Dealers Not Accepting Some Brands on Trade

[ENORMIS]

I’ve been noticing that some tractor dealers won’t accept TYM, LS, Branson, Bad Boy, or Mahindra tractors on trade. That may make it more difficult to sell/trade your tractor if you own one of those brands. Are these dealers being uppity about their brand or do you think they have legit business reasons for doing so? I’ve never seen a car dealer not accept another brand before so why do tractor dealers do it?

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Dealers, have to deal with that traded in tractor once they receive it.
Are they gonna move it quick or is it gonna sit?
If it breaks for the new owner can they get it easily serviced?
Is that brand/model moving at auctions.?
There's so many things to consider from a dealers point of view that customers can't understand.

Also a good reason to buy name brands that bring $ like JD, Kubota, etc.
...and some brands can be very regional.

 

[CloverKnollFarms]

You are always better off selling it outright. Last year dealers were telling me they were not looking to take trades, because trade values were too high, and they feared the market would correct, and they would be left holding the bag. That could be an issue today

 

[Gurney1010]

I’ve been noticing that some tractor dealers won’t accept TYM, LS, Branson, Bad Boy, or Mahindra tractors on trade. That may make it more difficult to sell/trade your tractor if you own one of those brands. Are these dealers being uppity about their brand or do you think they have legit business reasons for doing so? I’ve never seen a car dealer not accept another brand before so why do tractor dealers do it?

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A considerable number of New Holland smaller and mid-range utility tractors are made by LS. Same tractor except for decals. I have an LS, and when I need a parts item , I just use the New Holland parts diagrams and order the appropriate part from New Holland. The exact tractor, comparably equipped sells for approximately 10k more new with the NH emblems, so even if resale value on the LS is somewhat less, it all evens out in the long run.

 

[Grebber52]

Around here many brands are hard sell I think. Most off brands do not have very good dealer support. JD and kubota is what we see mostly when out driving around the farms. Many years back Massy was popular but lost their respect. New Holland has a good size dealer to the north but I seldom see many other than a few large units in the fields. Lots of older IH tractors still running, they seem to go forever too as I see the same ones in the field I saw many years ago but no dealer for them that I know of.
When government runs off all the cows and cattle things really change and not for the good IMO-

I agree wholeheartedly!

 

[tacticalturnip]

A considerable number of New Holland smaller and mid-range utility tractors are made by LS. Same tractor except for decals. I have an LS, and when I need a parts item , I just use the New Holland parts diagrams and order the appropriate part from New Holland. The exact tractor, comparably equipped sells for approximately 10k more new with the NH emblems, so even if resale value on the LS is somewhat less, it all evens out in the long run.

A lot of the LS guys seem to do that; it seems the New Holland dealers either have a better parts network, or they get priority when ordering parts.

 

[Shenandoah MF1760]

The last time I had my tractor in for just its initial servicing it was gone for over 2 weeks. I can't imagine how long it might take to get parts on another brand of tractor that is outside of their service network. I worry that my Massey dealer which has just added New Holland to their offerings might drop the Massey line. One reason I bought Massey was local dealer support.

I have an independent automobile mechanic that services everything but German vehicles. Why? He claims that he'd have to invest in another set of diagnostic tools to work on them and it's not worth it to him. I wonder if that's one reason for the reluctance to take Korean tractors.

Conversely, my son who is a BMW mechanic for a dealership won't work on his own F-150. He claims he knows nothing about Fords. I think mechanics these days are far too dependent on computer diagnostic and maintenance tools.

 

[2manyrocks]

What is interesting to me about that is there are guys who get so excited about restoring old IH farm tractors. Mahindra apparently used to be in a business relationship to make IH tractors and kept on making tractors using those IH designs after IH went out of business. So my Mahindra 3525 appears to have a Mahindra engine, but looks to be very much like one of the IH b series so far as everything else goes. The brake discs are the same as the B444 uses, etc. But no interest in Mahindra from the IH guys that I can see.

There are lots of older Massey Fergusons near me in Middle Tennessee. I was told they used to be sold at the local farmers co-op (I don't remember myself). But they really don't have the brand presence in new tractors today around here like they did 30 years ago.

 

[Shenandoah MF1760]

We are not allowed to take Ford 6.0 or Ford 6.4 trucks on trade in.

Interesting. As the owner of an '08 F-450 with a 6.4 in it, this is good to know.

