Corriher Implement closed up?

[trueblue]

Hi Guys. I'm with Tarheel Tractor and I haven't been on the boards in a while, but I thought I'd let you know what was going on with Corriher.

For a while Corriher and Tarheel were the only ones doing pricing on eBay and on our websites, and it was causing a lot of grief for other dealers (for reasons already mentioned in this thread)-especially in the northeast. Finally enough pressure was put on New Holland that they had to create a situation where if we stayed on the internet with obvious discount pricing then we were going to lose a lot of money in terms of discounts, etc. Our dealership thought it was in our best interest to comply and just try to be lower key about servicing our customers out of state. Corriher, for lack of a better term, "challenged" New Holland and kept everything the same. Although it took a while, this gave Corriher a bit of a black eye with New Holland and tensions between the two continued to rise. Mr. Corriher began encouraging his son to sell the dealership, which is why you saw it up for sale. We spoke with them about a buyout since we are only 30 minutes up the road from them, but we were very far apart on the terms. Finally with no buyers and a lot of pressure from New Holland, Corriher turned in their letter of resignation. New Holland then approached us about taking over that territory, which we will be doing in roughly four to six weeks. We are the ones that have been down there loading everything up to take to the new store.

If we can help you guys with anything please let us know. We had quotes set up to auto-respond on our website (Tarheel Tractor - Authorized New Holland, Toro & Yanmar Dealer) so people could get a price quickly, but we found that a large number of our quotes were being filtered by customer's spam filters. If you have any suggestions about how we can get you our "real" pricing quickly online, we are open for suggestions. Let me know if you have any questions. Thanks.

 

[Harold_J]

...Finally enough pressure was put on New Holland that they had to create a situation where if we stayed on the internet with obvious discount pricing then we were going to lose a lot of money in terms of discounts, etc.

Would you say that NH's disdain for price advertising applies to print ads as well as internet based? In a few of the regional farm papers that I read price promotions by certain specific dealers seems to have declined recently.

 

[Robert_in_NY]

The problem was a couple dealers were pricing tractors very low and shipping them all over the country. This took money away from other dealers and forced them to do the warranty work which any dealer will tell you that there is no money in warranty work and you are lucky if you break even.

New Holland doesn't mind local pricing as it really only helps the local dealers who are on equal terms as far as selling. It was the internet pricing and selling across the country that caused the trouble as dealers on the East coast get tractors cheaper then dealers in Rockies (as LoneCowboy will tell you) as these dealers have the added freight of trucking the tractors from the coast to their dealerships while the East coast dealers have a short haul from Baltimore.

 

[Harold_J]

New Holland doesn't mind local pricing as it really only helps the local dealers who are on equal terms as far as selling. It was the internet pricing and selling across the country that caused the trouble as dealers on the East coast get tractors cheaper then dealers in Rockies (as LoneCowboy will tell you) as these dealers have the added freight of trucking the tractors from the coast to their dealerships while the East coast dealers have a short haul from Baltimore.

I understand the part about the inland trucking costs, but it's funny that Trueblue said most of the dealer complaints were coming from the Northeast. And central NC is as far or farther from Baltimore as the Northeast.

Personally I would never go and wave a price (internet or otherwise) from 3 states or 700 miles away in a local dealer's face, but I'd keep it in my head when trying to bargain; but maybe some buyers were doing just that. Still, it was good information to have and an additional consumer tool for coming to terms with a fair price.

More likely I would suspect that complaints were coming from dealers with little local competition, either due to not much agriculture in the area and/or consolidation of dealerships. Another factor they will argue is a higher cost of doing business in certain areas like the Northeast (taxes, wages, utilities, insurance, etc.) These 2 dealers in NC were only 30 miles apart and I'm sure there are others nearby; well now there's one less and that's the way it seems to be going.

 

[MikePA]

...and it was causing a lot of grief for other dealers (for reasons already mentioned in this thread)-especially in the northeast.

Just curious, how did you know they were primarily from the northeast? Did NH tell you this?

 

[MikePA]

And central NC is as far or farther from Baltimore as the Northeast.

Baltimore to Lenoir, NC = 466 mile
Baltimore to Portland, ME = 508 miles

According to the New Holland site, there aren't any dealers north of Bangor.

I agree with Robert, odds are, they were getting complaints from any dealer within reasonable trucking distance from Lenoir, NC who were losing sales to Corriher. If I were one of these dealers, I sure wouldn't want to make less on a sale AND get saddled with the money losing warranty work.

 

[trueblue]

I'm not sure how other lines do their freight, but New Holland's is subsidized. Dealers on the east coast have to pay a portion of the freight expense associated with sending NH's to the west coast, for example. The actual cost of a tractor should not be much different for dealers in a different area, but other factors do contribute. The cost of living is much higher, say, in NY than in NC, for example. The other side of that though, is that all dealers set their own shop rate for warranty and then tell NH what that rate is. Ours is $65/hr for large equipment, but I know of a dealer in VA that is $80/hr for the same work. It's not really that he's trying to rip people off-he may just have more expenses than we do in our area. Our point of view was that if you can set your rate to cover your expenses then why not honor the dealer's agreement to warranty any NH piece of equipment regardless of where it was purchased? You are correct though-in general a dealer will lose on warranty work over time no matter their location. Our perspective, though, was why not do that warranty work, break even or lose a little, and then try to win the customer over for the future or to get their parts and service business? We've done it several times.

We basically had no choice being so close to Corriher-we either had to compete with the low pricing/high volume approach or we'd be out of business.

Yes, NH did tell us that the main complaints were from dealers in the northeast. They showed us all the letters and emails, etc. that those dealers sent in. I don't blame them for being upset, but it's not like we went into it to target the northeast. We advertised, people from all over the USA called, and we sold them equipment. We were allowed to do that based on the NH dealer's agreement, and like I said, at that point in time it was play the game your competition plays or get run out of town. We only felt like we could bow out when NH really stepped up the pressure.

I guess I should clarify: NH does not have territories now. We still can and do sell parts and equipment out of state, it was just the advertising that had to change. I would guess that roughly 30% of our sales are still out of state customers...

If I missed anyone's question please let me know.

 

[MikePA]

Thanks for the explanation. Very interesting.

 

[Brad_Blazer]

I don't know any details but Corriher is in business and selling Montana tractors. For the last few months they have been keeping a few tractors on display just west of TSC on highway 70 in Newton.

New Holland Tractors, Bush Hog, New Holland Contruction Deals!

 

[trueblue]

Yes, they opened back up two Monday's ago to sell Montana tractors and Bad Boy mowers. They have finished the physical inventory count on their NH parts and are waiting on return tickets from NH. Although their website suggests they are still a NH dealer they are not. Currently the owner is the only permanent staff there.