Farm Equipment is working on a special project to mark the Farm Equipment Manufacturers Association's 75th year. We interviewed Lee Rogness, the retired dealer-principal of Interstate Inc. in Fergus Falls, Minn., who sold his dealership to RDO in 2008 and then created and managed the entire shortline division of RDO thereafter. 

A dealership without shortlines is like a garden without carrots, he says, adding that if a dealership is going to service its customers to the fullest degree, it needs to have a product that fills the gap that their mainline manufacturer is not providing. Here’s Rogness with more on the importance of shortlines to the business.

“We always seen it, you know, when we started out when I started out in the business as a solo operator, and of course I had some partners to my brothers, but our whole idea was to meet the needs of the farmer and what he needed for equipment, and our major manufacturers. First of all, they just didn't build a forage line. They didn't build feed equipment, so we were. We had no choices, but to look to the outside of our major manufacturers for that, and it was quite natural, because they, some of those manufacturers, have been in business for years as long as the major manufacturer, for that matter. So that's how we built our product offering. Well, then, as time went by, you know, we found we were selling other compatible and not necessarily competing pieces of equipment to the farmers, and they needed it. They came to us, and it. It just gave us a complete product offering for our farmers, our local farmers.”

Not only did shortlines fill a product gap for the dealership, but Rogness recalls a story that highlights the foot traffic they brought.

“Well, I'll give you an example for an answer on that. How would that be? The Ji case company the dealer in this local town here the father that, or the person that owned it, lived to be an elderly person in his. The JI Case Company wanted a dealer, and they got the idea that before we were a John Deere dealer, they came over to us, and they'd have to wait to see me. And then when they come into my office, they say, ‘Goodness! We just can't believe all the people that walk into this place on it every time we're here. There's people in your store, and we just don't see that in our stores anywhere else.’

“Well, obviously they were coming in for more than just parts of our major lines. They were coming in for all these other short lines, and these were people that fed livestock and milk, cows and beef, cattle and poultry as well. They were all that was the farm scene at that time everybody had a little something and they saw the traffic so obviously. We had traffic.”

As we continue to work on the FEMA anniversary project, we invite you to share contributions, memories and anecdotes of what the shortline manufacturers or the association have meant to your business. You can email them to mlessiter@lessitermedia.com. 

Watch the full version of this episode of On The Record