in a lot of situations, that row crop tractor used to be kind of limited to that bigger three point mounted implement, whatever that might be. But now, if you take a look at what's going on with that four-wheel drive, you see a bigger opportunity now for a lot more versatility with that piece of equipment other than just a tillage tractor or just a this or just a that.
A lot of cases, that's your planting tractor, especially when you start looking at 24-row planters and bigger. I mean, to maintain that high speed that you need to maintain, unless you're just on flat bottom ground, if you got any kind of a hill at all, you're going to struggle with your typical row crop tractor.
Now, you need the horsepower to go up the hill eight miles an hour and you don't need the horsepower to go down the hill.
Aaron Fintel
Right. Yeah.
Casey Seymour
So, you're seeing some of that. You're seeing more deep tillage, that deep break up the hardpan type of tillage is really starting to come back into play.
Aaron Fintel
Well, and that's imperative. I mean, you can do whatever you want on top, but until you do something about that hardpan, you're only going to get so far.
Casey Seymour
But, I think, the point I was making is I think the hardpan is getting deeper.
Aaron Fintel
No. Right, right.
Casey Seymour
You know what I mean, where it used to be six or eight inches, now it's like-
Aaron Fintel
Yes!
Casey Seymour
... you might be eight to 10 inches. You know what I mean?
Aaron Fintel
Right.
Casey Seymour
So, you really have to get really in there and do it.
Aaron Fintel
Exactly.
Casey Seymour
So, I think those kind of things are making a bigger-
Aaron Fintel
I was just stating a fact about hardpan, was all. I wasn't-
Casey Seymour
No. It was good, though. I liked that. That was good. But-
Aaron Fintel
I was trying to feel needed, is all.
Casey Seymour
So, yeah, well, that stuffs been played. And all of a sudden, now you have a bigger opportunity to use that four-wheel drive in a wider expanse on your farm.
Aaron Fintel
Right.
Casey Seymour
You see four-wheel drives kind of start to make that turn and then they quickly retreat back to where they were as a preferred tractor in operations. And then you see them kind of rush back up to that cusp, if you will?
Aaron Fintel
Yeah.
Casey Seymour
And then they come back. And you've never seen the full-on adoption of a four-wheel drive. I think where the adoption of the full-on four-wheel drive has come into play where they're going to use a four-wheel drive to plant and till and grain cart and running down the list of things that-
Aaron Fintel
It's the tractor.
Casey Seymour
It's the tractor and it's guys that have grown, gone from X to Y and they've made a massive leap in the number of acres that they cover.
I think those are the guys that we see doing that. And then we still see some.
Aaron Fintel
Well, and those guys, everything they have is 40. If that's something 40 foot, that's little.
Casey Seymour
Yeah. I mean, we're talking about.
Aaron Fintel
Also, everything on the yard takes 500 horse.
Casey Seymour
Yeah. And especially with the birth of the high-speed stuff, you know what I mean?
Aaron Fintel
Oh, yeah.
Casey Seymour
I mean, there's a lot of guys-
Aaron Fintel
What a horsepower drain. Whoo!
Casey Seymour
Yeah. You got guys that would run a 35-foot disc and the old adage of thumb, it's 10 horsepower per foot type of thing. Got 35-foot disc and you threw-
Aaron Fintel
Divide it by 0.75 and that's what you get for high speed, right?
Casey Seymour
Yeah. So, now you're doing the same thing, but it's just, you probably need, so, 10 or 15 or 18 horsepower to make that happen. So, all those things start to come into play and what that looks like.
So now, you start coupling that together and so now you're going faster and you're going deeper. Your horsepower requirements are going to go higher.
Aaron Fintel
Right. Oh, absolutely. They have to. Both of those indicators take a substantial amount of power.
Casey Seymour
And that's what she said.
Aaron Fintel
And it is.
Casey Seymour
I know that's where you're going with that.
Aaron Fintel
I couldn't help it. I've been with teen sons all weekend.
Casey Seymour
Right on. All right. So, looking at that, because I mean, that's the one thing that we saw happen pretty early in this transition, this period that we're in right now is where a lot of new tillage got sold for a couple reasons. One, there was a lot of old age tillage, whether it was a mainland manufacturer or a short line manufacturer. There was a lot of really aged tillage that was hanging around. And guys started pricing new ones. A new one was 25% more expensive than the one sitting on the ground and it does the exact same thing. I'll just take the one that's here. Save some money and start playing that game.
