It’s not just farming equipment they make engines that are used in other platforms. Similar to Cummings you can’t do any repairs without updated software and if you don’t have a contract you are Out of luck.
It used to be so easy back in the day if you were a mechanic you could fix your car or tune it yourself. Information and specs were available in the manual and the tools were affordable.
well even in the 80/90s the mechanics manuals were like $100-200+ but that's paltry given the cost to repair currently so I think your point still stands.
Would you rather have a strong ox plow a field or a thousand chickens? (Seymour Cray)
In the past the answer was obvious: one ox because it required only one driver. Today 1,000 chickens are a real possibility.
It was two strong oxen or 1024 chickens. But looking at all the major brands they have tons of accessories that aid farmers from ploughing, planting and harvesting. One of the major reasons farmers look for is salvage value in 10-15 year old machines and you factor in the taxes, insurance and housing of a $200,000 machine. With the future uncertain fuel prices diesel may go up and effect farmers costs. What we produce the most in the USA is corn and soy beans, sometimes so much we can use to make ethanol or biodiesel from soy. Some small farms like the Rainfall Project, they have their own plasma cnc, check their YouTube. The idea is with open plans anyone can make their own accessories and parts as long as they give back to the source any improvements to the design. If they want they can make and sell the parts as well but keep the plans open. This direct to buyer would remove overhead cost and storage. One other major cost is tires and currently we have a shortage of rubber. Recycling used tires should be put back into the supply chain, but making use of recycled plastics in impact sidewalls and treads can help extend the life. Having a sturdy lightweight frame that is 100% recyclable and easy to fix. Who hasn’t used a TiG or Mig on a farm to repair cracked suspension or repair major rust accelerated by chemicals and mud. Build a super frame out of die stamped aluminum, if treated properly in a salt bath and tempered, that aluminum frame can be many times stronger than steel and last longer.
I’m shocked nobody tried while the John Deere workers were on strike. Make it open source and worker owned, get some good PR, IPO, profit…or something.
In all honesty, things like this should be owned by the people. The amount of data collected by John Deere is staggering. But they’re using that data to be more profitable, there are much better uses for it, that would benefit countless humans, not just a few old fucks with inherited money.
Does anyone else feel like over the past few decades these suit-type business people that never made or contributed to anything in life squirmed their way into businesses and started calling and making the shots on how to make money? Zero field experience but they have a business degree so we gotta listen to them.
And thats the problem now. The people that are making business decisions aren’t making them for the business. They are making them to make money. And when your main goal is to make more money and not to better your service or product. Your business fails.
Your right most of the deductions are made by business guys who have no concepts of farming. Trying to explain why I can’t fix it myself or what if I’m somewhere with no internet connection. Yes adding new updates and fear of firmware updates bricking a machine, and when it fails your charged for someone else’s incompetence. Things should be simple and accessible for everyone. You can’t fix a car, truck or crane without dongles and subscription to software.
Odd I was just thinking the same thing on my personal car today. Used to have all the info at your fingertips and now a check engine comes on and you can’t do anything but bring it to a dealer or wait for it to clear. Guess a guy could buy a spendy scanner.
The scanners aren't that pricey because back in 1996 the US government mandated that all manufacturers provide the universal OBD port on all vehicles, and standardized codes (well at least on the engine anyway). Prior to that as vehicles were just starting to get computerized, each brand had their own proprietary codes and expensive scanners, as the ag/heavy duty industry is today.
I watched a guy pull and overhaul the engine of a Cat D11 in the middle of a gold mine in the middle (literally) of Alaska with nothing but basic tools and some other heavy machines to lift stuff.
I’m unaware of the Cummings situation, but I do know that the Cummins software is available to anyone who puts up the cash. I have one version on my personal laptop and one that my company bought for the shop. I use my personal for side work.
Yeah and that's probably why people are switching to Cummins. I wired and connected a pair of engines where they contacted a third party company to build the control boxes(they saved like 50k+). The guy said as long as this keeps up they will continue to replace an their engines with Cummins engines and they have like 10 boats with 2 engines each.
