In my conversations with dealers and manufacturers alike, I always ask what their biggest challenges are right now and in the years ahead. Without fail, the answer is always related to staffing and more specifically with finding service technicians.

Our expert Casey Seymour of 21st Century Equipment and Moving Iron LLC addresses the following question: With the ability to shop inventory to death on the internet, what do you guys do to make your inventory stand out and separate it from everybody else?

The Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City released it third quarter Ag Finance Databook last Friday and its headline read “Large Scale Financing Drives Ag Lending Activity Higher.”

The limited cash available to farmers and ranchers in the U.S. will continue to put a dampener on the equipment markets in 2018 and 2019. The expanded depreciation programs that appeared in 2010 and reached its zenith in 2014 had the effect of pulling ahead purchases from future years. We are now enduring the results of that program.

Shaping the culture of a dealership is a complicated thing. Anyone who's ever tried to lead an organization after a major transition or change knows this. The culture of your dealership is at the heart of what can drive you to be successful, mediocre or out of business.

This summer, my dad (Frank), Darren Foster and I tagged along with the first group of VIP dealers and customers that converged on Downs, Ill., for a look at Horsch’s brand new Ag Vision Farm, which was purchased earlier this year from Beck’s Hybrids. 

Early on in my days on the Farm Equipment staff, the editorial and art departments were huddled around a board of potential covers for the magazine. The details of what happened next are a little fuzzy, but are now office lore.

Let’s face it. No compromise is going to be good enough for those who are demanding total access to the software that has been developed to make everything work together on today’s tractors. It’s an all or nothing deal. But you have to give the California Farm Bureau Federation (CFBF), which represents farmers, and Far West Equipment Dealers Assn. (FWEDA), which represents dealers, credit for trying.

Steel and aluminum prices will most certainly result in an increase in all farm equipment prices next year but our agricultural economy has been able to overcome those increases in the past and will most likely do so in the future.