So, I guess, as you're looking around right now, what's the one piece of equipment from a tillage perspective that you see guys really kind of banging the drum about?
Aaron Fintel
It's pretty early. So, there's not a lot of that going on yet. But one thing that I have noticed that's maybe brakes have pumped a little bit is the high-speed world has kind of calmed down a little bit. It used to be if you had one, it was gone and name your price, I need it. Get it here. And that's kind of calmed down quite a bit.
Casey Seymour
Is that because, has it gone back to being, I want to talk to you about my tillage needs late fall, early spring?
Aaron Fintel
No, because I know a lot of guys that have those and they use it twice. They'll use it in the fall, you get some decomp going and then they'll use it pre-plant.
I think the biggest factor to it might be that we're finally, and it's kind of funny because since that has blown up, the ag economy was going down as it blew up and then enter the shit show shorted supplied, all that stuff.
So, once that came into the picture, availability becomes an issue for the last, what, three years or whatever. And you just pile all these things on top, ramp ... It's what we're seeing in everything else right now. That's what started it, basically that market, that's what really got it going. And I think maybe to the point now there's enough machines out there that it's maybe calmed down a little bit. But I will say this. You see a lot of 40s on the market and what did we just say? They take a little horsepower to pull that big of a high speed.
Casey Seymour
Yeah.
Aaron Fintel
You don't see ... 25s don't last very long. 30s don't last very long. You get over 30, they kind of sit, but, say that's a five-year-old rig, that's probably been to its new buyer, had it two, three years. He rolls everything every time and then it went to the other guy and now he bought a new one because of the markets. And it might be on its third home.
And that's where you run into trouble because that customer segment can't pull it. So, drop the wings and make three out of it.
Casey Seymour
Right. So, well, this is one thing I've always thought about. We talk about combines and reconditioning points. We talk about tractors and reconditioning points. We talk about planters and reconditioning points and those kind of things. The thing about a piece of tillage is that there's really, I mean, there's, air quotes here, no "Real" reconditioning. Either you're replacing bearings and you're replacing discs or you're not.
Aaron Fintel
Right.
Casey Seymour
If there's something, an issue with one of the wings or something like that where you've got some kind of an issue there, that's more of a damage issue than it is a ... You know what I mean? It's like you hit something with it or whatever. I mean, you might have a-
Aaron Fintel
Wheel rock shaft fan or something.
Casey Seymour
Yeah. Something like that. I mean, you might have a pivot point that goes bad or something like that. I mean, I get all that, but normally, the reconditioning points on piece of tillage equipment, I mean that is so wildly varying. You know what I mean?
Aaron Fintel
Oh, yeah. Well, this is just kind of how I am with everything, but especially tillage, I don't know that you would ever touch a piece of tillage equipment. You budget for reconditioning-
Casey Seymour
Sure. Right.
Aaron Fintel
... but don't actually do it because that disc in March, it was a great disc, but if they don't sell for whatever reason, nobody wants that damn thing in May. And if you hold onto it, then it's been here a year and then it's trouble and so on and so forth, right?
Casey Seymour
Yeah.
Aaron Fintel
So, I think you always budget for it, but don't touch it. Wash it off, make it presentable. Be like, "Here. It's awesome disc, 1435, needs blades. Here's my price. I'll give you blades."
Don't do it. You can't afford ...
Casey Seymour
No, you can't afford that shop.
Aaron Fintel
Joe Blow Farmer doesn't want us to spend $150 an hour to reblade the disc.
Casey Seymour
Oh, yeah.
Aaron Fintel
He doesn't want that. We don't want that. So, you budget for it and send with.
Casey Seymour
All right. I'll disagree that we want that. That's a huge profit center for parts and service department. But I think that, at the end of the day, when you really-
Aaron Fintel
If it sold and the customer's paying for it, we want that.
Casey Seymour
Yeah, absolutely. But I think the difference between hours on a combine or a tractor or acres on a plane or those kind of things. Where they start to come into play is acres on a planter, they're kind of an even relative thing, right?
Aaron Fintel
Right.