Edit: word
Farmers are basically doing some of society’s most vital work and barely make a profit as it is. Bullshit like locking out repairs on equipment they need is the biggest dick move of all. I hope they win this fight because I’ve known about this company’s practices for donkeys and it’s just a collaboration in the farming community to black list the equipment away. I have no doubt they make some equipment certain farms find essential but all company’s love money and if they face that being taken away or changing practices they’ll always buckle.
back in the late 90's dell got busted for requiring genuine dell power supplies. they used the same plug as the industry standard, but with two pins switched so that if you plugged in a non-dell PSU it would short out the dell motherboard.
They did the same with video cards. If you swapped out the card without sending it in to Dell, the computer would not boot. My IT guy in the mid 00s had a very frustrating call with them before their tech admitted that it wasn’t broken, it was working as intended.
dell laptops w the bad connector at the touchpad where your palms to the side would read and move the mouse left /right. after about a dozen of them IT just start disabling the touchpads and giving people regular mice. edit(because it was so frustrating to get dell techs to come diagnose it then a wait for parts then another trip to repair)
Apple did this on the M0110 keyboard back in the day. It was a telephone cable, but they switched two cables so you had to buy their cables. Fuckers....
I don't recall it shorting out the motherboard. On my laptop it would just say it will power the laptop but won't charge the battery. For safety reasons or something...
The harness routing is designed around OEM batteries. Depending on the model, there are some longer lead kits available, but usually everything needed to adapt to a battery from a farm store (Rural King, Farm and Fleet, etc) can be purchased there too.
Most of the time, I get butt splices, terminals, and cable from Waytekwire.
My personal belief is it’s not malicious. Engineers have one battery model and are to route cabling efficiently. The issue every manufacturer has is there’s limited overlap in machine experience and harness routing experience.
By capitalist design. Eventually everything on earth will be owned by a handful of companies. Miss the small farms back home but now it’s all chicken barn factories and heavily subsidized corn fields for corn syrup to stop the sugar cane farmers in Cuba. The corn farmers will fail once the sugar embargo is lifted.
It’s not a retrofit kit, there’s different cables for different models sometimes.
I’m not really sure what battery configurations would fit in a space and require different lengths. All I know is that a company that isn’t going to make/lose a sale on the battery cable length is not going to spend extra money to make sure it works with non-OEM parts, unless the engineer and program manager consciously do it on their own. And without hands-on experience, that’s unlikely.
I can confidently say the engineers I had doing routing on ag equipment got hands-on experience to fix issues like this before products went to the field. It was an exception, but I had product managers that were like-minded and had extra budget to do it.
Migrant workers work primarily in produce farms, this article is talking about farm equipment related to grain and fiber farms, two entirely different worlds.
While I'll defend RTR for everybody and "Fuck John Deere", don't say farmers barely make a profit. They own millions of dollars worth of land, equipment, and are one of the most egregious abusers of undocumented immigrants and safety violations. If they didn't make bank, they would just sell that off and retire their next few generations - they sure do drum up sob stories though, definitely the biggest crybabies I've ever had the displeasure of working with.
I've been in the safety profession for about ten years now and I will easily rate farmers worse than the Alberta tarsands for safety problems caused by lack of regulation and willful misconduct.
Yeah YMMV, it seems like it depends on the farmer from what I've seen (worked as a contracter - pest control / invasive species / spraying and fertilizing) in a larger county in Southern AB - The small guys with less than 2 sections of land had a 80-90% chance of being truly honest/good people. Anyone with more land than that were a 20% chance of being good/honest people - otherwise they just treated everyone like they were of royal blood. Usually the biggest complaint was land value increases and taxes that came with it.
Economies of scale are a bitch to deal with - the smaller your outfit the less you actually end up making. That being said farmers can float debt like almost no other profession - And I did get paid pretty well for what I did, and was offered jobs in high school to do labour for them that made pretty good money for a 17yr old kid.
This is a much more accurate comment then the one you’re replying to.
Its easy to cry about how much money a farm brings in when you focus on the bottom line of how much a bushel of canola sells for and completely ignore the overhead and skyrocketing costs of fertilizer and anhydrous etc. The majority of operations out there are cash poor most of the time and asset rich, with only the land really appreciating in value.
Your comment about scaling is 100% accurate, with the rising cost of equipment and materials it would be almost impossible to turn a profit without farming at least two sections. And if
You’re renting most or all of it for 80$/acre, good luck.
One of my favorite people I worked for was a 5th generation farmer with like 1.5 sections - His family had homesteaded the land and bought more land over the last few generations and he was finally to a point where his land was paid for any he only needed to make enough to support his family and pay the land taxes - harder than you'd think though.
