Corriher Implement closed up?

[8561]

Too bad, I bought a couple of Midwest implements from Corriher a few years ago, had a great experience buying from them.

 

[rickrnc]

This is Rick Rinehardt, former Sales Manager of Corriher Implement Co. I want to invite my customers to call or e-mail me at my new location, Parker Farm Service, in Shelby, NC. I have over 10 years of experience and am an expert at New Holland Compacts, and very familiar with the farm tractor lines, Skidsteer loaders and track loaders as well. We offer parts and service for all my New Holland customers and would appreciate your consideration if pricing New Equipment. In addition to New Holland and Bush Hog, I have the Kubota line and Takeuchi track machines along with Alamo Industrial equipment and we are a level 5 Woods dealer. I have done the shipping and know the complete process for local and out of state sales for tractors and equipment... Call 800-441-9474 or e-mail rick@tractorsusa.com for help with your tractor and equipment needs and the best pricing and service around...

 

[sanzania]

I bought my tractor this year from Rick when he was at Corriher. He's a great guy to deal w/. I was skeptical buying a tractor 500 miles away, but I saved enough money to warrent it. I go to my local dealer to get odds and ends, but I was less than thrilled with "sales" there when originally tractor shopping. The TZ22's were more expensive than the TZ25's when the financing deals were on the 22's......, so I purchsed from Corriher.

 

[VAChesterfield]

Trueblue, I purchased my TC 30 from you guys over three years and 425 hours ago. It was a great experience, saved a lot of bucks, and I reckon that since I haven't needed any warranty work, I haven't cost my local dealers any "labor" dollars to fix a tractor you sold.

It's sad to see NH take the action they did instead of encouraging other dealers to emulate your (and Corriher's) business model, and find a corporate solution to the warranty challenge. NH would sell many more small tractors to small land owners like me if they leveraged the Internet to undersell the other color tractors. Probably sell more of the big ones too.

Just another sad case of a corporation's leadership being unable to climb out of the box they have been living in for way too many years.

 

[Robert_in_NY]

The problem with letting everyone do as these guys did is they all start cutting each others throats and before you know it they are all going the way Corriher did and are out of business. How is this good for New Holland?

The majority of the people buying from Corriher that live out of their area do so as they already made up their mind they wanted a New Holland are are comparing Corriher's price to their own dealer. How is this going to sell more tractors? All it does is take a sale away from another New Holland dealer. New Holland acted in the best interest of all their dealers and did the right thing. Everyone else plays by these rules and most do well, the reason Corriher went with the cost cutting internet move and ended up going out of business tells me all I need to know about the business end of their operation.

Who knows, maybe if they would have played the game the way everyone else did they would still be in business selling New Hollands. Make a little more money on each tractor but sell a few less and be just as far ahead with out having all the extra paperwork and headaches.

It is funny, Tarheel did what Corrihers did but when NH asked they stopped and are still in business and actually took over Corrihers area. There is no one to blame for Corrihers going out of business other then poor management on their part.

 

[trueblue]

Thanks for your comments, VA. I'm glad everything has worked out well for you.

Robert, I agree with much of what you said, but the fact is we were often putting NH tractors in areas that didn't have NH dealers nearby. In my experience, and at least at our dealership, the people who contact us have at least one other brand they are shopping us against. It was/is common for us to talk people away from a Kubota or John Deere both locally and out of state. You are correct, though, in that often it would turn into a situation where one dealer was just taking a sale from another-not beneficial to New Holland and from a parts and service perspective not beneficial to us.

The problem is during our involvement with all this it was common for customers to call us and tell some horror story about their local dealer and how they never wanted to do business with them again. Some dealers were charging the customer money (like hundreds of dollars) for work that was covered under warranty because the dealer took longer than the alotted time for the warranty job, or because "warranty work doesn't cover it all." Apparently this was often done without notice to the customer, and then the machine was held hostage until the bill was paid. It's the dealer's responsibility to have a staff that can complete warranty work in a reasonable time, or the dealer should assume the cost. Funny thing is, I'm talking about people who bought their machines from THAT dealer. We sold four track machines to Idlewild, CA for this very reason.

That's not to say we didn't have our issues with doing business this way either-we messed up a few times-but I think the difference is we always tried to fix the mess we made.

Like I said in a previous post, we still do a solid amount of business out of state-it's just the marketing that has changed. There are still pro's and con's to both ways of buying/selling, and it's most important that the customer knows those pro's and con's beforehand.

