The equipment Barry Hovis uses on his small Cape Girardeau, Mo., cattle farm is a lot different from the tractor he learned to drive as a kid. Today’s equipment is chock full of modern technology designed to improve efficiency and increase yields. Those digital features, however, require digital tools to fix—tools that Mr. Hovis can’t buy. Modern tractor makers keep their software in house.

“I consider myself to be a bit of a handyman,” says Mr. Hovis, a Republican member of the Missouri House of Representatives. “When I tried to buy the software tools I needed to do simple things like sync a new part to my tractor, I came up empty. And because independent repair shops get the same treatment from manufacturers, I’m forced to turn to the dealer for repair.”

He isn’t the only frustrated farmer. Many are calling for “right to repair” laws requiring manufacturers to provide easy access to necessary tools, software, parts and documentation.

In a report for the U.S. Public Interest Research Group last month, I detailed how software tools have become instrumental to the repair process. With the proper software, farmers and technicians can identify an issue with a tractor, authorize the repair, and clear the error code generated. Without it, they’re forced to go to the dealer for help or turn to hacking the digital components in the tractor, which some argue violates the license they are required to sign at purchase.

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Mr. Hovis can’t tinker himself or ask the local mechanic to come out and fix his tractor like in the old days. Instead he has to contract with one of two nearby dealerships that are authorized by the manufacturer to make the software fixes.

“When harvest season starts in southeast Missouri, everybody’s running multiple combines, tractors, everything. That means more breakdowns,” he said. “Our two dealerships’ service techs can’t keep up with the demand. Being a smaller farmer, I’m typically going to be the last guy on the list that gets the truck out to my house.”

Some farmers are choosing to forgo newer equipment altogether, instead opting for 30- or 40-year-old tractors they can keep running on their own. As a result, older machines are fetching high prices at auction. According to farm equipment data company Machinery Pete, the highest price a roughly 30-year-old John Deere tractor sold for in 1989 was a little over $7,200 in 2019 dollars. In 2019, a 1989 John Deere tractor sold for $71,000.

To Kris Folland, a Minnesota-based farmer, it makes simple financial sense to use older equipment. “They’ve stood the test of time, [are] well-built, easy to fix, and it’s easy to get parts,” Mr. Folland told the Star-Tribune of Minneapolis. “Older equipment is a way to reduce your cost per bushel to become more profitable.”

Reform may come soon. Mr. Hovis filed a right-to-repair bill in January. “To me this is a bipartisan issue. This is not about politics or anything like that,” he told me. Farmers in Florida, Montana and Nebraska are also pursuing legislative change, drawing support from state farm bureaus, farmers unions and lawmakers from both parties.

Legislators have an opportunity to come together across party lines and help farmers at a time when it is increasingly difficult to turn a profit tilling earth.

Mr. O’Reilly is a right-to-repair advocate with U.S. PIRG.

LINK: https://www.wsj.com/articles/i...63?mod=hp_opin_pos_1

I have a lot of John Deere equipment. It cost me $750.00 just for a service tech to drive to my farm. Then the clock starts. You literally have to plug a lap top to the tractor to figure out what is wrong. It can be a nightmare.

Right to repair is absolutely a no-brainer bi-partisan issue. This sort of absolute anti-consumer crap is despicable and should be 100% illegal, and that's me being as nice as possible about the matter.

This has kept many farmers from updating to newer, more efficient equipment. My dad had this issue come up last year when his 1963 Farmall 806 finally shit the bed (temporarily anyways). He and his boss were in a panic to find a replacement with low hours from the 70's, so that my dad is still able to work on them as needed. Ended up with fairly decent 1975 International 1566 (which still ended up needing work). The boss could have easily gotten a new tractor but any time something goes down, you can't do anything with them as they go into limp mode and need a tech to "reset" it. Maybe it would have been a wash because of how inefficient the older tractors are the soaring cost of petroleum but as far as a farmer sees it, service costs are taking money out of their pockets for no good reason. All of the manufacturers are guilty of locking out their customers and it's been an ongoing ordeal since the early 80's when they started introducing ECU's and all of the gizmos that go with them. Really keeps the secondary market for the older machinery lively because most farmers would prefer stuff that is user fixable and today's stuff just ain't it.

Right to repair should never have been an issue but even though the manufacturers kept doling out pain to their customers, the idiots kept buying them. The customers should have said no new machines unless they came with the software to do what they needed to do, but they didn't. Now they're expecting the government to fix it (and they should) but I can't lay all the blame on the manufacturers and dealers themselves.

IIRC this was a topic either here on on some forum where CA farmers were in an uproar over the same issue, several years ago...

Its the same with cars and motorcycles, you need some kind of software to scan the codes, Surprised there isn't and OBD2 type of port, that would be the first thing to have on these for minimum access. Independent techs have to buy software to work on new vehicles.

quote:

Originally posted by Jester814:
Right to repair is absolutely a no-brainer bi-partisan issue. This sort of absolute anti-consumer crap is despicable and should be 100% illegal, and that's me being as nice as possible about the matter.

I agree.
The same should also apply to cars.
They try to force you to go to the dealership for service.

John Deere family here back to the 1950s. Am in the market for a compact loader/backhoe. Reached out to John Deere with a question since now retired and need to be conscious on how I spend my money. Got a very cold shoulder, canned response.