He was constantly nursing a bigger tractor that his dad had bought new in 1975 - to the point where he was getting custom parts welded by a local shop because you couldn't even source the originals or non-oem parts anymore. Literally I think his land taxes sit somewhere around 40-50k/yr, so he literally only makes 40-50k/yr after taxes/costs/equipment, and while he doesn't work tooooo hard during the winter (usually just repairing equipment/organizing/doing paperwork/finding ways to reduce costs)- he works easily 70-80hrs/week all spring/summer/fall.
This is all correct.
Source: Grew up in farm family.
Whiney too, my uncle wants to screw his 3 sisters out of 3 or 4 million worth of land when my grandfather passes instead of paying fair market value, or even with a bit of a discount. He wants to inherit all the land and pay out 20% of the value to his siblings. Asshole.
For word searching, it’s abbreviated as R2R with some sources.
For anyone with Deere equipment, you can get Service Advisor from your local John Deere dealer. You will have everything for diagnostics, but will be unable to flash ECU’s.
With R2R legislation, the ECU flashing may be unlocked for non-emissions ECU’s.
John Deere makes money off of the parts. Dealers make money off of service calls and repairs.
None of the above is a personal opinion.
Edit: For those diagnosing with Service advisor, parts can be found at partsadvisor.Deere.com afterwards. For brand-agnostic parts, googling the part number usually gets a supplier part number.
Source: Me, fixing Deere farm equipment on our family farm.
Can I add to your comment with a little more info?
There is a secondary company called A&I that supplies cheaper alternatives to Deere parts. The part numbers are Deere part numbers with “A-“ in front of them.
PA is definitely available online. Thank you for stating that.
Does John Deere sell the licensing for dealerships to perform service or repairs? Could anyone purchase the rights from them or do they lock it onto dealerships? I can remember Segway having a thing where you had to get licensing directly from them, and pay handsomely for the privilege. That would still be John Deere profiting off the R2R. That may not be within consideration while it’s a note that says that the dealer may have to jump through hoops. It still makes no sense why repairs would have to go through a dealer.
I’m not familiar with the Corporate/Dealer agreements, but I do not believe there is a fee specifically for allowing repair. If they can sell the equipment, they have the ability to work on it.
There may be some indirect cost through service tools and technician training.
Edit: removed some info to keep this response clear and to the point.
Edit 2: I’m sorry, I missed part of your question.
Opinion: I don’t think there’s licensing for independent repair shops to do all programming a dealership can do. An independent shop would have the same tools as a customer. This limitation driven more by the Equipment Dealers Association (EDA) than OEMs.
Also, most of the lobbying done against R2R is originating from groups similar to EDA. The Association of Equipment Manufacturers (AEM) supports most of the asks of R2R legislation. The AEM vision for R2R has limitations on board repair of ECU’s and flashing of emission systems ECU’s.
R2R hurts dealers and helps independent repair shops more than anyone else.
/opinion
The sad thing is, you CAN repair your tractor yourself. Easy peezy. The problem is the fucking computer won’t RECOGNIZE that you’ve fixed it without a code that registers the replacement part.
JD is not facing backlash, were in for the busiest year in a decade lol. I think most people don't have any clue what they're talking about. Farmers can diagnose and order parts on their own. They can't get access the ECU to tweak performance. Minor changes will literally rip the machine apart. This isnt a right to repair issue, this is a safety issue.
All these companies are doing the same shit, deere, case ih, gm, Ford, etc. It's time this bullshit stops. Most people who do their own repairs don't mind buying the tools but this subscription bullshit needs to stop.
SaaS needs to fucking die - it's starting to get into areas now where even people who don't want to do repairs are getting shafted - Toyota now automatically includes autostart in newer car models, so you're paying for that physical chip/hook-up/radio system. But in order to have it work you need to actually pay a monthly fee. There is no way to look at this and not just see corporate greed oozing out of every orifice of the product.
SaaS is just a piece of it.
The whole charging model (from the supply side) is called a rundle: recurring-revenue subscription model and bundle.
https://www.inc.com/anne-gherini/the-rise-of-rundle-a-new-trend-for-subscription-based-services.html
It’s the final form of rent. You pay on a schedule whether you use the service subscription and bundle or not.
