[dbcurtis]

Did you ever notice that as you drive through farm country, you will see long stretches where everyone is using one brand, and then a long stretch where everyone is using another? Dollars-to-donuts it is driven by proximity to a regional parts depot. If you are down during planting or harvesting, and the mechanic can get you running today if you send your kid to a town 20 minutes away to pick up a part, or wait for tomorrows parts delivery, versus parts are two days away, it is an easy choice.

[magduf]

Ok, that made sense decades ago, but today there's two problems with that:

1) Overnight delivery

2) From everything I've read, you cannot go send your kid to town 20 minutes away to pick up a part for a John Deere machine. You have to call and set up an appointment for a service technician to come to your farm to repair the equipment on-site. After all, that's what all this right-to-repair stuff is complaining about: they aren't allowed to repair things themselves any more. And then the big problem here is: what if it's Saturday, and the service technician is off for the weekend, or is booked up all week long? How do you afford to have your operation down all that time because of a failed tractor?

So I don't see how having regional parts depots is useful any more.

[pengaru]

There's probably some level of acknowledgement that there will always be a subset of repairs requiring the dealer's expertise and tooling. Especially as the machines keep getting more complex.

So you will still buy the locally supported brand.