Gonna give up on John Deere, especially after reading about farmers having problems with John Deere regarding fixing their big tractors.

If John Deere is jacking around the big farm tractor guys, they sure do not give a crap about anything smaller.

Reading the writing on the wall, I am going to take a serious look at Mahindra.

Just sayin'.

John Deere stock (DE) hit an all time record high last week.

I'm sure there is probably some rogue mechanic out there making a fortune removing a lot of the computerized crap. There is a backyard mechanic down the highway from me who does this for diesel trucks. Several of his customers I have spoke with get much better mileage and pull stronger with all the crap removed. The agricultural industry is experiencing the same heartburn as the diesel truck owners. My dad has farmed for the past 60 yrs and hates all the electronic crap. Every year he has to have a tech come out and fix a computer on one of his tractors...every freaking year.

You have diesel emissions regulations to thank for this.

A small percentage of diesels go to offroad use, with the vast majority going to highway trucks. But that didn't stop the government from putting similar regs on off road engines in 2011 as they did on highway trucks in 2007 - EGR, variable geometry turbos, aftertreatment catalyst and particulate filters, etc. These things are complex now, more so than most passenger cars.

Not sure what can be legislated other than the ability to buy diagnostic software to interpret fault codes. But no one is going to get factory diagnostic software that allows you to change ECM calibrations and override emissions controls.

quote:

Originally posted by Hay2bale:
John Deere stock (DE) hit an all time record high last week.

My thought is that if John Deere stock is going up, then more the reason to shine off both big and small users. Until the stock goes down, why bother with what any of us think.

quote:

Originally posted by Hay2bale:
John Deere stock (DE) hit an all time record high last week.

A LOT of people think the economy has pent up demand that will benefit heavy equipment makers once/if/when it breaks loose. Deere and Caterpillar both are heavy into construction equipment... I own a bit of both.

For years my philosophy has been it has to either be old enough that I can fix it or new enough to be under warranty.

A new car (2020) was just purchased for my wife. It has the extended 10 year warranty.

My 2500 Dodge Ram (1995) I can fix. The two Deere tractors are a 1965 and a 2003. So far the newer one hasn’t been too much trouble (a model 110 tractor/loader/backhoe). The 1965 is a 1020 model that I call “old reliable”.

If the tractors needed replaced I would consider Kubota. I believe their heavier machines are now better designed while JD has been riding on their reputation for years.

If a car/truck company built their vehicles like army trucks are built, so they can be fixed “in the field”, I would take all my business there. At this point they won’t and can’t do that because of emissions making equipment excessively complex and the money dealers make doing repairs.

If it was simple enough for the shade tree mechanic, the service departments would go silent. Then again, how many shade tree mechanics do you know that are under 50?

My son is in the construction / developer business . They don't own anything larger than a skidsteer , small dozer . The big stuff is leased .

Been going on a long time. My dad taught high school vocational auto mechanics and bemoaned the fact you couldn’t teach how to fix anything anymore. It was “replace only.” My ex owned a starter and alternator shop in a rural area. Did a lot of tractor and big equipment rebuilds, until all of a sudden cheap Japanese after-market new stuff got cheaper than you could rebuild. Long before computerization complicated things.

quote:

Originally posted by Lefty Sig:
Not sure what can be legislated other than the ability to buy diagnostic software to interpret fault codes. But no one is going to get factory diagnostic software that allows you to change ECM calibrations and override emissions controls.

The 'hobby' guys will shit at the cost of the tools/software if/once it's available, let alone being trained to use it. It's always a good story to have a corporate boogeyman, but a lot of the decision to not offer the diagnostic tools is the cost to support all the dumb, er, ignorant questions/requests that will go along with it.
It takes a lot of equipment & expertise to make a tractor that you can prop your feet up & play on your iphone while planting corn, it's also going to cost a lot to fix it when it's broke.

The heavy truck side already went through this.
Fleet and dealer level software is available and it's not cheap.
Some fleets are even able to perform their own warranty work now and don't have to take their stuff to the shop.
They also had to have people trained and certified to do the work and file the claim. Same as a dealer.
ODOT even has our training dept go to their location for training. Which is a few thousand per person.

A friend of mine operated a new dredge for a lake community with a JD engine. It had a check engine light come on and a tech came with a laptop and it had over 100 problem codes.

It goes both ways. I run a lot of BIG diesels in yachts (500HP-2600HP pairs of engines) on an almost daily basis from CAT, Cummins, Man, MTU, Volvo and others, they've all been computerized for almost 3 decades and requiring a computer to read a lot of the codes. The big independent mechanical houses (non dealer) do have the laptops to plug into them. That being said, the computers have saved A LOT of them from grenading and needing major overhauls by catching overheats, overloaded engines, injector issues that would've washed out cylinder walls and many things of that nature, that would've just ruined/destroyed an old school mechanical diesel. Generally they're pretty damn reliable and very very rarely do I need to get a tech out to hook up the laptop on any of them.

I wouldn't keep any new vehicle past a warranty period, lease it for the same period or less and dump it into the used market for someone else to pay the repair fees.

Every new vehicle has several computers, all tied together, sensors everywhere that have to signal some module to tell the ECM to allow it to run. One goes bad and you're off to the bank to drop big bucks.

All these electronic gadgets are going to make keeping a used vehicle on the road expensive.