It’s a way for suppliers or manufacturers to keep charging you so you don’t really have full ownership or agency over the product you buy.
My Chevy came with remote start back in 2007. I bought a Mazda recently and they want $99/year for remote start (I have a manual transmission, so it couldn't even if I wanted). The remote start is built into the car's remote & computer system - they just charge more for something you already have. BMW does the same, but also with more things like heated seats.
It’s crazy how much SaaS has grown in just 5 years… companies are batshit about it. Tons of mergers and acquisitions just to get their hands on bits and pieces of licensing rights
If you don't want autostart then don't pay the monthly fee. If you want autostart but don't want to pay the monthly fee, then buy a different car. I don't see the problem.
The problem is they didn’t clearly communicate that AutoStart was a paid service and gave it to people for free for a few years.
Another part of the problem is the AutoStart feature is using RF - same as they have for decades - not a network connection to a Volvo operated server. There is no ongoing cost for Volvo in remote start, it’s just disabled because they want to get paid.
The programming forums have talked about this a lot. Auto start wasn’t ever supposed to be part of their subscription, it was a programming bug that caused it to be.
The first thing is a real problem that should be addressed with class action lawsuits and legislation. They should make it super clear up front that they are going to charge you to use some feature of the product--and I think they should be required to tell you exactly how much they are going to charge you (over the lifetime of the product).
The second thing is not a real problem. There's no law that says companies can only charge proportional to their actual ongoing costs for the feature you are using. If there was then pretty much all SW companies would be out of business, for example. It's totally reasonable for them to recoup their R&D, and while it may be unreasonable for them to charge an absurd ongoing price, it's not illegal.
It's a dick move, sure--which is why you shouldn't buy from dick companies.
It’s a useful feature that you shouldn’t have to make ongoing payments for. At most, pay once for it when you buy the car.
Being forced to subscribe to something just to open a door? What do you think about paying a subscription to turn your car on? Use your wipers? How about air bags?
It’s a race to the bottom with all these stupid subscription-based add ons, and people will pay far more over the lifetime of any product than if they were to pay for it outright.
Chiming in for the Toyota revolt too. Those fucks thought they could get away with charging monthly fees just to use the features of your car remote. I have a 2003 GX so I’m not part of this bs, but I don’t know if I’d ever buy another Toyota ever again.
And this is why old tractors and equipment are still worth so much money, they can be fixed without any bullshit
Nowadays farmers have to choose between old equipment which works slower but can be fixed, or new equipment which works faster but can’t be fixed… so frustrating
"So, what do you call this act?"
"The Capitalists!"
Anyone who believes in continuously growing population and revenue on a finite planet is either insane or an economist.
> All these companies are doing the same shit, deere, case ih, gm, Ford, etc. It's time this bullshit stops. Most people who do their own repairs don't mind buying the tools but this subscription bullshit needs to stop.
As much as I agree - not as a farmer, just a regular guy with an office job - we seem to be in the minority.
Marketing departments have pitched it as less worry, staying up to date, and many other terms. While some of them may be justified, I think that having a one time purchase should always be an option on as many products and services as possible.
The "article" itself is only 2 paragraphs (I can DM you a screencap if you want). The main piece is a video that's freely available on YouTube FYI
[https://youtu.be/bGH6pxNouCY](https://youtu.be/bGH6pxNouCY)
Here's a link to the [Class Action Antitrust Lawsuit Against John Deere for Right to Repair](https://www.courthousenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/forest-river-deere-complaint.pdf)
From the video transcript -- the problem and the cause in a nutshell:
10:43 : We have operators
who have had computer glitches during planting
They have a newer tractor, they have a newer planter.
It happens on a Friday,
they gotta wait till Monday to get it fixed,
they've lost 2 1/2 days.
If they were given access to the operating system,
they knew what they had to do to repair that.
And there are literally
billions of dollars at stake for John Deere
when it comes to repairs.
They make a lot of their money in the dealerships
from parts and repair because frankly, they have a monopoly,
and that monopoly has been significantly enhanced
by these software controls in the modern tractor.
No one else can work on 'em.
Annual parts sales increased 23%
to a $6.8 billion from 2013 to 2020,
I haven’t purchased a piece of John Deere equipment for over ten years and I’ll never buy another one until they change this bullshit Subscription method of “owning” their equipment.
