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jdemaris
12-03-2004 06:07:06
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Re: Information on Crawler Reverser, Please in reply to Lavoy, 12-02-2004 16:11:24
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Long parts story here. The last Deere dealership I worked at went out of business in 1989. Business was still good since we had Ag., Industrial, Forestry, and Lawn & Garden - all under one roof. But, the owner was an old-fashioned, ex-chicken farmer - business man. Deere company tried to bully him. They wanted him to invest a ton of new money and make separate sales buildings and shops for each franchise - i.e. a green Ag. store, and a yellow Industrial & forestry store, etc. And, funny thing is - we were the area leader in sales and service at the time. Anyway, he basically told Deere to "shove it", he was too old to be pushed around, and closed shop. Closed our doors in 89, and he died a few years later. On the subject of used parts, I had been saving discarded parts since the early 70s. I now get sick thinking about it. We'd have a brand new 4020 diesel engine blocks with a sand-casting flaws in them (easily repairable), Deere would warranty them, and we'd throw them out. We'd sometimes rebuild powershift transmissions with "module packs" and throw out all the old parts - good or not. We had a bunch of complete, new, Yanmar diesel engines that got scrapped. They had minor injection pump problems, but Deere/Yanmar chose to replace the entire engines under warranty. We had piles of good diesel cylinder heads that we discarded because the valve seats were getting too deep and there was nobody local that we trusted to install seat inserts. We had one mechanic (on the road) that was in the habit of replacing closed-center piston pumps without even testing. That is to say, if a machine had any sort of hydraulic problem, he'd replace the pump first, and if it still didn't work, he started looking for problems elsewhere. This resulted in a mountain of discarded hydraulic pumps behind our shop, some good used, some brand new. For the time, I was more apt to take the time to diagnose problems and fix only what was needed, where as some others were just parts replacers. There are arguments for both approaches. For years, I was stockpiling parts in two of my barns - until I had no more indoor storage. One time, during a slow part of the repair season (mid-winter) my boss told us clean up old inventory in the part's room. It had new-old-stock inventory from a Deere dealership he'd bought out in the 50s. There were piles of magneto parts, and brand new two-cylinder engine blocks, and heads, pistons, etc. He told us to take all the stuff down to the car-crusher and make sure it all got busted up before we left. He didn't want anyone getting the stuff and trying to resell it. I spotted a brand new engine block that would fit my 1936 BO and wanted it bad. At the time, it was no longer available from Deere. So, I made him an offer to buy the whole lot, and he reluctanly sold me it all for $400 - with my promise NOT to sell any of the stuff to our customers. I sold it all the next day for $800 and thought I'd made a killing. If it was now, with Ebay, the stuff would bring thousands. I took two full pickup truck loads to carry it all. In the lot was also old test equipment and three large magnet chargers. I still have one of those. Sometime in the early to mid 80s, Deere had a long strike. Seems we went for months, maybe close to a year with little to no parts available from Deere. It was a mess. We were taking apart brand new machines to get parts to fix customers mahcines. Then, my boss - reluctantly, started buying back used parts from me that I had stockpiled. Since new parts were not available, we stared using a lot of aftermarket suff when available, or fixing used parts. In restrospect, I'm surprised that strike didn't put an end to Deere Company. We lost a lot of once-loyal customers. Anyway, the point to this long story is - I could probably retire on the value of those parts if I had them today. But, I don't. I've got lots of Deere equipment - but - I have to buy stuff over the counter or from a nearyby tractor salvage yard - and parts ARE expensive.
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