Right to repair is a topic that gets me worked up and while I like talking about it, I’m also ready to be done talking about it. As dealers, I'm sure you feel the same way. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like that wish will come true any time soon. Some of that is because groups like PIRG keep pushing it out there. But there are farmers out there talking about it, too. 

Back in January during the National No-Tillage Conference in Indianapolis, the topic of right to repair came up during Clay Mitchell’s presentation. Mitchell is a 5th generation Iowa farmer and co-founder of farmland venture capital firm Fall Line Capital. He was asked by an attendee, “How does the right to repair business that we're into now with some major companies figure into our profitability or our way to do things on our own?”

Here’s how Mitchell answered: “It's a great question. I think it’s pretty important. Unfortunately, because we have a very small number of very consolidated companies and we’ve gotten into this complexity, it’s taken power away from the farmers. I think the right to repair is really important. It’s just that we also haven’t figured out what that means with really complicated stuff where I might have to go through a whole lot of training to be able to repair it?

“I think the instantiation of the right to repair involves a lot of steps. It's not just access. It's not just opening up an ability to keep your firmware going when it has a problem or repairing a machine. I shouldn't say modifying, because that's what they want to avoid, but fixing stuff yourself. But designing stuff so that the farmer can maintain it and build it like we all used to. We need to meet somewhere in there. And hopefully, a free economy would solve some of that. We don't want to buy stuff that you have to pay $40,000 a year for to repair your combine. None of us want that. So hopefully somebody comes out with an alternative where we can do it ourselves.

“I think it's a mix of legislation and also it's one of the things I encourage with our startups who are in the robotics or machinery or automation space. Don't treat them like consumers. We want to be able to fix stuff ourselves. And also there's some machines that have great diagnostics, even some of the big OEM machines. Some are better than others, and I love it. It can save so much time to be able to go in and look at the sensors and see is this working or not?”

Earlier this week I was in Dallas at the North American Equipment Dealers Assn. Dealer Conference. One of the highlights was a dealer panel on right to repair, featuring Tom Nobbe, Sydenstricker Nobbe Partners, Terry Hlavinka, Hlavinka Equipment, and Jeff Oldham, GreenMark Equipment. 

During the conversations, Hlavinka raised a point that could silence a lot of the R2R chatter — at least from the farmers. A lot of the frustration farmers have is the expense that comes along with maintaining Tier 4 products and DEF systems. “The expense is real, and it’s aggravating our customers. I’ve pushed over the years for better warranty coverage on those units,” he says. 

He suggested that had the industry been more proactive and set less confusing warranties on these units, it’s possible much of this headache could have been avoided.

“It's a very difficult thing to understand, because it depends if it’s on-road or off-road, but we do have some warranty coverage that was not even well publicized when the Tier 3 and 4 engines were first introduced,” he says. “It was buried in the federal legislation somewhere. But if we would stand behind those products as an industry for maybe 10 years or 10,000 hours, I think two things would happen. You'd lose half of the frustration from the repair cost that our customers own and secondarily probably would fix the products, because the manufacturers would have more incentive to spend the R&D money to fix those emission issues.” 

A question raised by a dealer in the audience — where’s the EPA? We are where we are because of Tier 4 engines and emission standards that are ultimately at the heart of this R2R debate. All of that was mandated by the EPA, but the agency has been very quiet in the whole debate, beyond one small comment saying the Clean Air Act can’t be used as a reason to restrict access. 

What do you think? Would better and clearer warranties for equipment with Tier 4 engines make a difference? Are we too far into the mess to appease anyone? Or, are there even that many customers out there that this issue is even a problem for? A number of the dealers I talked to this week said no. Tell me what you think in the comments.