[joshspankit]

John Deere is a consistent (imposing) presence in almost all discussions of right to repair simply because they understand the power we people have: Once right to repair is established in law and public opinion, nothing they can do will stop farmers from being able to work on their own tractors.

[mulmen]

I paid for books (and beer) in college with a summer farm job. I did equipment maintenance and drove trucks. We ran John Deere 6602 combines from the mid 1970s. This was in the late 2000s.

They were an absolute dream to work on. Everything was straightforward and consistent. The assembly was well thought out to enable in the field repairs. In my mind at the time John Deere was a brand that understood the needs of farmers.

I can't reconcile their current position on right to repair with my experience. Something clearly changed between the 1970s and today.

[snarf21]

Sure you can. They don't care about farmers because farmers are a smaller percentage of their business each year. When Private Equity buys all the mega-farms, they won't care about having to rent tractors from JD. Actually, they would prefer it because you can CapEx a maintenance contract instead of putting it on OpEx. It does mean that there will be an ever growing opportunity for a smaller tractor company that actually does care about farmers but JD knows where their bread is buttered and they don't care about the little guy.

[thrdbndndn]

Why are we making a distinction between (indie) farmers and mega-farms?

They are all farmers, do the farmers' thing. And the latter is more efficient. It makes sense (and IMO is better) for a tractor company to cater for the latter.

[adolph]

That seems a kinda conspiratorial stretch for a phenomena that has a simpler possible explanation: they see maintenance as a growing revenue source.

[salawat]

It's not conspiratorial at all. After a certain size, and upon getting a CFO that'll actually pay attention to things like that, this is a 100% incentivized way of doing things.

It's not conspiratorial in the mustache twirling sense, but it is 100% an unambiguously desired outcome of how our tax laws and accounting principles are currently structured.

A system is perfectly tuned to generate the outcomes it does. If you don't like those outcomes, you have to change the system.

[ask_b123]

What are the benefits of a maintenance contract being CapEx rather than OpEx?

[zdragnar]

My grandfather and his brother (sons of poor immegrants) traveled halfway across the country in their youth with nothing but a motorbike and some tools. They stopped at a farm each night and worked out a deal to do some equipment repair work in exchange for food and a place to sleep.

Those days are long gone. Fewer small family farms, fewer friendly and trusting people, fewer simple things for mechanically minded handy men to fix.

There's a lot of good things progress brings us, though it is often interesting to ponder on what we have lost.

[MisterTea]

> fewer friendly and trusting people,

I honestly blame film/TV and other modern media for implanting anxieties in people via a combination of sensationalist news reports on gruesome crimes and the horror genre which seem to form a feedback loop of mistrust. Before that people had to go out of their way to hear of such grizzly tales in books or newspapers (if they could even read) so most lived in ignorant bliss, unaware of the potential violence lurking in every corner of humanity. Maybe I'm wrong but I'd just like to know when ans why it was we lost out innocence as a society.

[zdragnar]

Sadly, I never got a chance to ask him about it, though I imagine he probably would have had a few stories of inhospitable hosts or people who wanted nothing to do with them as they came through.

Nowadays, people tend to have more worth stealing - including your identity if you happen to have documents in an easily accessible area of your home. Back then, though, there wouldn't have been much worth taking from a small family farm- no TV, cell phones, electronics other than a radio and light fixtures for the most part (this would have been in the 1930's or 40's, I forget which).

One last stay thought: hospitality and community in general were much more central to people's way of life in rural farming communities then- farmers would help each other out with planting and harvesting, share equipment, every person in the community went to the same or one of two churches, etc. People had to rely on each other just to survive.

[mulmen]

It's been over a decade since I worked on a farm but back then it was common during harvest season to have a tractor and disc hooked up in case a fire broke out. Everyone had one set up because it was in everyone's interest to stop the spread ASAP. If your neighbors field caught fire you'd still run your tractor over to help.

[linuxftw]

I'm not worried about being murdered as much as I am being robbed blind of everything that isn't bolted down. The opioid addiction crisis is real.

