Every industry has gone the direction of only large dealerships at the cost of having fast, friendly service and a friend down the road who sells machines. I've seen this first hand in my industry, copy machines. Of course, the equipment has become much more complex, efficient, reliable, but to a large part, not as economical to rebuild as the old gear used to be. I own a tiny independent shop and we still lease and service equipment, but are truly in an industry of giants. Our customers love us and know me by name as Eric, who answers many of the phone calls and sends out invoices and sells equipment and rents on a month to month basis with no contract often. The truth is, my business used to be fun because there was another dealer down the street who we also know. It's gone, but I make a decent living and am too small to sell for any real money. I am new to tractors, but find many parallels to my office equipment industry. The large corporations buy up dealers and it is probably hard for a country corner farm tractor dealership to compete and actually make money as he once did. The big box stores like Rural King have such low prices, people will give them a chance to save thousands on a similar John Deere or whoever else is still in the game.
I just realized this is an older post, so its probably gotten worse for the consumer / farmer or homesteader who needs good service, as service is going away and lower priced products, made cheaply is the way we seem to be going, and it ain't cheap at that. Just my rant, fwiw.
