Talked to an AGCO rep today

A  few years ago I was invited by another tractor/equuipment company to their proving grounds to critique the new prototypes.  I asked if their equipment could be painted any other color.  I was surprised to learn that all I  would need to do was to furnish a color chip.

I agree that it is foolish to drop the orange. I purchased a tractor this spring, and looked hard for  a compact alliis, atleast it would be orange, but went with Kubota. It was a realy nice product, price and features and of course it was a pretty good match for corporate orange. If we can order different color cars and trucks, why not tractors. I'm certian that dealers would stock the color which sold the best in their area. Paint color is a small edge dealers could offer, but every little bit helps. Challanger yellow is almost as bad as jd-green. I wonder how many of the buisness leaders at agco have a true agriculture background, family loyalty to a quality product is a built in market share, which should be built on and not ignored.

Spud.  Son, I think you need to stop smoking Wall Street crack and I mean that in the most caring and sincere way possible.  We have yet to feel the true impact from the economy that Wall Street is producing.  Yes you need to make money to maintain and grow a company but Wall Street wants you to make it fast and every quarter no matter the long term cost.  Used to be, and still is with privately held companies, that companies would invest in the future.  Sometimes you have to spend, and therefore, loose money to make it.  With the Wall Street mentality they only care about the current and next quarter.  So if they can save $50,000 next quarter on paper, by cutting out say a color, then they'll do it and to heck with a year down the road.  They will continue to squeeze blood from a turnip until there is no value left in that turnip.  That's why a lot of companies move overseas.  Do you think they do it for their employees, customers or quality of product?  They do it to save a few bucks.  The montra is buy or use your good name and put it on some junk products that you build cheap from China.  People will buy it, even though the quality has gone down, because you have a good name that someone built up over the years.  In a short time though, your name will be junk and all you will have is junk products with a junk name.  The CEO will not care because he will have taken his millions and left.  Two names you can watch do this now is Milwaukee tool and Vise Grip both of which are made in China now.  In the end the only hope for these companies will be that these companies, and ones like them, have turned us into a throw away society.  So by the time their names are junk people won't care they'll just buy another one and they'll get to profit again.

So, my friend, Wall Street companies like AGCO don't care about you or me.  They care about lining their pockets and raising stock.  My point before about AGCO having to generate ideas from within instead of buying up companies is going to be a tough pill for them to swallow.  Yes the RT, DT and super 7 are cutting edge but their not going to be able to make as much money on them as they have buying up good companies, stripping them and moving on which is how they were founded.  Tye, Glencoe, Farmhand, etc. people understand that.

clovis wrote: JohnCO wrote: Makes me think maybe Mahindra has the right idea.  Simple tractors for the masses.   Once upon a time, there was a guy who had the same idea with automobiles. Simple, inexpensive to purchase, cheap to operate and repair...that guy sold millions of them. Can anyone say "Henry Ford, and his Model T"?

i havent posted much in a long time, but,

As you lament, just realize that the folks who are "maximizing shareholder value" are the ones who sell those shares once the value has been "maximized".

Do you suppose those stock holders will take their "earnings"-for lack of a better word, and buy massey equipment?  I don't think so, either. Management needs to spend more time kissing up to the customers (and employees)-they are the people actually carrying the load. The others are merely parasites as near as I can tell.

The thing I hate about AGCO the most is to me they have no true identity.  What are they really?  Massey? Challenger? Fendt? Gleaner? Sunflower?  Red? Yellow? Green? Silver?  it's to confusing for the average person.  What is John Deere?  John Deere.  What color is John Deere, green, anybody can answer that question.  The other thing I hate is that they keep changing the logo all the time now, AGCO inside a box, AGCO outside a box,  then it's orange, now it's red probably be yellow next....A-C used one logo from 1965 till the end. 

I think we're on the verge of a political discussion here. Didn't this maximum stock value thing start in the 80's when a lot of big old companies were bought and split into seperate small "new" companies and spun off for cash. Hostile takeovers causing companies to shelve R&D and use the cash to boost the bottom line. Shipping jobs overseas to lower costs and sell the US real estate. Greed is good!

redline wrote: Do you suppose those stock holders will take their "earnings"-for lack of a better word, and buy massey equipment?  I don't think so, either. Management needs to spend more time kissing up to the customers (and employees)-they are the people actually carrying the load. The others are merely parasites as near as I can tell.

Somehow once you get outside the midwest or even in urban areas here I think the only equipment maker names the majority of people could identify would be John Deere and CAT.

Edited by Dave in il - 28 Jan 2011 at 8:50am

Spud wrote: Lonn.  I suspect you are one of the parisites that you say you despise.  Do you have any kind of a pension plan at work.  Do you have a 401K?  These all invest in companies.  They try to invest in successful companies. If your 401K manager came and said that we are trying to decide between investing in a successful company or investing in an effort to bring back Studebakers because there are people out there that like them and damn the cost, it is the right thing to do, which would you prefer he did?

clint wrote: maximum value for shareholders has been around 500 years since the first corporation.   my point is, they have a legal duty to make the most out of what they have- for the shareholders. a lot of you are retired or have 401k plans- you realize that you want the most production out of your investments so you can live on the money, right?   right or wrong fellas, this is the law.     and lonn, i think i was making sense- what i am saying is that i own 3 agco tractors. how many that complain about them dropping orange own any? what i said is if people were really upset about it, we should have ordered 10x more and saved the color based on demand.   i love AC, but they are just a means to an end for me. i dont get a premium for running ac- i have never been asked by my buyers what tractors i run. they are tools. if you like the tool- i can see from a purely objective point of view that the color shouldnt matter- it is the machine you are buying. if you like a ford truck and hate chevy, etc- i doubt you would buy an orange chevy just because you couldnt get that color in ford. we are talking about the machine itself- i doubt it knows what color it is.   and- the federal reserve has exactly zero to do with the laws of corporations- this stuff was set up a long time ago- i spent a long time studying them a long way back- you are right about us being stuck with the system though Lonn- corporations move to better states based on the laws in those states- at one point almost all major corporations were incorporated in delaware- most big players still are bc that state decided they would have the most business friendly laws for them.   i dont fault management for trying to maximize shareholder value- i expect it- i want to retire someday and stock growth is what most of us bank on one way or another (read- insurance here as well)

 

you are comparing orange tractor sales to combines? how does that make sense?

clint wrote:   all we are talking about is a color- from there view- the color means a lot to me for heritage reasons- but from a farming view- what difference does it make if it is yellow or red if it is the same machine?       corporations were started to allow an entity to function without personal recourse to investors if the entity failed- the exact same reason we have them today.