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In this episode of the Farm Equipment podcast is brought to you by Machinery Scope, we have what was likely the last interview with Bob Mazer, president of Mazergroup, who died on July 6, 2025, nearly one month to the day of when this interview was recorded.

I was lucky enough to interview Bob back in January for the Farm Equipment Dealer Hall of Fame and then again in June for the Dealership of the Year story. I’m blessed to have had the opportunity to get to know and learn from him. He was a well-respected dealer and leader both in the industry and his community and will be dearly missed.  

Founded in 1959, Mazergroup grew to great success which Bob attributes to their work culture — what he refers to as the Mazergroup Way which places customer service above all else.

Let’s jump into my conversation with Bob as he shares how Mazergroup goes out of their way to create a successful management team and expands their holdings while also doing whatever it takes to keep the farmer up and running in the field.

     
   

   

     
   

This episode of Farm Equipment Podcast is brought to you by Machinery Scope.

At Machinery Scope, we’re more than a warranty provider—we’re your partner in closing deals, protecting margins, and building long-term customer relationships. Our flexible programs are designed to work with your sales process, whether you're selling new or used equipment, on the lot or online.

We help you stand behind what you sell with fast quotes, prompt claims, and insured coverage that builds buyer confidence. Plus, we pay fairly—retail labor rates, travel time, and MSRP on parts—so you and your customers stay protected without the hassle.

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Full Transcript

Hi, I am Kim Schmidt, Executive Editor of Farm Equipment. Welcome to Farm Equipment's Podcast. In this episode, we have what was likely the last interview with Bob Mazer, President of Mazergroup, who died on July 6th, 2025, nearly one month to the day of when this interview was recorded. I was lucky enough to interview Bob back in January for the Farm Equipment Dealer Hall of Fame and then again in June for the Dealership of the Year story. I'm blessed to have had the opportunity to get to know and learn from him. He was a well respected dealer and a leader both in the industry and in his community, and he'll be dearly missed.

This episode of the Farm Equipment podcast is brought to you by Machinery Scope.

Founded in 1959, Mazergroup grew to great success, which Bob attributes to their work culture, which he refers to as the Mazergroup way, which places customer service above all else. Let's jump into my conversation with Bob as he shares how Mazergroup goes out of their way to create a successful management team and expand their holdings while also doing whatever it takes to keep the farmer up and running in the field.

My dad started and we built it together. He was a farmer and he was a farmer at heart, but he also was a farmer, and he knew the sense of urgency that somebody has when they're either seeding or they're haying or they're combining or whatever and the machine is down. It's stressful and so a sense of urgency is there. And I think there's a lot of, again, a lot of complexes that in the size and the scope and the way they're managed and directed, they lose touch with that. And we call it our Mazergroup culture.

Okay.

Yeah, our Mazergroup culture is about customer service and we'll never change that. And it costs us a lot of money, it costs us a lot of money. If somebody's combine goes down and maybe the part is in Iowa and it's Friday, guess what, you're screwed. It's three or four days to get across that damn border. Not going to see a lot of guys sit there with a combine for four days.

Right.

So we have alternatives. We'll rob it from another combine or we'll do a well-fit or we'll whatever. But the policy is if the guy's going to be down more than a day, bring him a machine, put it on a truck, on wheel. And that's expensive, trucking and hours on machines that you own, it is expensive. Then you got to clean it up and almost recondition it after. But you can't beat that, you can't beat the service. I would say Mazergroup [inaudible 00:03:14] has got its own brand in the sense that we're known for our service, we're known for caring about our customers, and I believe that, I truly believe that we have that, it's part of our Mazergroup brand. We literally have this customer care philosophy that is pretty much un-bendable. It took 1994 to 2010 to change the structure. So for 16 years, we had the same structure with all those partnerships, and so we only just got other locations with other partners and just kept moving, that's all, for the 16 years.

But once we converted to Mazergroup and I said, "Okay, guys, everybody's a buyer and everybody's a seller. So if you've got $500,000 of equity in the store at Neepawa, then that's what you're going to get in shares and then you're going to be a shareholder. Then, I'm going to give you a job and you're going to work for me. You're not my partner anymore, you're going to work for me. And it was a pretty big deal because I treated these guys very well as partners and wouldn't step on their toes. Even if they were 10% or 20% or 15% partner, I wouldn't step on their toes. And this was not by design because we ultimately didn't know where we were going really. But when opportunity comes, that's when you make a decision. You just make a decision on the opportunity, not necessarily a grand plan.

Right.

And a little hard to make a grand plan if the location that you think you want is not for sale-

Right.

.. Yeah, I don't know. So as these things came up, it was interesting because only a couple times did we depart from contiguous and that was with one little store north of Winnipeg, and then there was one north of, way north here, the furthest north, Swan River. But all the other ones were actually contiguous and it was easy to make the decisions, okay, this thing belongs to us and we can make sense of it, and then the structural change when it got to be Mazergroup. And then, our management structure that I put in place or we put in place, for me has been phenomenal, it's been super.