Casey Seymour
Acres on a piece of tillage equipment. Now there's guys out there that bury it to the frame and there's guys out there that just cut six inches, right?
Aaron Fintel
As Dave says, "If we're going to disc, we're going to disc."
Casey Seymour
You look out there, that guy, Is he pulling something out there?
Aaron Fintel
Yeah.
Casey Seymour
Oh, yeah. There it is. I see it popping up for air every once in a while, like one of those things on Tremors.
Aaron Fintel
Why are you not making dust?
Casey Seymour
So, I do on Tremors, where just you see it the ground, but then it pops up type of thing. Same kind of deal. But then you've got that customer that does that and then you've got another customer that does it another way. What their soil conditions are like play a big factor in, if you're really sandy, loamy soil, you got to change a lot of bearings and hardly even change the disc.
If you're in heavy clay, probably not going to change many bearings. You're going to change a hell of a lot of discs, you know what I mean?
Aaron Fintel
Yes.
Casey Seymour
So, I mean, all of those things start to come into play. It's kind of like the difference between if you have 1,200 hours on a combine and all it's ever done is cut wheat, the wear on that machine is completely different than the wear if it's cut edible beans and comp and corn.
Aaron Fintel
Yeah, or soybeans.
Casey Seymour
Or soybeans, something like that. I mean, probably at 1,200 hours, the wheat combine is just kind of knocked the paint off the stuff.
Aaron Fintel
Yeah, I was going to say, it's like a 400-hour bean combine.
Casey Seymour
So, the same thing goes with your tillage practices.
Aaron Fintel
Right.
Casey Seymour
I mean, so, whatever you're using with tillage, even the deep-ripping stuff like that. If you're out here and you're deep ripping, your points on that ripper are going to be completely different wear than use it like back home where I'm from, Wichita, where it's heavy, heavy, heavy clay.
Aaron Fintel
Those sons of bitches will glow when you lift them out of the ground at night.
Casey Seymour
You really have got-
Aaron Fintel
Don't touch them.
Casey Seymour
... different things. Yeah. Don't touch. Don't touch them, right?
Now, all that being said, how you recondition those things and how you do that. I'm just saying that I think it's more like a buyer beware type of thing when you're calling on somebody, calling on a piece of equipment in X or Y. Understand what you're buying and where, What is it, because you call us and you say like, "Oh, this thing's ... It's pretty well used in ABC, heavy clay area." The thing might look pretty nice.
Aaron Fintel
Right, exactly.
Casey Seymour
You know what I mean?
Aaron Fintel
Yep.
Casey Seymour
So, and those are the kind of things you got to take into consideration when you're calling this place. Understand the soil conditions and also understand the practices that you have. I mean, probably out here we probably tend to be a little deeper when we till because you can.
Aaron Fintel
Oh, yeah.
Casey Seymour
You know what I mean, whereas-
Aaron Fintel
It's called sand.
Casey Seymour
... someplace else, where it's heavier soil, you might not be that deep, but you're going to get the same level of wear. You know what I'm saying? You're deeper, getting more friction against that disc than you are if you are someplace else. But it may look the same, but it may not look the same. It's a completely different animal.
So, I think it's just one of those things where you got to pay attention and understand what it is that you're doing when you're talking to whoever it is that you're wanting to buy that piece from.
Aaron Fintel
Yeah. I get it.
Casey Seymour
All right.
Aaron Fintel
That does make sense.
Casey Seymour
Yeah, because it's just, it's different. It's just different.
Aaron Fintel
Different.
Casey Seymour
All right. So, now if you were looking at kind of the overall spectrum of the economy right now, on a whole different thing now we're done with all that talking about tillage, but we're talking about the overall economy right now.
Looking at the whole economy as a whole, the interest rates came through, Fed bumped everything by a quarter percent. I'm looking to see-
Aaron Fintel
Three quarter.
Casey Seymour
Or sorry, three quarter, I meant. I'm thinking about the quarter they didn't bump it. That's my bad. So, three quarters of a point and they come through and if you're looking at what's happening, I'm looking to see, I mean between six-and-a-half and seven-and-a-half percent, depending on where they were to start with and who you're getting your money from. But you're going to see another half to full point jump in interest rates.
Just feels like there's still enough money out there right now that guys are ready to do something.
Aaron Fintel
Yeah. Yeah.