 

[VAChesterfield]

Robert, I disagree with many of the points you have made, however, I suspect it's unlikely I will be able to change your mind (nor, for that matter, will you change mine).

Perhaps Thomas Friedman can do what I cannot. I suggest you read his latest book (please try to find the updated version), The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century.

Information about the book is available on Wikipedia at The World Is Flat - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Corriher was trying to live in a flat world, while the mass of other dealers insist the world is still round. One day, much like our American auto manufacturers, NH and the old die hard dealers will discover, to their horror, that the world is indeed flat.

 

[jimg]

>>The problem is during our involvement with all this it was common for
>>customers to call us and tell some horror story about their local dealer and
>>how they never wanted to do business with them again. Some dealers were
>>charging the customer money (like hundreds of dollars) for work that was
>>covered under warranty because the dealer took longer than the alotted
>>time for the warranty job, or because "warranty work doesn't cover it all."
Even if they buy the machine from you theyre still stuck w/ no service on their end. How does buying from you solve anything? In the cases you mention above it sounds like NH should have become involved.

 

[MikePA]

Robert, I disagree with many of the points you have made,

How can you disagree with the idea that in some (many? most?) situations Corriher was simply 'stealing' a sale from another NH dealer which not only doesn't benefit NH, it hurts them?

 

[trueblue]

Under the terms of the New Holland Dealer's Agreement all dealers are required to perform warranty work on any piece of equipment under warranty regardless of where the item was purchased if requested by the customer. It's the same as someone buying a Ford F150 in South Carolina and then moving to Virginia. The dealer has to service it if it's under warranty regardless of where the truck was purchased.

jimg, I was not suggesting that buying from us or Corriher was a solution-I was only pointing out the circumstances under which many out of state customers came to us in the first place. New Holland did get involved in quite a few of these situations. I just don't think the situations should have happened in the first place.

 

[Robert_in_NY]

Trueblue, I know what you are saying about how some people don't like certain local dealers. But if you don't like your local NH dealer because of problems with warranty work then how is buying a tractor from another dealer out of state going to solve your warranty work problem?

I know not every area is like mine but I have 4 New Holland dealerships all within roughly an hours drive at most. 3 Case-IH dealers, I can't even keep track of the John Deere dealers and then there are the Agco dealers as well as Kubota, Mahindra, Kioti and a few others. I don't care for my one Case dealer so I deal with one of the others. Distance wise, the one I don't like is 40 minutes away and is a large dealership. The one I do deal with is smaller and is 25 minutes away. They just don't have as large a selection of equipment. I buy my JD parts over the phone from my friend who works at the JD dealer 90 minutes away instead of dealing with the local JD dealer who likes the color of his equipment way more then I am willing to pay. Buying a tractor from another dealer would require me to deal with that dealer for warranty work also as there is a reason I don't deal with a couple of these local dealers. But I am not loyal to a brand, I am loyal to my dealers. The guys who take care of me get my business. The guys who don't care don't get my business anymore.

 

[Robert_in_NY]

Robert, I disagree with many of the points you have made, however, I suspect it's unlikely I will be able to change your mind (nor, for that matter, will you change mine).

Perhaps Thomas Friedman can do what I cannot. I suggest you read his latest book (please try to find the updated version), The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century.

Information about the book is available on Wikipedia at The World Is Flat - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Corriher was trying to live in a flat world, while the mass of other dealers insist the world is still round. One day, much like our American auto manufacturers, NH and the old die hard dealers will discover, to their horror, that the world is indeed flat.

You disagree, yet New Holland and even TrueBlue agree. I don't think I will read that book you read.

 

[VAChesterfield]

You disagree, yet New Holland and even TrueBlue agree. I don't think I will read that book you read.

As you wish.

 

[Harold_J]

Trueblue, I know what you are saying about how some people don't like certain local dealers. But if you don't like your local NH dealer because of problems with warranty work then how is buying a tractor from another dealer out of state going to solve your warranty work problem?

I know not every area is like mine but I have 4 New Holland dealerships all within roughly an hours drive at most. 3 Case-IH dealers, I can't even keep track of the John Deere dealers and then there are the Agco dealers as well as Kubota, Mahindra, Kioti and a few others. I don't care for my one Case dealer so I deal with one of the others. Distance wise, the one I don't like is 40 minutes away and is a large dealership. The one I do deal with is smaller and is 25 minutes away. They just don't have as large a selection of equipment. I buy my JD parts over the phone from my friend who works at the JD dealer 90 minutes away instead of dealing with the local JD dealer who likes the color of his equipment way more then I am willing to pay. Buying a tractor from another dealer would require me to deal with that dealer for warranty work also as there is a reason I don't deal with a couple of these local dealers. But I am not loyal to a brand, I am loyal to my dealers. The guys who take care of me get my business. The guys who don't care don't get my business anymore.