And so when you have issues and there is a bump in the road or whether there's a gap in the highway or whatever it is, you deal with it. And I look at other complexes and I look at the disjointed methodologies, and I'm going, "Holy Jesus, what are they doing, 10% market share?" It's just crazy. But we look at every store. Once we settled in at the 18 stores, then Wally and I decided that okay, we need to just hold off here a little bit and let's see if we can improve the performance of the underperforming stores. There were some perfectly performing stores and there were some totally underperforming stores, so everywhere in between there. So we started working away at that. And that's good effort, it's just plain good effort. It's just a good thing to work with-

Right.

... because you learn a whole bunch of stuff and you learn stuff about the area and the store, but also you can apply a whole bunch of stuff you know about the business to improve the performance in that particular location, improve the performance and grow the business of the 18 stores and then when we're ready, we can go again if we want. But I personally, I think we're getting close to the end. I don't know if our structure would, because as soon as we get to maybe 25 or 30 stores, we're going to have to put some more people in between. And then the question is, how much of that Mazergroup way or the culture are you going to lose? How much are you going to lose in there? And if you lose any amount at all, you're kind of in a negative position.

So we did just about 530 million, I think, this year and it's a nice number. It's not massive, but it's a nice number. And if you bring the proper dollar to the bottom line for the shareholders and the investors, as what the industry will bear or kind of allow you to, it's good money. And maybe that's me being 75 years old. Well, it could be, it could be. It might be me being 75 years old. Maybe Jonathan and Andrew and their cohorts here, they maybe saying, "No, no, let's go for the gusto again and let's make some jumps and so on."

But we did have an opportunity to take on a family operation, three stores contiguous to ours, perfectly aligned with our territory. Absolutely everything was right, nice facilities, little proud of their business and a little proud of how much they wanted for. But I wouldn't say that was a deciding factor at all. It was you know what, do we really want to take this on, do we really want to make that jump? And again, that might be me being 75 and having, low with cancer and so on, maybe I'm just winding down, and Kim, I think I am. I don't think there's any doubt that I'm winding down.

Right.

I'll stay in the business as long as I can, as long as they're willing to let me come to the office, but yeah, but I'm not sure. We're going to visit a complex, it's got 30 some stores, I think almost 40 stores, on Thursday. And I'm really interested in having a chat with them and understanding-

How they...

... how they think and what's important to them. It is 40 stores, oh, that's the answer or is it 40 performing stores? Yeah, for me, it's 40 for us, we think it's 40 performing stores-

Right.

.. not just have a bunch of stores. I'm the dumbest bugger in the goddamn building, so you got to be careful. You don't want to cut the legs out from under somebody just because you have a bias or whatever. And so no, I farmed and I've been in many, many different businesses over the years and now I'm down to the farm equipment business in farming. But you have to let people do their job. You have to let people take responsibility. And if they don't make a mistake, it is a miracle, at some point in time. But if they don't make a mistake, they'll never learn. It's like kids. Everybody's the same way. You got to make a mistake to learn, something that's going to be embedded in your brain. And so now I'm very much comfortable.

You probably didn't order three more conveyors once you finally sold that-

No, I'm kidding. Yeah, nobody else did either. Yeah, nobody else. I do this stomp around the building every once in a while, "What the hell is going on here? Get rid of that stuff. And how was it that we got the damn thing anyway?" But yeah, no, exactly. I think everybody knows their parameters and their, well, between the capabilities and the parameters I guess, they know where they need to go.

We will get back to the conversation with Bob in a moment, but first I wanted to thank our sponsor, Machinery Scope. At Machinery Scope, they believe equipment owners and dealers deserve better, better protection, better support, better value. They're a family-owned team that's farmed the land, turned wrenches and sold iron, so they get it. Machinery Scope's extended warranty solutions are flexible, valuable, and fast. With insured coverage you can count on and service that keeps deals moving, whether you're protecting margins or equipment, they've got your back. Machinery Scope, raising the bar for the people who keep the industry running.

Okay, let's get back to my conversation with Bob. In this segment, he expands on the current state of the dealership, its successes and challenges, and also gets into a bit about the challenges of the used equipment market and how Mazergroup is managing.

Yeah, the kind of damage you're doing, but yeah if you don't, you say, well, you don't want to sell a bunch of service and parts and stuff, but on the other hand, you really feel for your customers. And if they're buying the machines and they're working good, that's not a bad thing. It's a good thing. Yeah, I haven't seen May's numbers yet, but yeah, we start our year-end or year on April 1st. So April's kind of, we generally don't even count it almost because it's kind of a cleanup month after the year-end. So May is the first.