Casey Seymour
I don't feel like there's any kind of slowdown, I guess is what I'm getting-
Aaron Fintel
No, no. Yeah. There's a little slowdown, but slowdown from absolute batshit crazy is nothing but good.
Casey Seymour
I don't know. The reason I'm saying nothing's slowed down is because we're still, I mean, as soon as this new stuff comes in-
Aaron Fintel
Oh, yeah.
Casey Seymour
Install-
Aaron Fintel
Something shows up, it's gone. Yeah.
Casey Seymour
I think there's going to be a ... I'm just interested to see how that goes, right?
Aaron Fintel
Yeah.
Casey Seymour
I mean, is someone going to say, "Well, dude. I said, 'Yes,' at two-and-a-half or 3%. And I signed docs at seven."
Aaron Fintel
And that really hasn't been a thing recently.
Casey Seymour
But I don't see it being a thing to be real honest with you.
Aaron Fintel
No, I don't think so. And until there's two digits or you're getting closer to two digits, I don't think it'll matter.
Casey Seymour
I think this go-around, it won't matter, period.
Aaron Fintel
No.
Casey Seymour
I think the next go round-
Aaron Fintel
It'll matter a lot a hell of a lot.
Casey Seymour
It'll matter to be looking at some stuff.
Aaron Fintel
It'll matter a lot.
Kim Schmidt
We'll get back to Casey and Aaron in a minute. But first, I wanted to invite you to join us virtually this December 8th and 9th for the Ag Equipment Intelligence Executive Briefing. To learn more and to register, visit agequipmentintelligence.com/executive briefing. Now, back to Casey and Aaron.
Casey Seymour
Let's spend a little time talking about this. Talk about looking at your customer base and who you're talking to about what and why. I'm writing a series of articles about the kind of customer base, what we see now, lines of delineation, how these stuff are all coming together and that there are more defined roles for customers than there were ever been in the past. And I think a lot of that has to do with the price of equipment, price of used equipment, right?
Aaron Fintel
Absolutely.
Casey Seymour
I mean those things are starting to make a big play. And then you start looking at guys that, for the longest time, have had the same amount of acres forever. And prices have gotten to a point to where they're like, "I can't do X, but I can do Y."
What are your thoughts on having those conversation with the customer, that were doing X, now they're doing Y and building that same traditional cost of operation discussion that we would have with that one or two year old guy that's rolling stuff every year, every two years, something like that. Buying new, rolling that stuff every year. But kind of going down to that used guy and saying, "Hey, look, we can do the same thing with you and here's what it looks like." Do you think that has a play in the equipment business?
Aaron Fintel
Yeah. Totally, totally.
Casey Seymour
I think it has a bigger play in the used equipment business than on the new side.
Aaron Fintel
It has a more beneficial play, but I don't think it's bigger. I just think, well, I think the human nature of humanality will triumph.
Casey Seymour
[inaudible 00:27:04]. Yeah.
Aaron Fintel
No, humanality.
Casey Seymour
I didn't know that was a word.
Aaron Fintel
It is. It's the act of being human.
Casey Seymour
Okay. Just like the Van Halen song?
Aaron Fintel
Yeah. Humans being.
Casey Seymour
That's what makes us humans being?
Aaron Fintel
Yeah.
Casey Seymour
Right on. So-
Aaron Fintel
5150, baby.
Casey Seymour
So, my thought process on that is ...
Aaron Fintel
Very little.
Casey Seymour
Depends on who you asked but yeah. I think my thought on that is that if your customer base that you deal with traditionally on the used equipment side that are traditional used equipment buyers, they have a roll cycle just like everybody else does.
Aaron Fintel
Yeah. Every so often. Hours or age.
Casey Seymour
Yeah. Some guys that are really dialed into the marketplace come hell or high water every three years, they're getting an X or every five years, they're getting a Y and they're doing that. I think there's a place where you can sit down with the conversation, because the reason they're doing that is there is a cost of operation that they have figured out that fits their operation.
Aaron Fintel
Yeah. Right.
Casey Seymour
Right? They're not just doing that because, "Hey, you know what?"
Aaron Fintel
Dollars and cents, ma'am.
Casey Seymour
It's like me with computers. Every two years, I get a new computer. And the reason for that is I can get the exact same price on the computer that I got two years ago that's five times the computer that I got this time because the way technology rolls in now.
