Gleaner a dead horse

I agree.  It's a safer bet than vegas or wall street and maybe even safer than betting Favre comes back.

I will take the bet, name the amount :-) -- A very large lesson was learned the last few months at Agco.  I know it seems so sometimes to us outsiders, but they are not all idiots at Duluth , all the time anyway.   About  a year ago there was a large battle fought, many put it all  on the line for the new Silver technology coming - thank the lord it proved out  - More later....

Thanks tbran,  the question still to me remains who is going to market them  and what abouit parts availability ?   We have one agco dealer with a larger Massy 10 miles away ,the agco dealer will no doubt drop gleaner leaving nothing with in a 120 miles. Quite a few gleaners in area but with dealer gone so will the sales.  It makes no difference how much technollogy goes in if there is no outlets you have no sales.   I know I will not along with other I spoke to consider a gleaner if local dealer drops agco all together.   Gleaner has no home  without a tractor base.   But I might be wrong but doubt it. 

Maybe Massey will park the gleaners next to their White combines and try to sell them?  Kink of like when a car dealer has both chevy and gmc pickups and parks them next to each other?

Gleaner combines will be offered to the MF and Challenger dealers as some already have in the past.  You did not have to be an AGCO Tractor dealer to get Gleaner combines.  If there was a good MF dealer who wanted Gleaner and the area was open they could get Gleaner. 

So they went from three to two tractors because they had too many brands but they'll keep all three combine brands?   I'm not up on the combines but some have said all the newer larger class combines will only be offered in red and yellow.  I believe the only gleaner you'll be able to get in the future is the transverse.  That combine is at the end of it's theoretical size.  So if all you can get that is silver is a smaller transverse how long will Gleaner be around? 

I would be interested to know what this "very large lesson that was learned in the last few months" is.  I doubt it has any hope of saving orange tractors though.

If combines get any bigger they will be like the big choppers, in 200+ bu corn going over 5mph you wilneed to keep a cart or something along side it all the time.

They have painted themselves into a corner. Somehow, the Orange tractor needs to be reincarnated or the Gleaner should be sold to somebody who will respect it. If it stays, Richenhagen and his current henchman need to be relieved of duties and Allis Chalmers resurrected. He has stated many times over the past couple of months that NA is going to 2 brands, what does that mean with Gleaner, Sunflower and White planter? No doubt, the Super 6 & 7 will be the best Gleaners ever, but guess what? John Deere has a new machine coming as well. The point being that with the collateral damage already inflicted by this clownish management team, the impact won't be near what it would have been if the Orange tractor would have still been here. As most of us here know, the Orange tractor and Gleaner were twin brothers. Many customers are already gone!

I just got my RFDTV magizine and on March 4 there is an AGCO live show to talk about the R series and all the improvements they are making so maybe there is hope.

Perhaps they will be co-branded Massey Ferguson-Gleaner much like Massey Ferguson-Heston haying equipment?!

Lonn wrote: PUKE!

I agree.

Just because they invested a lot of money in the transverse rotor machine doesn't mean its still going to be around as a Gleaner.  Look what happened to the DT series orange tractors.   Maybe this move by AGCO is being done to put the whole company up for sale.  We're thinking the execs are talking about MF and Challenger as being the two brands sticking around, but maybe they are actually talking about JD and CNH.

I know for a fact that the Gleaner transverse combines are being manufactured at least 2 to one if not 3 to one in hesston. I can't imagine that AGCO would just give up on what they have got. And with the new technology that is coming they are going to put all the big boys in their place...

Gleaner combines are 6 or 7 to one Massey and 11 to one Challenger.

Lexion and Claas are not AGCO products. I was only comparing Gleaners to Challengers and trying to relate that it would be stupid for AGCO to stop Gleaner production when they push out 11 Gleaners to one Challenger or 6 Gleaners to one Massey. Maybe you got that and you are just relaying more info. Do you know or does anyone here know what market share Gleaner has in North America? I'm pretty sure it's better than the 4% it had under Deutz. At least I would hope it is. Far cry from it's glory days when they out sold all other makes in North America and you'd see them in many many ads in magazines. Not just Allis ads but ads for sheds and an L sitting inside the shed or ads for seed or power washers and a Gleaner was what was being washed in the picture. I remember my uncles and Dad talking about how Gleaners were the dominant machine in the wheat growing areas. Heck, I remember seeing green tractors in a field with a Gleaner doing the harvest. It was common. What happened? Why did they quit the sure sale L and M machines before they had the N series figured out?

Edited by Lonn - 31 Mar 2010 at 5:44am