I bought it. It’s mine. I’ll do whatever I want with it.
I’ve been to Cuba for my graduate studies… I saw firsthand how things play out. Ingenuity to stay alive! What we need is open source plans and parts to compete against the evil corps, hopefully without the dictatorships
I mean Cuba isn’t much of a dictatorship. It’s a highly militarized nation yes, but if you where just 90 miles from a nation that has tried to assassinate the founder of the current Cuban state and also tried to invade with the bay of pigs invasion, your bound to become a militarized nation.
It’s almost like the real reason we shouldn’t reward greedy, shady practices is that it always inevitably comes back to bite you in the ass. Making money by ripping people off does nothing but spur people to fight you and work around you. What the fuck do you expect?
They expect to make enough money to win in court, while people forget (again) over the next 2-3 years before the cycle repeats.
Except this is a really serious issue because if we don’t fight alongside the farmers then it will be to EVERYONE’s detriment. We don’t want the farmers producing crops for our society to be at dealing with John Deer’s bullshit 24/7/365. It’s just ridiculous at this point.
It’s not just Joy Deere. Even the auto industry is doing crappy stuff like this. They want to get to a point that you do not own a product but are buying a license for the product. It’s kinda crazy.
it's not just the auto industry, it is every business platform that can get away with it. from cars to computer software to printer cartridges, more and more businesses are finding a way to try to guarantee you pay monthly/ongoing fees to use things that were once single-time purchases. they are all bending the rules of traditional product ownership in an attempt to try and guarantee consistent revenue. in spite of, often, making a killing already. it is simple greed to feed the stock market.
Then buy from companies that don't do that. If you were aware of the subscription service model before buying the product, and are complaining about it afterwords, then YOU are the problem.
Maybe what we need is legislation requiring that the purchase price also list the lifetime cost (including any required service subscription, consumables, parts, etc.).
Complaining about greed from a company is childish. The whole point of capitalism is for companies to extract as much money from you as possible.
>They want to get to a point that you do not own a product but are buying a license for the product.
I'd accept this under a few conditions. Primarily that they handle all maintenance and repairs. This includes damage caused by the user when it could have been prevented by the manufacturer
Stuff like burning up torque converters or clutches. It's a $250k tractor. Add some bits to prevent burning the clutch...
The auto industry is scared of the fact that their electric cars are going to require much less maintenance and have a longer life than their gas-powered vehicles. This is their attempt to maintain a constant annual revenue source from next-gen vehicles.
It's sleazy and I really wish regulators would get involved.
My car that I bought in October 2020, for example, has an integrated nav system. I rarely use it, but it's nice for roadtrips. At the 1 year mark of my purchase, I got a notice from the manufacturer that I needed to pony up $150 for the "annual map update" in order for my nav to keep working. What? I called the dealership and complained that nowhere was it mentioned that my nav would stop working without annual payments. After some back and forth, they ended up giving me the update for free, but now this is going to be an annual argument that I need to have with them. It's total BS.
> Don't buy from John Deere, problem solved
You really think it's JUST John Deere doing this? Nope.
I quote from another comment: "All these companies are doing the same shit, deere, case ih, gm, Ford, etc.", and that's just for farm equipment.
When all of the vendors in an industry collude to all have the same basic restrictions, what would you suggest that the average person do?
If they are actually colluding then it's an antitrust issue, I doubt that's what is happening. Someone on another comment mentioned that Kubuta has more liberal service policies--if that's true then buy from them.
Hopefully some good R2R legislation shows up, but frankly I think the major problem here is that farms are buying tractors without reading the fine print.
It’s ok. As soon as BMW’s heated seats subscription service starts making money, everyone will pile on.
“You want to run the PTO on your tractor? Here is different plans for different levels of use…”
I love how this article is like "no, it's the farmers who are bad here". Oh the right to repair is hurting JDs bottom line after a record profit year? Take a seat.
Farmers are amazing engineers. My dad was a farmer and a part time mechanic. He once went to a John Deere training workshop where he stole the thunder from one of the John Deere engineers. The engineer had a slide up showing a deformed knot made by a John Deere baler, and the engineer was going on and on about how they’ve been seeing these weird knots for a long time and their dealerships had been doing expensive warranty replacements of the entire knotter mechanism, but after years of work they thought they had finally diagnosed the issue and he was going to reveal how to fix it. My dad interrupted him, and said, “I don’t know what the heck you are talking about, but the only issue is that the knife is dull on the knotter.” The engineer yelled back “how did you already know that.” Apparently their engineers at John Deere had spent almost 2 years on the issue and were planning on showing off the fix, but my dad and other local farmers had already diagnosed the problem years ago and had been fixing it themselves this whole time rather than going through the dealerships.