Robert, you're lucky you have that many dealers nearby. Are they all independent of each other? The trend I see is consolidation and smaller dealers going out of business; net result less competition. This has followed the earlier mergers at the corporate level. I have one each of three of the major brands nearby, MF JD and NH. Anything else is many hours and a hundred or more miles away. There is little competition on price, so we have to pay or shop far away and take our chances with warranty problems. I see this as the trend in farm and industrial machinery, and it's not good for the consumer. There is a similar trend in the automobile business, but not as bad because it's a bigger market.
I think the only things that will keep the major brands on their toes is if some of the new players like Mahindra or the Korean companies start to make some inroads with a good product and develop a decent dealer network. Ford and GM would be doing the same with autos if they didn't have Toyota and Nissan come on the scene 30 years ago.

 

[MikePA]

I don't think I will read that book you read.

It's not a bad book but it's got no relevance to this thread.

Tractors are not commodities where the only issue is price. Tractors have a local component of service and not simply warranty work. A truck can deliver the tractor and the UPS truck can deliver parts but neither can deliver service.

 

[ducati996]

How can you disagree with the idea that in some (many? most?) situations Corriher was simply 'stealing' a sale from another NH dealer which not only doesn't benefit NH, it hurts them?

NH gets the sale regardless and this same type of scenerio plays out in every type of industry. Its those that loose the business who whine about it but the reality is the competition for them is the area around them and every state as well. The days of protected dealerships and territory are over- the consumer can go where ever they please, and there is nothing a dealer can do by cry over a lost sale. I see it in other industies, why should Industrial machinery or tractors be specially isolated from who the rest of the world works? Dang I bought a ton of implements from Corriher, saved money compared to frontier over priced equals. Even with the shipping it kept large amounts of money in my pocket where it belonged with better equipment (IMHO). I even went out of state and save $2700 dollars on a Deere purchase compared to my local dealer who was given all the chances in the world to react, and it wasnt even an Internet sale. Oh and yes they will do the warranty work. Its my money, I will spend it how ever i wish and with whom. No MFG will ever excerised there "implied right" on what dealer or territiory Im forced to purchase from. Im sure the others who bought from Corriher, or any other dealer outside their locale, feels the same.

Duc

 

[MikePA]

Simple. You want to be a NH dealer, you follow their rules. Same goes for JD and Kubota. Chevy, Ford, Acura, Honda, MB, etc. follow the same model. More industries that apparently are isolated from how the rest of the world works. Since Corriher went out of business, their business model wasn't too effective.

 

[Robert_in_NY]

I know I am lucky which is why I have to choose how I reply carefully as not everyone has the options I do. The JD dealer owns multiple stores in this area, the Big case dealer has multiple dealers but the others are further away. The two closest Case-IH dealers and owned by different people. There are actually 5 New Holland dealers if I want to drive a slight bit further (these are only New York dealerships) I am quite close to the PA line and there are more dealers down there. The 5 NH dealers are owned by 4 different people only my local store (Larry Romance and Sons) has multiple NH dealerships (two). All the Agco dealers are independents.

 

[ducati996]

Simple. You want to be a NH dealer, you follow their rules. Same goes for JD and Kubota. Chevy, Ford, Acura, Honda, MB, etc. follow the same model. More industries that apparently are isolated from how the rest of the world works. Since Corriher went out of business, their business model wasn't too effective.

None of them say or allow that warranty's get denied by the dealer if it wasnt purchased from that dealer. Glad you brought up cars - folks buy them out of state all the time through the Internet, or shop for warranties from dealers or internet in other states to get a better price. As for Corriher going out of business - could be lots of reasons for that, seems like they were in business long enough to make a strong impression and make a lot of dealers whine, means nothing that they closed. Happens all the time for perfectly acceptable reasons - tired of it, people die, etc...bankrupt, etc..

Duc

 

[MikePA]

None of them say or allow that warranty's get denied by the dealer if it wasnt purchased from that dealer.

No one said they did, in fact, exactly the opposite was mentioned. Read trueblue's post.