A lot has changed for Messick’s Equipment since brothers Merville and Marlin Messick opened the first store in 1952. At the time, it was an International Harvester dealership. Eventually the company began carrying New Holland and later Kubota as well as Krone and more than 200 other shortlines.
Despite growing its product lines and expanding to 9 locations across the state of Pennsylvania, the company’s mentality of maintaining that small family business feel and delivering tailored service and attention to its customers has not changed.
General Manager Jay Gainer has been with Messick’s for 49 years but says even for brand new employees, that mentality is a big focus from day one.
Messick’s Equipment
Founded: 1952
Employees: 350
Executive Management Team: Neil Messick, Bryan Messick, Scott Messick, Kevin Messick, Lucas Messick, Mary Henry, Nelson Horning, Jay Gainer, Jesse Miller
Locations: 9 across Pennsylvania
Revenue: $227 Million
Absorption Rate: 107%
Major Lines: New Holland, Kubota
Shortlines: Aerway, Alamo, Allied, Art’s Way, Ausa, B&D Rollers, Baumalight, Bear Cat, Befco, BelAire, Billy Goat, Boss, Bradco, Bridgestone, Bridon, Briggs & Stratton, Brillion, Bruder Toys, Bush Hog, Cam Spray, Camso, Cardinal Canvas, Cordex, CrustBuster, Cub Cadet, Curtis, Custom Rope, Danuser, Degelman, Del Morino, E-Z Trail, Enorossi, eXmark, Farmco, Fast, Ferris, FFC, Fill-Rite, Fleetguard, Flexicoil, Forney, FPPF, Galaxy Tires, Greenleaf, Harley, Harvest Tec, Haybuster, Hensley, HLA, Honda, Horst, Husqvarna, Hustler, Ironcraft, Jacto, Kawasaki, Kohler, Krone, Kverneland, Land Pride, Loegering, MacDon, McMillen, Meyer, Miller, MK Martin, MTD, Oregon, Oxbo, Penta, Pequea, Pik Rite, Pro Ag, RACKS360, SawHaul, Simplicity, Snapper, Snapper Pro, SnowEx, Steiner, StrikeForce, Sweepster, Taarup, Tama, TerraKing, Troy-Bilt, Tytan, Unverferth, Van Sickle Paint, Vicon, Virnig, Viscosity, Winmore, Woods, WR Long, Yetter
“We are still a family business. How you maintain that and how you pass on the culture, that got us where we are today,” Gainer says. “You don’t want to become this big corporate company and have customers feel that we don’t care. When we get new employees, we teach them every customer is important.”
Gainer says a customer who needs to buy a small 20 cent screw for his chainsaw is just as important as a customer who is about to make a large purchase on a tractor.
“That’s just part of the culture,” he says. “It’s not just the customers; the company has always treated its employees with respect. That’s something we’ve always tried to pass on — making the employees realize they’re an important part of our business.”
Growing the Game
Messick’s Equipment has gone through several different periods of growth both in terms of increasing numbers of employees as well as expanding into more locations.
Neil Messick, who now owns and operates the company alongside his 3rd generation brothers and cousins — Kevin, Lucas, Bryan and Scott — attributes a lot of the company’s success to their ability to stay calm and focused during several of these periods of growth and change over the years.
“We’ve gone through a couple periods of rapid growth. In a lot of cases, we’ve taken 2 dealerships on either side of town and combined them together. We had a period where we would have done about 3-4 of those in about 18 months,” Neil says. “But the company wasn’t as ready for it at that point and that caused more operational strain for us. It was a lot harder for us to go in and get things running the way we wanted them and serve customers in the way that we wanted with some consistency across the company.”
“We’re all inundated with offers all the time, but being able to be part of the community, being a trusted place, being a friend, I think goes a lot further…”
Neil says the company learned from that rapid growth and is now much more prepared when those types of opportunities arise.
“To be able to do it here in the last 18 months or so, it’s a very different vibe. We had trainers in place. We had documented processes on how things are done. The company just executes better at this point. And so today, if I went down the hall here and told somebody, ‘Hey, we’re turning up another store in 2 months,’ no one would stress about that because we know how to train, we know how to implement processes. It’s a much more seamless thing today.
“You can’t plan these opportunities. When a dealership comes up for sale, you have to move because you don’t get these opportunities all the time. Recently it’s just felt like we’re ready for it. We know how to execute now.”
Neil echoes Gainer’s sentiment about the importance of maintaining the family business mentality and not straying from that as the company grows larger.
Messick’s Equipment puts a strong emphasis on providing top-tier customer service in its parts department and across all departments while working one-on-one with a customer to find the exact part or solution needed to solve the customer’s problem. Messick’s Equipment
He says that family business feel is all about how the company sees and presents itself.