Aaron Fintel
Tractors work that way, too.
Casey Seymour
No, they don't, unfortunately. I've not seen that model work yet.
Aaron Fintel
Not yet. Not yet.
Casey Seymour
Now, you could argue to some extent that that's the price that tractors have gone up. So, has the level of efficiency with varying levels of technology, right?
Aaron Fintel
Oh, yeah. Yeah. You can argue that all day.
Casey Seymour
I mean, you'll get the guy in here, like, "I'm buying the exact same tractor with the horsepower that it was five," blah blah, blah. You know, you get those same guys to do that but-
Aaron Fintel
Well, and those guys aren't using the tech. They just want the tractor.
Casey Seymour
Right. And I think that's where ... Yeah. So, I think-
Aaron Fintel
Those are my people.
Casey Seymour
... where I'm going with this conversation is I think, as I look at the overarching kind of momentum of the farm equipment business is that-
Aaron Fintel
And how it affects humanality?
Casey Seymour
Yeah, humanality. That's a nice word, though. That's totally made up but that's fine.
Aaron Fintel
It's not.
Casey Seymour
It's fricking made up. But they have, as you're looking at this overarching kind of thing with what we see going on here, the bolt-on technology to me is the greatest differentiator in the value of the actual nuts and bolts of the machine.
Aaron Fintel
No, it's part of, but it's not greatest.
Casey Seymour
So, if I can sell you a tractor today and I can tell you for the next 10 years, you can run this power train, engine, transmission, rear end, mechanical front, whatever it is you got. You run all of that. And I can tell you that over the next 10 years, whatever comes out new, latest and greatest and whatever, you can put on that machine, what reason do you need to upgrade your tractor?
Aaron Fintel
Hours, age, depreciation. Bottom line, your financial position, lots of things. Got to burn cash.
Casey Seymour
Burn cash by updating the technology that's on it.
Aaron Fintel
Well, how damn much is the technology going to cost, man?
Casey Seymour
Well, I'm just saying you can take a ... Let's use sprayer, for example. If you have a 2015 R4045. Let's use that one for example, I can take that machine and I can take off everything about the machine, cab, chassis, powertrain, all that stuff. And I can make it an exactly brand new, exactly what we have to offer today.
Aaron Fintel
Like a glider, like a semi glider kit.
Casey Seymour
I don't know. What is that?
Aaron Fintel
They'll take a new truck with no engine and transmission in it and then throw an old 500 Cad in it that is tier two.
Casey Seymour
Okay. Yeah. Something like that. Okay. Yeah.
Aaron Fintel
But yours is backward to that.
Casey Seymour
Yeah. Mine is you run the same R4045.
Aaron Fintel
You're making a 4440 a 6175R-
Casey Seymour
Yes. You're taking a-
Aaron Fintel
... without any of the tandem ...
Casey Seymour
And so, you take an Excursion, right?
Aaron Fintel
Yeah.
Casey Seymour
And you take that-
Aaron Fintel
You light it on fire and go, "Why in the hell did I buy a Ford?"
Casey Seymour
You take the Excursion and you take the body off and you go down to your local Ford dealership and say, "I want a 2022 rolling chassis and the transmission. And I'll set this one back over top of it." And then I got a brand new ...
Aaron Fintel
You got brand new problems.
Casey Seymour
I got a brand new badass machine. Right. So, yeah.
Aaron Fintel
You got a brand new thing to walk home from.
Casey Seymour
But the difference between that is now you take your ... Think about 15 years down the road for now. You have a 2022, 2020 whatever, R4060 and whatever the latest and greatest technology is, you've upgraded that along the way and you just maintain the power train of what you got.
So, what's the benefit of you going out and buying a brand new machine if you just have to maintain the power train of what you got?
Aaron Fintel
Age, hours, you got to spend money for taxes.
Casey Seymour
But I'm upgrading the technology and stuff that comes along with it.
Aaron Fintel
Why are you trying to not sell machinery? That's what I'm worried about. We're not Dell. We're not working at Gateway. I'm not sending out Holstein boxes.
Casey Seymour
I'm going to tell you right now, this industry is going to turn to that-
Aaron Fintel
You know what?
