John Deere employee responds to Right to Repair: Difference between revisions
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Another common complaint that is true is the lack of independent repair shops. To my knowledge there are no true legitimate businesses operating as independent repair shops in my area. This meaning they have some sort of store front, business cards, file taxes as a business, etc. Unlike cars where you have options besides the dealer like Pep Boys, Midas, Jiffy Lube, any thousands of other small independent repair shops this does not exist for agriculture. They like to blame this on the fact that these shops don't have access to the dealer level software. This is true but I'm not sure this is entirely the reason. This is because I was born in 1973 and grew up on a farm a decade before the first computer was put on a tractor and even then there were no independent repair shops for agriculture in my area. Or anywhere that I am aware of. Now maybe there is or was one somewhere but I feel like they have to be rare. I am very curious to find out if one does or did exists [''sic''] that is specialized in agriculture repair. If you got your farm machine repaired then or even now outside the dealership it was done so by a shadetree mechanic or a moonlighter. If you are not familiar with the terms a shade tree mechanic is someone who works out of their home typically with little to no formal education or training. Kind of like a hobbyist. A moonlighter is someone who works for a dealership during the day and works on their own time at night by the "moonlight" for cash. Now you might be able to get an automotive shop to do a simple repair like charge the air conditioning or a truck repair place to repair a hydraulic hose. But not many places outside the dealership have ever existed for major repair that I am aware of. This probably has a lot to do with demand. I would be surprised to find out there are not more Apple products in the state of New York than John Deere tractors with computers in the country. Not many people own a $300,000 tractor. Opening a tractor repair shop would be a very risky business even with availability to software. Availability to hardware is not an issue. Most of the tools we use are purchase [''sic''] from tool dealers like Snap-On, Matco, Mac, Craftsman, etc. The tools that are only available to dealers we are happy to sell to customers if they are willing to pay for it. We sell a specialized wrench used to change starters on old tractors all the time. In some circumstances we even borrow them out to customers. However if someone wanted to purchase the full line of specialty tools the dealership owns they would have to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars. This just isn't practical in most cases. So this isn't a problem I see changing because of right to repair since this issue is also caused by several other factors. Also the factory warranty for any component related to emissions is five years. So not many new tractors would even go to these shops for engine repair since the dealership will fix it for free. And just to be transparent and clear only the emission system is under warranty for 5 years. The rest of the machine is typically only covered for 1 or 2 years depending on the model. | Another common complaint that is true is the lack of independent repair shops. To my knowledge there are no true legitimate businesses operating as independent repair shops in my area. This meaning they have some sort of store front, business cards, file taxes as a business, etc. Unlike cars where you have options besides the dealer like Pep Boys, Midas, Jiffy Lube, any thousands of other small independent repair shops this does not exist for agriculture. They like to blame this on the fact that these shops don't have access to the dealer level software. This is true but I'm not sure this is entirely the reason. This is because I was born in 1973 and grew up on a farm a decade before the first computer was put on a tractor and even then there were no independent repair shops for agriculture in my area. Or anywhere that I am aware of. Now maybe there is or was one somewhere but I feel like they have to be rare. I am very curious to find out if one does or did exists [''sic''] that is specialized in agriculture repair. If you got your farm machine repaired then or even now outside the dealership it was done so by a shadetree mechanic or a moonlighter. If you are not familiar with the terms a shade tree mechanic is someone who works out of their home typically with little to no formal education or training. Kind of like a hobbyist. A moonlighter is someone who works for a dealership during the day and works on their own time at night by the "moonlight" for cash. Now you might be able to get an automotive shop to do a simple repair like charge the air conditioning or a truck repair place to repair a hydraulic hose. But not many places outside the dealership have ever existed for major repair that I am aware of. This probably has a lot to do with demand. I would be surprised to find out there are not more Apple products in the state of New York than John Deere tractors with computers in the country. Not many people own a $300,000 tractor. Opening a tractor repair shop would be a very risky business even with availability to software. Availability to hardware is not an issue. Most of the tools we use are purchase [''sic''] from tool dealers like Snap-On, Matco, Mac, Craftsman, etc. The tools that are only available to dealers we are happy to sell to customers if they are willing to pay for it. We sell a specialized wrench used to change starters on old tractors all the time. In some circumstances we even borrow them out to customers. However if someone wanted to purchase the full line of specialty tools the dealership owns they would have to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars. This just isn't practical in most cases. So this isn't a problem I see changing because of right to repair since this issue is also caused by several other factors. Also the factory warranty for any component related to emissions is five years. So not many new tractors would even go to these shops for engine repair since the dealership will fix it for free. And just to be transparent and clear only the emission system is under warranty for 5 years. The rest of the machine is typically only covered for 1 or 2 years depending on the model. | ||
I have heard people complain about the lack of parts availability. This does not come from the dealer or corporate. We will sell you every part to make a brand new tractor from parts if you would like. We can also get many OEM parts dating back to before 1960. The common ones we stock. I think what they might be referring to is aftermarket parts. I don't know how much control Deere has on aftermarket part availability. Once again I think supply has a lot to do with it. With being so few machines there just isn't much of a market for it. The only major company I am aware of for aftermarket parts is A&I products. There are a few other smaller ones but I don't know of any that deal with controllers. Also Deere hardly makes any of their own electronics. It is all outsourced to companies like Delco, Bosch, Lucas, Phoenix, Delphi, and others. So even electronic components inside of these devices I would think would be largely up to them to supply. And I know some of them are available because there is an independent company called Ag Express that specializes in agriculture electronic component repair and harnessing. Now maybe there is more going on behind the scenes I am unaware of stopping production of aftermarket parts for electronics but I don't know right to repair is going to fix it. As a side note you may want to try and contact Ag Express out of Sulphur Springs Indiana www.agexpress.com. They may be able to give you a lot more detail on the electronic repair side of things outside of the dealership than I could. | |||