“I love to market in a way that goes to a customer and says, ‘bring your kids into a store for an open house. We’re going to serve you food. We’re going to do a touch a tractor event.’ We also do a huge Christmas light show where we set up a massive display outside and we have about 300 cars a night come through here. It’s a great time. If you’re trying to sell your dealership to a customer, being part of their community, being the place that they want to do business means exponentially more than saying ‘buy my tractor.’ We’re all inundated with offers all the time, but being able to be part of the community, being a trusted place, being a friend, I think goes a lot further.”
Creativity Shapes Success
Much like Neil’s approach to marketing and connecting with the community, Messick’s Equipment has several unique programs and protocols that make them successful by thinking outside the box. They are constantly asking if there is a better way to do something that’s been done the same way for a long time.
President, Bryan Messick says the sales and service departments are both doing unique things and seeing the benefits pay off in a big way.
“From the sales side, we have a very eclectic sales group,” he says. “We have a lot of young, newer people but we also have some people from older generations. That being said, we sell consumer products, we sell homeowner products, we sell gobs of construction products and we sell agricultural products from small to the biggest ones out there.”
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Click here to see Messick’s YouTube channel, featuring more than 1100 videos.
Bryan also explains that the salesmen are divided up in terms of specialty and focus. Certain salesmen work on big equipment while others might specialize on hay equipment or compact tractors, etc.
The company even has one store that just primarily focuses on orchards and orchard products.
Bryan says dividing it up for regions and specialties works well and that they utilize a similar strategy within the service department with specialized techs that work on certain areas more than others.
Messick’s Equipment, Farm Equipment's 2026 Dealership of the Year
“We use some very unique scheduling programs that make our efficiency with our technicians top notch,” Bryan says. “We also implemented regional managers for parts and service as well as for sales. Those managers can travel to our different store locations on a daily basis to help those departments through their day-to-day challenges, which is a lot easier than a few corporate managers trying to get to as many stores as possible whenever they could find time.”
The dealership employs full-time trainers for the service department. When a new tech or anyone in the service department gets hired, they spend a significant amount of time with a full-time trainer.
The first 3 days are full time classroom training days to learn Messick’s systems and processes before going into a store environment to learn the vendors and the specific equipment they will be working on.
“From the time that new hire walks in the door to the time they leave, they’re going through all the programs. That includes something as simple as how to request vacation or how to log overtime, all the way to learning how to get a job work card or a repair order or how to order parts. They work with that tech the whole way through and then spend time with the tech as they’re graduating up through the classifications and the technician standpoint.”
“Messick’s doesn’t sit still. Instead, they continue to try to find ways to innovate & approach the business differently…”
Bryan says Messick’s has utilized this approach for at least a decade and has seen numerous direct benefits from doing so.
“You get your people up and running faster. That growth period and learning curve is cut down significantly. We know we are setting them up for success.”
Big Picture
Messick’s online parts program has been a big contributor to its overall success as a dealership.
Customers can go online and find parts quickly and order them from their own home, whether that’s locally in Pennsylvania or clear across the country. This online parts program has been in the works since 2006.
“By putting resources online it gives your dealership credibility,” Neil says. “It gets a customer on the phone. It gives you an opportunity to be able to actually interact with somebody and use your knowledge, your professionalism and the time that you’ve been in the industry to solve their problem. Not a whole lot of transactions happen in a traditional e-commerce type way. It is marketing really. It’s another opportunity to serve somebody.”
Bryan emphasizes that even through the online marketplace, excellent customer service is still at the forefront of their minds.
“When orders come in via the phone, we work through the purchase with that customer on what they need,” he says. “We pride ourselves in the customer service experience more than anything. We’re going to treat you with just the same amount of respect as we would if you walked in at the parts counter. Our technicians are trained to go through and figure out what you need and help you through that. If that means you got to go out and measure a part and say, ‘Hey, it measures 5 inches, what does yours measure?’ They’re going to take that extra mile just to make sure that you’re going to get the right part, which leads to good customer service.”
Messick’s flagship/headquarters location is located in Mount Joy, Pa., and spans 200,000 square feet including 28 usable acres of land. The company operates 8 other locations across the rest of the state of Pennsylvania. Messick’s Equipment
Before re-joining the family business as an adult, Neil and his brothers and cousins were highly encouraged to work outside the family dealership to see if they really wanted to be a part of it or if they might find their calling elsewhere.
Neil spent time working in IT and has since been able to bring that knowledge and experience back to the dealership and translate it into rapid and efficient technology growth for the company.