Casey Seymour
... especially when you get to an autonomous vehicle.
Aaron Fintel
Yeah, here we go. I'm just going to sit around and wait till the Mayan apocalypse. They were off a little bit. It's all this technology is going to implode.
Casey Seymour
[inaudible 00:33:19].
Aaron Fintel
No, I know that. They were wrong is what I'm getting at. This technology is going to implode the world and the rest of us will be sitting here with our sound guards going, "Who wants to rent some RAM? I got no electronics."
Casey Seymour
Sure. Yeah. When there's an EMP attack and-
Aaron Fintel
See? Those kind of things.
Casey Seymour
[inaudible 00:33:43]. Sure.
Aaron Fintel
That's your magnetic pulse.
Casey Seymour
And I've got a cache of stuff out in the hills here that I'm going to go out there in fashion when I-
Aaron Fintel
Exactly.
Casey Seymour
Yeah.
Aaron Fintel
Exactly.
Casey Seymour
I'm going to start a colony of sorts. I'm going to do that.
Aaron Fintel
I like to call mine a compound. I just give it the full brunt.
Casey Seymour
Colony really makes you feel good and warm on the inside.
Aaron Fintel
Yeah.
Casey Seymour
Yeah.
Aaron Fintel
That's why I like compound. It is what it is.
Casey Seymour
Until you share-
Aaron Fintel
Bring your ammo belt and come on down.
Casey Seymour
Bring your linked ammunition. Let's go have some fun.
Aaron Fintel
Southwest tower's open. We need a guard. That's something I've been thinking about a little bit.
Casey Seymour
Yeah, I do get it.
Aaron Fintel
And you're right. That's a hundred percent where we're going to. I've had guys call on combines and if it says it's got an activation and it don't, they're upset. And to me I'm like, "It's not like I told you it's got duals when it's got singles."
Casey Seymour
Right. Yeah.
Aaron Fintel
It's like the salesman didn't check the right damn box and it don't have activations. "Well, I don't want it." Well, it's better than hand shelling, I guess.
Casey Seymour
Well, yeah. We got one of those in story. The crank thing you run the cob through and it does the thing.
But, I mean, to me, I really think that's the direction that we're headed is that-
Aaron Fintel
Yeah. Ag is going so incredibly over the top tech heavy compared to the rest of the world from zero to 90.
Casey Seymour
Sure. Yeah.
Aaron Fintel
I mean, when I got into this business was when you could buy Trimble.
Casey Seymour
Oh, yeah.
Aaron Fintel
You could put it on one of two different body style makes of tractors.
Casey Seymour
Sure.
Aaron Fintel
And it was $55,000 because I can drive straight.
Casey Seymour
The conversations that I used to have with guys about that when I first got in this business was, "Ah, but rich man's tool."
Aaron Fintel
Yeah. "That's a toy. I can't afford that business."
Casey Seymour
"That's just one of those things. I mean, hell, you got markers." And oh, yeah. You do. You got markers.
Aaron Fintel
Yes, you do.
Casey Seymour
And then guys that go out and use it and they realize, "Hey, for the money that it cost me to get it, I actually saved-"
Aaron Fintel
And ate well, and the biggest thing that helped that, I think, as you get into, excuse me, the middle of the ag economy is the strip-till portion.
Casey Seymour
Oh, sure.
Aaron Fintel
The repeatability.
Casey Seymour
Repeatability. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah.
Aaron Fintel
Your loss or your subscription, they're great, but there's not many guys that are truly getting the benefit of it other than you're not nearly as tired. Holy shit! It's a huge difference. You're getting a quality of life from it and you can't really put a dollar amount on that. But the bigger portion of it is as long as you're full-bore RTK and I'd say we're probably, what, 80% RTK out here, at least.
Casey Seymour
Got to be more than that.
Aaron Fintel
90?
Casey Seymour
97.3%.
Aaron Fintel
Okay. It's for that repeatability. Once you go down that road, pays for itself super quick. If you're doing strip-till and you're back on that strip, bam! One [inaudible 00:37:05].
Casey Seymour
The only reason we wouldn't have RTK somewhere is because we don't have an RTK tower up someplace.
Aaron Fintel
Yeah, but, I mean, you got some ... If guys you don't strip-till, they're working ground and planting and harvesting and that's what they do. Out here, most of them have RTK, right? But nationally, that's like an SF3 guy.
