Top 10 Equipment Purchase Myths

[Music] neil from messick's here to do a video for you guys that are out there shopping for a piece of equipment we're going to take some time here this morning go through and talk through 10 myths that we hear from people who are shopping for a piece of machinery we all know that saying bigger is better and that's something you're frequently going to hear in regards to making an equipment purchase a lot of guys out there on the internet that are going to tell you things like buy the biggest tractor that you can afford or buy two steps larger than what you actually need and in some cases i think that is actually kind of true oversizing yourself a little bit isn't a terrible idea because these do tend to be long-term purchases there certainly are some applications where machines like this big t7 back behind me here can never be quite big enough but there's also applications as well where you may not necessarily want a bigger machine blindly following that bigger this better advice can run you into making a purchase selection of something that may not necessarily be right for your application right we're not just out here buying equipment we're not just selling machines we're buying things that have a purpose so taking some time to go through and work out in your mind the purchase that you're making and what kind of tasks that you want to accomplish with it and then size a piece of machinery to those tasks don't just go buy something big buy something that makes sense for what you're doing so if your primary goals are things like mowing around a residential property taking care of things around your lawn bigger is most certainly not better bigger is harder to get around it's more weight on your lawn it ruts things up more if you're out buying a tractor to go out and hay and you want a a rake tractor or a tetter tractor a good size utility machine with some good chunky tires on it travels through the field nice and that's great that's what you want but a machine like this t7 behind me here while it gets around great is going to burn a ton of fuel and you're not going to make as much money at the end of the year so sizing is kind of a smallish utility tractor for those kinds of tasks is certainly a better approach than just buying something because it's big how about this one cash is king i love the guys that come in here waving the benjamins around like it's going to make some kind of big difference in their purchase of sometimes cash and buying machine for cash can help some of our manufacturers have some pretty significant cash discounts but when you go through and you think of the way a machine is priced there's a certain slice of the pie if you look at the purchase price as a whole a certain slice of that pie is set off for discounting right and those discounts can be a lot of different things not necessarily just cash discounts that pie is also made up of things like multiple implement discounts uh maybe discounts that go along with a loader buying an attachment or uh discounts related to the kind of customer that you might be if you're a government or non-profit or something like that there's a certain budget that's set aside in the purchase price of that machine in order to give away discounts and that slice for cash may not be as big as what you think it is some manufacturers do give away a meaningful cash discount but other ones like kubota often do not that cash discount can be surprisingly small and if you value your money appropriately if you take that pretty significant chunk of change and look and see what it can make you say in an investment account somewhere or even in a safe cd or put into the stock market and you look at the returns that you can get off of that cash oftentimes it's greater than the cash discount that's offered to you in the purchase price of your tractor you may actually come out ahead in the end of that that purchase cycle of your machine by not paying cash so certainly go through look at your sale work out what that cash discount is going to be but don't make the often incorrect assumption that cash is king and you're going to walk out the door with the overall best price by paying cash up front another myth that i see developing out there is a sense that all equipment anymore is good that anything is kind of fundamentally the same or a reasonably high quality today and as somebody that has the opportunity to get on and off a lot of these machines and trades all brands of equipment i'm here to tell you that that's absolutely not the case there are some very significant differences both operationally and capabilities and quality and comfort between all these different brands of equipment that are out there and if you think of a healthy marketplace a healthy economy each one of these companies is really targeting specific subsets where they feel like their product fits in and they tailor their machinery to say a low price point of maybe a little bit more crude build or a higher end model with a lot more features to them there's some very significant differences between both implements like this chrome stuff behind me and tractors that are out there on the market today and i feel like a lot of our social media platforms and that kind of stuff today have washed that out a little bit you don't get this sense of the differences that are out there between brands because you're gonna find strong advocates for people that own things right once you've made a purchase decision if you think of the consumer psychology that's out there once you've bought into a piece of machinery you become an advocate for it because feeling poorly about it and talking openly about its shortcomings in some ways defeating yourself in the purchase decision that you chose to make at some point and owners of equipment i think are not necessarily the best people out there to really point out the intricacies of machines there's some great long time operators out there that certainly probably can do that but individual homeowners or people getting into this business for the very first time that are buying their first piece of equipment and that is such a huge subset of what's out there anymore i don't think advocate for this stuff in a healthy way for a community of people who may be shopping and really trying to understand the differences between machines that are out there so to me that's an absolute myth that kind of starts to come out anymore that that says that all equipment is kind of fundamentally good or fundamentally the same at the end of the day is absolutely not true if you look at a machine on the used market there's certainly some myths out there that exist around a clean tractor if you're looking at a nice shiny used piece of equipment people often have some funny predispositions to what that may actually mean in terms of that machine's previous life a clean tractor can be a lot of