Every time I mention this truck to a mechanic they say, "Sell it!", but not to them.

Yes, I know the engine is as fragile as glass and it goes through oil changes twice as often as it should due to "making oil".

I had thought about trading it in only because it's an XL and lacks a lot of creature comforts. I even had to add cruise control to it. But it has only 90K miles and its only used as a tow vehicle for our 5th wheel. If I get 200K out of it I'll be happy. It looks and runs good, but has been hobbled by its emission controls.

 

[rogerauf]

AGCO is more concerned with pushing Fendt brand over any other brand. That's why they killed Challenger, New Idea, White and many other brands. The MF compacts are Iseki made and are good tractors. CNH compacts were made by Shibaura but now they are LS and not the same quality. Many of the Indian and Korean made tractor will not have as high a resale value. There are always exceptions but the Japanese tractors are usually better quality. Contrary to popular belief, there are no tractors under 100 hp made in the US. JD claims some are made in Georgia but they are just final assembled out of the shipping container there.

 

[troverman]

I can tell you the view from an auto dealer.

We are not allowed to take Ford 6.0 or Ford 6.4 trucks on trade in. Here is what happens:

1) A guy wants to trade his Ford 6.0 and we're not allowed to keep those on our lot (not starting a brand war, but if you know, you know.)
2) So we have to look at auction results on similar 6.0s. And offer 20% less than those auction results to cover our time and our risk.
3) When we go back to the customer and offer him 20% less than auction results, he gets mad and storms out. So we lost the sale and a potential customer is mad.

Much easier to just say we can't take those in on trade.

Seems crazy to still not take 6.0L's in trade, at this late stage in the game. The newest 6.0L equipped trucks were from 2007, and vans from 2010. Anything that old is going to the auction anyway. The sad thing is by now, the problems of the 6.0L are well known and there are fixes for all the problems, mostly from International / Ford updates, but also from the aftermarket. Once done, they are pretty nice engines.

In 2020, I was given $11,000 as a trade for my 2012 F-550 on my Ram 5500. I drove it to the dealer, it was leaking oil and smoking when I pulled in, so I drove it to the back part of the dealers lot. That was a huge relief to get rid of. I was delighted to get 11K as a trade. Not much interest as a private sale. Best offer I got was 12k and the guy interested was shaky at best.

I took the 11K and ran for the hills.

Dealers will lowball, but $11k for an 11 year old 550? Was it 4x4? Really high miles? Rusted out? That seems extremely cheap. Was it a V10 or the 6.7L? We've got a 2012 F-550 6.7L diesel 4x4 that's been nearly bulletproof, had the DEF tank heater failure and both NOx sensors fail, but otherwise nothing. Then again, I have a friend in the excavating business, he also had a 2012 550 diesel dump truck, with 60k miles on it (but 7 years old so out of warranty) the engine crankshaft broke!

This is interesting since Green tractor parts are manufactured in India right next to their Ref tractors.

Not all of them are. Many people think there's nothing more American than a John Deere tractor, but a lot of the mid-size utility tractors are in fact made in Pune, India. The large, Ag-oriented JD tractors are made in USA and are very good machines. Some of the smaller JD tractors are made in the US, but almost all the smaller JD machines (<75HP I think) have Japanese-made Yanmar diesel engines.

Most automobile dealerships will take any car in trade these days, but that's because the auto brands are all well-established and its not particularly hard to get any brand of vehicle repaired or serviced. Book values are also clearly established. With tractor dealers, from what I've seen and experienced, a JD dealer will take JD and Kubota trade-ins; a Kubota dealer will take Kubota and JD trade-ins. Some will take Massey or NH. Many will not take the Korean (Kioti, Branson, LS, TYM, etc) or Indian (Mahindra) tractors. The easy excuse is that they don't know how or cannot service these brands, reliably get parts, etc. There may be some truth to that. A lot of the Asian tractors (excluding Kubota) have factory-sold implements like a front-end loader or rotary cutter, etc...that are made by who knows who, and parts can be very hard to source. On a JD or Kubota, those parts are easy to source, plenty of service info, etc. Beyond that, there might be an intentional strategy of trying to lower value, or at least perceived value, of the 'value' brands by not taking trades. In fairness, the Korean and Indian brands do not hold their value as well and do not have as good a support system. They might be just fine for many users of course.