[bluechip]

The big difference is the warranty. This has been good and bad. the good is that buyers get a real parts and labor limited warranty administered by Fail Safe. The bad is the tractors can be higher priced than at an independet dealer who imports his own inventory. Farm Pro does have an extensive parts inventory, but contact necessary to get those parts remains difficult, There has been quite a bit of turnover within the organization over the last year or so. They have not done the best job of selecting or qualifyind dealerships and have suffered as a result of sub standard dealers. If you have a good dealer with a good reputation to deal with, it will not matter a lot if it is Farm Pro or some other name on the hood as Greg said.

I will say that Farm Pro played a big part in the jump in quality that occured a few years back in the Jinma tractor. At that time they were importing something like 5000 to 7000 a year and they held up on a large order pending some comittment from the factory for quality improvements. I have not had a lot of assembly issues on the farm pro tractors we have handled.

Farm Pro has lost a lot of dealers over the last year or two which I attribute to the comptetitive nature of the business, (this is not an easy money business), pricing and to some extent, internal communications issues.