different things now you might make the assumption that it's something that just wasn't used right that it's sat in somebody's garage and they never really put out and put it to work but i'll tell you i see a lot of clean tractors in a lot of other contexts as well a lot of people out there that are just very intentional about their maintenance tend to keep very clean machines it could be an indicator or something that was really well taken care of a clean machine could also be an indicator of somebody who's trying to hide something that may have really ran something worked it hard but before it came into a dealership put a nice coat of wax up there on the hood so a clean tractor can tell you a lot of different things i love the ribbing that people will give each other about getting out there and getting their equipment dirty and putting it to work but the end of the day if you look at a clean machine you don't really know what its life story has been in relation to something that might be a little bit more dirty another myth that's out there is that you should buy everything that you need for your tractor the accessories the options the implements all up front and that's something i have a little bit of an issue with especially for people who are learning machinery for the very first time there are definite benefits in the financing implications doing that single transaction and wrapping it all together into one financing package is advantageous oftentimes you're going to get much more advantageous terms on those implements and stuff than you ever would if you came back and bought them separately later so that portion of it and the financing side is kind of true however once you get outside of that and you look at things like accessories on your tractor lights hydraulic remotes those kinds of things or or really going overboard on implements if you sit down and you wrap up all the jobs that you're going to do with this machine over the next five years it might cause you to come up with a really long list of implements and oftentimes we go and we talk to people who have bought machines down the road or we're trading things in that are a couple of years old it's not at all unusual for us to go up and start bringing in things that are nearly unused right hydraulic remotes that have never had the rubber plugs pulled out of them or implements that have never really seen the dirt before because sometimes people will go through and try to wrap so much expectations for what they're going to do with this machine into that initial purchase i kind of prefer to see people pick up the things that are necessities or the things that make the machine flexible for them down the road maybe putting on a third function kit on the hydraulic remotes or something so that you can add those things easily down the road if you decide to put on a grapple or something off the back of the tractor that needs a rear remote setting your machine up for flexibility is good but not necessarily going in and packing in every implement that you think that you could potentially use because you will find once you get out and start operating a piece of equipment regularly having it on your actual property instead of looking at pictures in a brochure you're going to learn a lot more about that tractor and how it operates and what implements might be best for it and work best on your property property or size right to your machine there's so much that you will learn through seat time that you just can't exactly figure out to wrap into that initial purchase upfront another myth that's out there is that you can find some great values in used equipment and i'm here to tell you that certainly sometimes that's true when machines age a little bit but the nice clean stuff that's really attractive sometimes isn't as good of a deal as you might think it is if you relate equipment to buying an automobile right when you buy a car and you take a new car home the value of that vehicle depreciates sharply as soon as those first miles are put on and if you're a guy like me that looks for value out there i like to buy those low mileage vehicles right because that initial depreciation is gone the equipment market does not function that way there's so much more demand out there for machinery that the used ones the good clean stuff that people are really confident about sells for a real premium and if you need financing for this purchase you're gonna pay five six seven percent in order to finance that piece of used equipment and if you compare that against the cost of buying a brand new one at zero percent oftentimes you're going to find that the interest costs are going to wash out the savings of buying the used ones so if you're a cash buyer yeah you can find some deals on machines like this b2650 right here but if you're gonna finance this machine you're right up to the cost of the new lx 2610 you might as well buy the brand new one with the zero percent financing so if you're looking at clean used equipment certainly make sure you're pricing the new ones as well to make sure that at the end of the day you are actually saving a little bit of money another piece of advice that you'll hear out there about buying a piece of equipment will be in regards to emissions equipment and avoiding it at almost any cost this stuff now has been on equipment for a number of years now right we've been going on eight about eight years now at tier four and tier four emissions at the beginning of it may have been a little rocky we all had some things to learn but this far into having this stuff on machinery now most of the problems have been worked out of it we find it to be very reliable anything under 75 horsepower doesn't need def fluid even though most people think it does the machine's over 75 horsepower you just need to understand how to handle and treat death to avoid most of the problems that you'll find out there any experiences that you hear from guys in regards to their trucks largely do not carry over into tractors and equipment because the duty cycles of those machines are so different from one another so today in modern equipment we could chill out about this kind of stuff the type of emission systems whether it's dock only or dpf or def fluid involved should almost be not even a consideration in your purchasing processes anymore and that comes from somebody who sells just about every system that's available out there on the market i wouldn't ever use it as a purchasing consideration to push me one way or the other something else to keep in mind if you ever have a dealership tell you that a new piece of equipment does not have emissions on it they are lying to you that is something that you will have some salesmen say out there about doc only engines as being not having emissions that is completely and totally untrue would be phenomenally illegal to even be doing that kind of stuff so all