Casey Seymour
Dude, I bet you nationally SF3 guy is the guy that just can't get access to an RTK tower.
Aaron Fintel
Hmm. Maybe.
Casey Seymour
So, like the StarFire 7000 comes out and you don't need towers anymore and you're working off of all the various constellations, whether it's Goneoffs or whatever the other two are called. I forget off the top of my head, but you know you got-
Aaron Fintel
The Big Dipper and Little Dipper.
Casey Seymour
You got the different constellations out there. Man! [inaudible 00:37:58]-
Aaron Fintel
Or is it Orion's Belt?
Casey Seymour
And you're driving down the road now, you don't need a tower. Your repeatability is 300 GPS satellites that are triangulating down to year one where you're at. You're getting after it. To me, that's another example of bolt-on technology.
Aaron Fintel
Okay. Sounds good, man.
Casey Seymour
Just to me, I just think that's where we're headed, where we're going and-
Aaron Fintel
I think we're there. To your point, we're there.
Casey Seymour
I think it'll be a bigger deal when-
Aaron Fintel
Reichardt bridge. Reichardt bridge.
Casey Seymour
Reichardt bridge?
Aaron Fintel
That's that thing-
Casey Seymour
Is falling down, falling down.
Aaron Fintel
No, that's that deal you put on fence challengers to run Deere guidance. You put it on red tractors to run Deere guidance. There you go, Casey.
Casey Seymour
Mm-hmm.
Aaron Fintel
I know of guys who are AGCO is the day as long and who are Case IH as the day is long, but they got Operation Center, they got all that shit because they love that yellow globe.
They don't care about the green iron. They like that yellow globe. Yep.
Casey Seymour
So, I think we're going to see that. And I think as more autonomy comes into play, the power train and what we're doing, especially when stuff goes to electric, then you're talking about stuff that lasts a lot longer than traditional combustion engine type stuff. I mean, there's less componentry that makes that a hindrance, if you will.
Aaron Fintel
Mm-hmm. Nobody's overhauled a Prius.
Casey Seymour
Not yet. And so, I think when horsepower just becomes-
Aaron Fintel
But when they do, they'll find an old 110 Honda out in the trees, old three wheeler and throw that son of a bitch in there.
Casey Seymour
Yeah. "Meet you at the drag strip." Yeah. When I think about this, do you ever watch that movie? Hugh Jackman's in it and there's robots and they fight.
Aaron Fintel
Yeah. What is that called?
Casey Seymour
I can't remember what it's called but-
Aaron Fintel
The boys loved it when they were little.
Casey Seymour
... the whole concept of that thing is you have these super huge technologically advanced fighting robots and this guy finds this robot in the scrap heat.
Aaron Fintel
The 4430 robot with the ...
Casey Seymour
That's kind of where I'm thinking about this is because you can take a 4430 chassis and trap powertrain and everything else and make it into the latest and greatest. I mean, if you really think about-
Aaron Fintel
Holy damn! Yeah. If you really think about it, welcome to Open Skies. Look at what we can do.
Casey Seymour
You can take whatever and turn it into one. Ag [inaudible 00:40:39]-
Aaron Fintel
But see, here's the thing. Nobody's going to spend the R&D to develop any of that kind of shit.
Casey Seymour
But I don't think there's any R&D to develop. I think it's already exists. It's just a hydraulic block that you plug into your hydraulic system that steers things the way it's supposed to steer. I mean it's-
Aaron Fintel
I know, but you're talking about the rolling chassis and update everything around it type deal. Initially that's what you're talking about.
Casey Seymour
Sure, but there's the old ...
Aaron Fintel
Like I said, you're turning a 4440 into a 6175R. Nobody's going to make the kit or any of that shit to do that.
Casey Seymour
Well, they made that kit.
Aaron Fintel
They might make a 6175R, a 6180R.
Casey Seymour
They made the kit for the 4440 back in 2005. It's called EZ-Steer, right?
Aaron Fintel
Oh, yeah. True.
Casey Seymour
You put EZ-Steer with the ... What's that thing called? You had to stay between the two things.
Aaron Fintel
Light bar?