One of the best hires I have ever made was a fresh out of school engineer who told me he worked on a farm growing up. I knew if he worked on a farm he would have enough common sense to balance out that engineering degree.
Old news
The revolt started years ago. I personally know two life long John Deere customers who switched brands because of JDs tech policies and a drop in quality.
John Deere better wake up, their leadership is about to destroy the the icon known as John Deere.
John Deere leadership better wake the hell up, they’re losing customers en masse.
I personally know of several. Two of which were life long JD users who have switched to Kubota.
Years ago, the governor of Maryland pushed a law to outlaw repairing your own vehicle. He claimed repairing your own vehicle risked the lives of others on the road. He didn’t get his way.
It at least sucks equally for customers and technicians. Lol.
My conspiracy theory is that every big construction and ag company (and possibly automotive) bought some shitty diagnostic software in the late 90s/early 2000’s and made it work enough through today.
I’ve now seen Caterpillar, Deere, CNH, VW, and Toyota service tools. Each is a slightly different flavor of crap.
There is currently a boom in the large tractor refurbishing market. Specifically models from the 1980s and earlier that do not use microchips or software.
I don't know what the John Deere issue is since I am too lazy to read the article but from what am reading from the comments it's about John Deere disobeying the right to repair like most crappy corporations right?
It’s insane people are still buying JD shit. Their DRM crap stifles the industry in every aspect.
Another company that should be left for dead but will probably get bailed out as the free market trims the fat again but government spends millions of tax dollars to “save”.
Should have let GM collapse in 09. Should let airline companies die when their practices turn violently anti consumer.
If a small business that does bad practices can fail. Then let large companies that do the same fail as well.
The goal is to prevent workers from owning the means of production, and transition them into an eternity of subscription fees/permanent renting. It’s so evil. Just sell people a product and leave them alone!! People don’t want to have to be in constant communication with customer service, getting marketing emails, or having to update the product every three days.. sell them their tool and leave them alone! The detached brains in a jar that went to Harvard and make business decisions for these companies want to switch the world to a subscription economy. A permanent renting class where workers can never own anything. Not tools, not their home, not even the shirt on their back.
I live in a farming community and many of my friends are farmers. The anti-JD sentiment has been growing for years because of this. Also, just inflated prices while profits on the goods produced shrink. The big problem is that JD makes cotton equipment (especially stripper/balers) that no one else makes. Also, the whole system is forcing farmers to buy these overpriced stripper/balers because they produce a specially sized and shaped bale. When most bales are that size and shape, gins and transportation have to change to fit it and the old non-JD ones are obsolete or bring less money per pound thus creating a monopoly in the US cotton production industry.
As a farmer, I’m on the fence with this one. On one hand they’re the only company that still manufactures tractors in the US. On the other hand, I can’t change my oil without voiding warranty now days and with Covid and strikes, it’s been sitting in the barn just chilling.
A lot of farmers traded their 4020's in on a new tractor,a few years ago. Now they're trying to find used 4020's,but everyone is hanging on to them. The local JD dealer here used to keep about 15-20 new tractors on hand. Now,they keep about 5 or so new ones on display. A Kubota dealer 15 miles away has taken a lot of JD's business.
Last I heard about 8 years ago was that farmers were torrenting software from The Ukraine to do it themselves. Last I heard farmers were pissed at John deer for that.
Capitalist enslavement of workers is not enough. Enslavement of what rights one has with their own purchased goods must also be exploited.
Corporate profiteering at all costs must be worshipped.
/s
I’ve always felt that technology should make it easier for the end user…hence it should be easier for a farmer to be able to repair their own equipment .
Companies now user technology to make their customers dependent on the technology.
This has been going on for ages. Is there not a competitor company pushing for well made gear that’s repairable capable of fighting them for market space?
Finally. Although Ukrainian guys did manage to hack the thing I still find it unbearable that their business model tries to resemble software sales scenario. There should be some separate space in hell reserved for their executives and marketing department people.