myths in a modern piece of equipment admissions is just something not to worry about at this point we've really moved on on that kind of stuff by now another myth that's out there is the relationship that you end up having with your dealer am i going to need my dealer over the long haul and in most cases i'm going to sit here and tell you that is probably should be one of the most important purchasing considerations when you're looking at that piece of equipment it's the dealership who are you buying it from and their ability in order to back it up right this really starts with that automobile thing again right we can very easily buy a car but be not be going back to the dealership in order to go back for any kind of service needs and that kind of stuff that happens though with equipment right we're doing a lot more than just oil changes many people take care of that kind of stuff on their own but the nature of this kind of stuff is that there's a certain amount of wear and tear that happens with it right tires are worn out attachments need to be purchased or sticks will punch through a grill or you know there's there's all those kinds of realities of running a piece of equipment in harsh environments that cause us to be needed at the end of the day for parts and service and that kind of stuff so when you're making a purchasing decision on a piece of equipment you certainly want to go and look at things down the line right what does that dealership service department look like how many parts do they have behind the counter do they have a facility that's clean and organized and an operation that's going to be able to take care of this piece of equipment just now or a year from now or a couple of months when i need a filter but 20 and 30 years from now because this is good lasting stuff that many people are going to have for a lifetime when we were coming up with topics for this video i laughed when somebody suggested if it fits it ships i think that's great right it's very descriptive of what sometimes i'll see maybe some less than experienced or less than honest dealerships do with a tractor sale because most of these machines are going to have universal skid steer couplers on the front of the loaders or universal three three-point hitches on their backs all kinds of implements can be pinned up to that machine and they may be implements that aren't necessarily appropriate to that tractor right if a dealership is going to try to sell you say the things that they have in stock and not necessarily the things that are right for your tractor this is what you get you're right if it fits its ships and you can end up having things that don't fit the machine well that might be oversized from the tractor or more often than not lighter duty than what really belongs behind that machine and being sold an implement that might get busted up at the end so that idea of if it fits onto the tractor it's good to go is absolutely incorrect just because if it fits on the machine doesn't necessarily mean that it's right for it and taking time and going through and understanding say the manufacturer's recommendations for the right duty implements for the back of that tractor or how to properly size things onto the front loader really should be the duty of a good dealership sales person but in the absence of that having some baseline understanding of it yourself can be really advantageous to you in making the right purchase another myth that you'll hear about equipment is the package deal right it's got the word deal with it it's got to be a good deal right we frequently will have people seeing package deals on listed online available for sale or walk into a dealership showroom and say hey can you give me a package deal packaging things together and buying it together it can make sense in some situations and yes overall in a large purchase you might walk out with a little better purchase price than if you bought all those things individually at different times where package deals though are absolutely not a good deal for you is when the elements of that package the things that are rolled into that one purchase price are not necessarily right for you or a good configuration of that machine we'll see very frequently where different companies will go and roll together say a trailer a tractor and an implement and put all these things together at a really attractive looking price and when you go in and you start looking at the different components you're usually going to find the cheapest trailer that they were able to find a tractor with the least expensive set of tires on it that are probably not right for your application a loader with no skid steer coupler on it in order to cut that cost out and the cheapest implement that they were able to find right and so what you have here at the end of the day is something that might have a very good purchase price something that's attractive and tempting to try to get you in the door but if you walked out and actually purchased that thing you're going to be disappointed in the ways that it holds up or the quality of the implements or the lack of flexibility of the tractor or the way the tires don't fit your application well so package deals when it's the right package for what you actually need at the end of the day okay maybe but what is actually pitched to you on that piece of paper at that very low price more often than not is not as good of a deal as what it looks like on paper so those are 10 of the myths or misconceptions that we hear out there in regards to purchasing a piece of equipment been making videos here on youtube for almost five years now many of these things have been their very own video topic if you're just getting into understanding equipment for the very first time or if you own a piece of machinery and want to understand how to use it better i'd encourage you to hit the subscribe button there i think there's a lot that we can educate everybody about help you to be better operators and understand the things that are out there on the market for your piece of equipment so hit the subscribe button here and join us if we can help you with a piece of machinery if you're making a purchase on a piece of equipment or if you have parts or service needs for a machine you've already got give us a call at messick's we're available at at 800-222-3373 talked about each one of these things almost in a dedicated video if you go into enough depth i'd encourage you to see some yeah that was rough okay stuff can be overcome certainly simply by understanding how that machine works knowing how to keep fedex

Channel: Messick's Equipment

Views: 33,228

Rating: 4.9530025 out of 5

Keywords: Messicks, Kubota, new, holland, caseih, case, krone, farm, equipment, tractor, tractors, farming, farminglife, construction

Id: mU57bX-2o7Q

Length: 19min 6sec (1146 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 10 2021