“Operationally, probably one of the best things we’ve done that enabled a lot of our growth was about 6 years ago we moved off of a legacy business system to a much more modern one that has really tidied up our data,” Neil says. “Newer, more modern computer software gives us reporting that we can trust and actual actionable things within our business of leverage that we can pull in order to improve things. In a lot of cases where we’re rolling out new processes around here or we see an area of the business that needs to improve, that is driven by computer software today. With 9 stores, it’s really difficult to say, ‘Hey, you guys need to do this better’ and actually trust that it’s going to get done. But if we build computer processes around those areas, we can be more targeted with implementing new systems.”
Neil says the level at which the dealership introduces new technology is fairly unique. Messick’s runs RIMSS as its business system but also employs software developers full-time to build internal applications to help run the business.
“It’s an investment, but also just makes worlds of difference in the quality of data and the quality of the business that we’re able to run. It helps me sleep a lot better at night.”
Humble Recognition
While Neil, Bryan, Jay and much of the Messick’s Equipment staff like to remain humble, they also recognize the significance of being recognized with an honor like Farm Equipment’s 2026 Dealership of the Year.
“The biggest thing for us is the recognition for our staff,” Neil says. “As an owner of a company, you interact with enough people in the industry to kind of know that you’re highly thought of, but for the rest of our staff that doesn’t have the opportunities to have those interactions, this kind of recognition for them and to be able to show what they’ve accomplished is really cool.”
Bryan says awards are a good reminder to reflect on the company’s family history and remember where they came from.
Dealership of the Year Recognition Has Domino Effect
Being named the Dealership of the Year goes beyond just one store or even one company. Since Messick’s Equipment sells New Holland equipment, CNH Territory Sales Manager George Rigdon says it’s an honor for him and the people at CNH as well.
“It’s certainly a proud moment,” Rigdon says. “It’s very rewarding to see them earn that award because obviously it’s a partnership and we refer to that pretty extensively here. And maybe at the end of the day it’s cliche to say but it is truly a partnership and when you can see the dealership excel in carrying one of your brands as a flagship brand within the organization, I think certainly it’s a sense of accomplishment, a sense of being proud and showing that partnering together can really move the business forward and it’s a good thing for both the dealer and it also helps the manufacturer quite a bit. It’s great to have that relationship and see them be successful through that partnership.”
Rigdon also says manufacturers like CNH notice when a dealership is doing things differently and succeeding in selling products and marketing themselves and their equipment lines in a way that is less traditional.
He references Messick’s large online presence, specifically its YouTube channel which currently has over 1,000 videos and more than 150,000 subscribers.
“Messick’s doesn’t sit still. Instead, they continue to try to find ways to innovate and approach the business differently,” Rigdon says. “They’ve got a tremendous digital presence and a lot of times they’ll take maybe some of the messages that we have at a high level from a New Holland standpoint and they will kind of tailor that message to their own customer base and maybe pick out certain things that could be more defining for them. That’s one of the things that excites me about them as a dealership is they are definitely more progressive. They’re always reinvesting in themselves as a business and playing the long game.’’
Neil Messick says he typically tries to make two YouTube videos a week and has been doing so for about 10 years.
“I enjoy it. It gets me out from behind a computer so I like doing it, but I do have a full-time video editor who really does the time consuming hard work,” Neil says.
“We’ll be here almost 75 years as a family business coming up next year,” he says. “We’re very proud of that. Being the third generation of it makes me more proud that we were able to carry on the legacy that my grandfather did and my dad and uncle did and that the third generation is able to keep this business growing But it’s something to be proud of. I think our employees will be very proud of it knowing that they work for a company that’s being recognized as dealer of the year.”
Gainer looks at the award as an opportunity to recognize the things the company is doing right.
“We try to always hire good employees and that’s getting harder to find, but you want to hire people with good morals, good ethics, people who will treat everyone with respect,” Gainer says. “We have always tried hard to solve a customer’s problem. If you come in and you want something, we want every tool possible to try and help them with it. And then we also try to follow through with parts and service support as well. We stock a tremendous amount of parts and we stock a tremendous amount of wholegoods. We are always trying to fix the customer’s problem.”
Fostering a Positive Environment
According to Neil, one of the single most important contributors to Messick’s success as a whole has been the company’s ability to retain employees over a long period of time. He says they have rarely had an issue with this because of the way they treat everyone and because of the company’s positive environment.
“There’s nothing that drives me nuts more than watching a dealership grow, and many of them will have this executive team that thinks the world of themselves,” Neil says. “Staying humble and recognizing that as a business grows, it’s a lot more than even the people sitting in that executive team that are making things happen. It’s the people who are doing the work every day interacting with customers and getting stuff done. We’re so blessed to be able to have people and a culture that gets that. That has made our jobs and growing this company so easy because so much of it just happens with everybody else who gets it.”
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