Former International Harvester (IH) executive/dealer Paul Wallem & Case IH North America vice president Scott Harris reflected on the IH and Case merger of 33 years ago and contrasted today’s ag cycle with the early 1980s during a sit-down at the Case IH Experience Center in Racine, Wis. The last time Wallem was in Racine 33 years ago, the ag economy was still reeling after a confluence of stacked-up woes precipitated by President Jimmy Carter’s Russian grain embargo, 22% interest rates, a 6-month IH labor strike and factory-pumping equipment inventories that took dealers 4 years to unload.

European dealers differ vastly from their counterparts in many ways, particularly in the concentration of dealers and sizes of the farms they serve. This meeting with a European dealer-principal and a manufacturing exec from a large multinational company showed how data challenge debates exist everywhere, and that dealer-manufacturer relations remain critical, and remain more art that science.

Clayton Camp, President of Kern Machinery and David Rankin, President of Rankin Equipment and Northstar Attachments, discuss the value of the relationship between suppliers and dealers and what makes those relationships work.