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.