Rural lifestyle dealers are largely optimistic about 2026 revenues. These dealers, who serve homeowners, hobby farmers, landscape contractors and municipalities, had a strong 2022 and 2023 but 2024 proved to be a more challenging year than they had predicted due to a mix of supply chain issues, rising interest rates and increasing costs of new equipment. However, 2025 proved to be a better year than they had forecast. And rising interest rates, which have weighed heavily on dealers minds for the previous 2 reports, dropped from their top concern in 2025 to #9 on the list in 2026.

Looking at their areas of concern and optimism for the year, aftermarket once again stands out as a strong revenue opportunity. In the 2026 Rural Lifestyle Dealer Business Trends & Outlook report, just over 97% of dealers forecast service revenue to be as good or better than 2025 and 97.2% of dealers expect the same to be true for their parts revenue.

The 2026 report showed 75.6% made a profit in 2025, which was down from 84.9% who said the same about 2024. Despite that, their results proved to be better than they anticipated they would be heading into the year, with 81.3% of dealers reporting revenues flat to up compared to 75.8% who had forecast that way a year ago.

A larger percentage of dealers are forecasting wholegoods revenue improvements for 2026 than are forecasting decreases. Despite the positive outlook, the impact rising cost of new equipment will have on customers’ purchases tops the list of dealers’ top concerns, with 95.2% of dealers saying they were either concerned or most concerned. Technician availability came in at #2 on the list 91.5% of dealers saying they were either concerned or most concerned. 

Understanding these dealers’ forecasts and concerns — as well as the history of those sentiments — is the key to succeeding in the rural lifestyle market. 

To paint a clearer picture of the new challenges and opportunities dealers are facing, Ag Equipment Intelligence has compiled the data from the 2026 report and compared it to previous years. This report also breaks down the latest data by dealers’ main tractor brand and by their number of employees.

The insights from this report are intended to help your business understand how to further penetrate the rural lifestyle equipment market and what this niche needs most from its equipment manufacturers and partners.