I'm a little concerned about June. June was a devastating month for everybody in Western Canada last year. There was no hay, it was cool and the hay wasn't growing. And I don't know, yeah, our parts and service just completely fell to pieces in the month of May for some reason, or not the month of May, but the month of June last year. So I'm hoping that isn't going to happen this year 'cause we really struggled. We got close to recovering, but not really.

Not-

... totally recovered, but we had a pretty good year considering when you look at Titan's results and a few other big boys, we had a good year, so against that. And so having said that, we did pull the trigger on, we got... As long as I'm in business, as long as... I've got my VP Brad Tars, I think, 25 or 26 years in sales with me the whole time and a whole bunch of other people that I have got real long and the true veteran sort of knowledge of the business, it's surprising how you just sort of miss, "Okay, this is going differently than we think."

Now, having said that, we sold 120 new combines, that was 2024, 90 for this year. So when you're selling those combines, particularly combines, selling them in July of the prior year, you have no idea what the marketplace is going to be like a year from now, like zero. And so yeah, we landed up with just, the used combine market went a little soft on us and so we're getting better at it. I said, "Okay, let's pull a trigger," and we sent 50 off to auction, this month and next month, I think 39 this month and 11 next month, that basically put us in a position where we are in our sort of normal inventory going into the harvest season in years past. Nobody ever wants to take a major loss and so you basically say, "Okay, we're paying interest on them, we're paying curtailments on them," which means you're investing cash left, right and center and all of a sudden, it is gobbling up this cash.

And it's not that we are short of cash, but we haven't got endless amounts either. And we basically say it's never going to get better. That's the long and the short of it, it never gets better like it meant something... I never lived through it anyway. Maybe I guess there's a possibility that all of a sudden the market takes a turn to the right, but we just basically said, "You know what, Brad, it's going to take a lot to market through 50 more combines 'cause that means probably more like a 100," because you take trades, so you might take a trade on every second one or you might take two trades on every second one, you don't know.

Yeah, so ultimately we're just getting better at it, and we do it as a group. We certainly don't put that on us, on Brad, even though he's the one that runs the sales organization and ultimately is supposed to try to navigate the waters of what's the marketplace going to do and da-da-da-da-da. And so we do it as a group. And so actually New Holland's pretty decent. Over the years, we've talked them into it, we pointed out to them they should really help us with this and they should have some help that's automatic because up here, maybe not so much in the US, but up here, it's pretty traditional for the big companies, John Deere, Case and New Holland and Claas and Agco to have programing unused.

Okay.

And that programing costs them a lot of money. If they give an interest free on a combine for a whole year or maybe even sometimes it's two years, that's a pile of cash. So we basically say, "When we take them off to auction, your liability is gone. And so give us that money, give us that money to subsidize the sale, the auction sale."

Okay.

And they've agreed to that notion that they were going to spend the money anyway. Only they help us get to where we need to go much, much quicker. Because if we don't write our inventory, then that's not going to go well for them in new sales for the next year. So they're really good, they're pretty good at that, really pretty darn good. And so we appreciate their help. And yeah, there's taxes to pay and so on. When you look at, our tax up here are not small and so if you take the after-tax value or the write-off value against the income, it's not as onerous. Anyway, so yeah, that's my story, I'll stick to it. We tried that. We tried okay, 30 days' grace, and yet somebody's got somebody 30 days for the salesperson that took it in to have a chance to sell themselves 'cause there's money in it-

For them.

... Yeah. And they know the product, they maybe know the customer or whatever, they're comfortable with the trade. But that doesn't work, it just doesn't work. You just have to, it's no. If you turn it in trade, when it drops, when the deal drops in the system, everybody gets a ding on their phone, everybody gets a ding on the computer, and we had, I think 40-some salespeople and the second the thing drops, it's up for grabs. That's the deal. And it's the right answer, it's just playing the right answer. So having said that, the way around that for some salespeople that know this is going to be a premium piece and it's going to be easy to sell, they'll go pre-sell it.

Right?

Yeah. Before he drops the deal, go find another sale and then drop them together and it's over, which is a good practice to learn. It's not something bad that you learn. This is a good thing to learn. And so I think our system, our internal system, we're in CDK, it's not, I don't think it's the very, very best, but it's okay. I don't think they call them CDK, I don't know if they even call it CDK anymore, I think it's called something else. But every store, the first thing they'll do is say yeah, it'll flash and if they don't have it in inventory in their own store, they just punch the button and it'll flash and show them where it is. Yeah. With our stores, it can be as little as three-quarters, an hour away. So most people, and with a little luck, maybe it's in the right direction through their farm. So yeah, so parts is good and service was what we built the business on.

Thanks to the entire Mazergroup team who welcomed me into the dealership to film and interview their team. You can read our full Dealership of the Year coverage online and in the July-August issue of the magazine.

Thanks for joining us for this episode of the Farm Equipment podcast. Until next time, I'm Kim Schmidt. Thanks for listening.