Casey Seymour
Light bar. Yeah. And so, that's-
Aaron Fintel
You don't ... It's all on there, but-
Casey Seymour
Right, yeah. But, I mean, the ideas that if you ... It's-
Aaron Fintel
It's like the old Outback, Outback guidance.
Casey Seymour
Outback guidance. So, I mean the same concept there where you can take that particular generation of machine and you don't need to have the hydraulic thing. You got a thing that spins the wheel, right?
Aaron Fintel
Right.
Casey Seymour
So, I mean, in theory ...
Aaron Fintel
Or in an ATU 300 or whatever.
Casey Seymour
Sure. So, now you've got, in theory, you could take a 50-year-old power train and make it do everything the new tractor can do.
Aaron Fintel
Do we get to do that?
Casey Seymour
What do you mean?
Aaron Fintel
I got seven years and I'll be 50. My power train will be 50.
Casey Seymour
Hip replacements at 90.
Aaron Fintel
I need some updated tech.
Casey Seymour
Yeah.
Aaron Fintel
Good heavens.
Casey Seymour
So, anyway. All right. Good place to stop. I think we've kind of hit that point there.
So, Aaron, folks want to reach out to you, get more information about what it is you got going on, what's the best way to do that?
Aaron Fintel
Smoke signals, Pony Express.
Casey Seymour
Right.
Aaron Fintel
What are them birds called?
Casey Seymour
Homing pigeon.
Aaron Fintel
Homing pigeon. Yes, sir. With a little message on its leg.
Casey Seymour
Sure. Message in a bottle? Yeah.
Aaron Fintel
Yeah. Well, we're kind of landlocked in North-
Casey Seymour
North Platte gets kind of low. So, it might get stuck somewhere here in the [inaudible 00:42:48].
Aaron Fintel
It might take a minute for that message in a bottle to get to Box Butte County but somehow. No, I'm on the socials. Aaron Fintel on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, just @AaronFintel. Email, Aaron dot Fintel at MovingIronllc.com or best way, call me or text me. (308) 760-1193.
Casey Seymour
Right on. Hi, I'm Casey Seymour. You can find me at Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at Moving Iron LLC. You can find me at LinkedIn at Moving Iron Podcast. And you can check out the video version of this podcast on the Moving Iron YouTube channel called Moving Iron YouTube channel. Pretty original.
Aaron Fintel
Dude, great job!
Casey Seymour
Pretty original.
Aaron Fintel
Hell, yes.
Casey Seymour
Came through with that one real good. You can also go to movingironllc.com and you can check out everything Moving Iron-related, blog posts, all the good stuff. Plus all the information for the Moving Iron Summit coming up here in Nashville, Tennessee, 6th, 7th and 8th of September. If you're interested doing that, you really need to get signed up because that's rapidly filling up and getting really close to selling the sucker out.
Aaron Fintel
Booyah!
Casey Seymour
So, if you're looking forward to doing that, send me an email, MovingIronPodcast@movingironpodcast.com or you can just click in the upper right-hand corner, Moving Iron Summit tab, bring down and just click the registration tab and you can sign up there. So, if you're a dealer of any kind, by all means, well worth coming. We've got Deere guys, Case guys, AGCO guys, Kubota guys, you name it. They all come. So, check it out. So, be interested in doing that, check that out there.
Good friend of ours, Alex Shevchenko is fighting the good fight over there in Ukraine. He's hauling humanitarian aid between Poland and wherever it needs to go in Ukraine. He sent me a video the other night of air raid sirens going off and stuff flying around in the air in the middle of the night. So, he's in the middle of the stuff there if you-
Aaron Fintel
War zone.
Casey Seymour
Yeah, he's getting after it. So, you want to help him out. There's a link in the show notes. Check that out. Or you can go to his GoFundMe page, which is Help Alex Transport Humanitarian Aid from Poland to Ukraine and you can help him out there. So, with that, I'm Casey Seymour with my good friend, A-R-R-O-N Aaron Fintel. So, with that [inaudible 00:45:13] folks. Out.
Kim Schmidt
Thanks, Casey and Aaron, for sharing your conversation with us. You can keep up on the latest industry news by registering online to receive our free newsletters. Visit www.farm-equipment.com. For Casey and Aaron as well as our entire staff here at Farm Equipment, I'm Kim Schmidt. Thanks for listening.
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