[alistairSH]

Even at that, the chances of being robbed (national averages, at least) are pretty low - through 2020 they were the lowest since the 1970s. I realize the pandemic caused some spikes, but I can't find numbers for those and if those spikes brought us anywhere near the peaks in ~1980 or ~1990.

[kevin_thibedeau]

> Something clearly changed between the 1970s and today.

MBAs took over American companies. They're the ones who cook up these exploitative ideas so that no money is ever left on the table.

[lotsofpulp]

401k owners, IRA owners, and taxpayers via defined benefit pension funds want to pay for the management that maximizes returns.

[kevin_thibedeau]

Convenient that forces have aligned to make people dependent on 401K and IRA by taking away all other profitable money stores. Why play with only rich peoples' money when you can force everybody to be exposed to a market you take a cut from.

[daniel-cussen]

Man different CEO, they got the sales (wrong word in this case, see my other comment about selling) in charge of the company. Clearly. I highly doubt John Deere--the man named John, last name Deere, the actual living breathing human--would have stood behind like tractor on a cloud.

Tractors on the cloud.

Castles in the sky.

[shellfishgene]

Im not a farmer and have no interest in tractors, however just from general media consumption it seems to me the John Deere and self-repair issue has been talked about at lengths for many years now. Do they really have such a stranglehold on the market that there are no alternatives? I would assume every potential buyer now knows about the repair issues, and can buy a different brand.

[bluGill]

As a john deere employee not speaking for my company, repair issues are non existent to most customers. They go to the dealer and buy any part or tool they need, including the same scan tools the dealer uses.

Everytime I dig into someone complaining about right to repair I find someone who wants to bypass emissions controls.

[joshspankit]

This is a very dangerous insight. It implies that if we just let companies have the power that they’ll use it to empower their customer but we know that is not what happens.

We can regulate emissions and farmers can be penalized for violating them, so that can’t be on John Deere.

To say that they can use the same scan tools is a false solution because John Deere could simply choose to stop selling it to them.

And while in your experience repair issues are “non existent to most customers”, we cannot let that be a reason that we don’t pursue right to repair. It’s like saying “most of the slaves are treated well” (which I admit is an exaggerated comparison, but it shares enough similarities that I’m sticking with it)

[bluGill]

> We can regulate emissions and farmers can be penalized for violating them, so that can’t be on John Deere.

The letter of the current emissions laws and court case law is it is on John Deere. So start by talking to your federal representative about this.

Are you willing to pay for someone to go around and do random exhaust sampling of tractors? Most farmers aren't doing anything, but there is no way to know which farmer is the 1% that is without testing. If it is still "factory" then it meets emissions (VW style scandals aside, but then catch one you get them all), how are you going to enforce it if anyone can make violating changes?

> To say that they can use the same scan tools is a false solution because John Deere could simply choose to stop selling it to them.

Probably not. The protocol is the ISO11786, and we will keep using it because there are other customers of engines who demand it. The engine in our tractor is also sold for use in boats (boats are not large enough a market to pay the development cost of a modern engine, but the profit margin makes them worth selling to), it is also used in generators, and a number of other applications, and those customers demand standards so they can fix things when it is in their unit.

Also, one of our big selling points is everyone knows you can get parts for old John deere tractors (but not our competitors), and so the trade in value is higher.

Though technically you are correct, we can stop selling scan tools, the reality is there is too much value to do that.

> while in your experience repair issues are “non existent to most customers”, we cannot let that be a reason that we don’t pursue right to repair.

Sure, but be very careful about the what the law says. Most right to repair laws are not helpful to someone who uses a tractor as intended, but are useful to those abusing it in ways you may not want them to. violating emissions better be clearly on the farmer. What about the person who buys a used tractor - we use the same engine on a 200 and 300 horsepower tractor (I'm not sure without looking the exact range, but that is close enough for discussion), it wouldn't be hard to modify the smaller tractor to have more power, but that will impact how long the tractor lasts and thus the value to the next owner. There is no way to know if someone made that change and then undid it.