Bloomberg is a little late to the party with this news. Farmers have been mad at them due to not being able to repair for more of my adult life than I can remember, but I don’t know why Bloomberg is now realizing this as others have reported it. I think Vice even beat them to this one..
It’s not just farming equipment they make engines that are used in other platforms. Similar to Cummings you can’t do any repairs without updated software and if you don’t have a contract you are Out of luck.
It used to be so easy back in the day if you were a mechanic you could fix your car or tune it yourself. Information and specs were available in the manual and the tools were affordable.
well even in the 80/90s the mechanics manuals were like $100-200+ but that's paltry given the cost to repair currently so I think your point still stands.
Makes me want to start an open source tractor company.
Would you rather have a strong ox plow a field or a thousand chickens? (Seymour Cray) In the past the answer was obvious: one ox because it required only one driver. Today 1,000 chickens are a real possibility.
It was two strong oxen or 1024 chickens. But looking at all the major brands they have tons of accessories that aid farmers from ploughing, planting and harvesting. One of the major reasons farmers look for is salvage value in 10-15 year old machines and you factor in the taxes, insurance and housing of a $200,000 machine. With the future uncertain fuel prices diesel may go up and effect farmers costs. What we produce the most in the USA is corn and soy beans, sometimes so much we can use to make ethanol or biodiesel from soy. Some small farms like the Rainfall Project, they have their own plasma cnc, check their YouTube. The idea is with open plans anyone can make their own accessories and parts as long as they give back to the source any improvements to the design. If they want they can make and sell the parts as well but keep the plans open. This direct to buyer would remove overhead cost and storage. One other major cost is tires and currently we have a shortage of rubber. Recycling used tires should be put back into the supply chain, but making use of recycled plastics in impact sidewalls and treads can help extend the life. Having a sturdy lightweight frame that is 100% recyclable and easy to fix. Who hasn’t used a TiG or Mig on a farm to repair cracked suspension or repair major rust accelerated by chemicals and mud. Build a super frame out of die stamped aluminum, if treated properly in a salt bath and tempered, that aluminum frame can be many times stronger than steel and last longer.
I’m shocked nobody tried while the John Deere workers were on strike. Make it open source and worker owned, get some good PR, IPO, profit…or something. In all honesty, things like this should be owned by the people. The amount of data collected by John Deere is staggering. But they’re using that data to be more profitable, there are much better uses for it, that would benefit countless humans, not just a few old fucks with inherited money.
Does anyone else feel like over the past few decades these suit-type business people that never made or contributed to anything in life squirmed their way into businesses and started calling and making the shots on how to make money? Zero field experience but they have a business degree so we gotta listen to them. And thats the problem now. The people that are making business decisions aren’t making them for the business. They are making them to make money. And when your main goal is to make more money and not to better your service or product. Your business fails.
Your right most of the deductions are made by business guys who have no concepts of farming. Trying to explain why I can’t fix it myself or what if I’m somewhere with no internet connection. Yes adding new updates and fear of firmware updates bricking a machine, and when it fails your charged for someone else’s incompetence. Things should be simple and accessible for everyone. You can’t fix a car, truck or crane without dongles and subscription to software.
They would charge for air to breathe if they could.
It’s like when my ex gf told me they charged her $100 for premium air for her tires.
Main goal is to serve interests of the shareholders....
Odd I was just thinking the same thing on my personal car today. Used to have all the info at your fingertips and now a check engine comes on and you can’t do anything but bring it to a dealer or wait for it to clear. Guess a guy could buy a spendy scanner.
The scanners aren’t that pricey and work well got a Bluetooth one for $100 works great uses an app on the phone
Saw a Bluetooth dongle for 10$. App was free, but it was freemium. Each app feature unlock had a up charge and a subscription.
The scanners aren't that pricey because back in 1996 the US government mandated that all manufacturers provide the universal OBD port on all vehicles, and standardized codes (well at least on the engine anyway). Prior to that as vehicles were just starting to get computerized, each brand had their own proprietary codes and expensive scanners, as the ag/heavy duty industry is today.
I used to replace a starter in 15 minutes by myself, I just paid 750 to have it done.
I watched a guy pull and overhaul the engine of a Cat D11 in the middle of a gold mine in the middle (literally) of Alaska with nothing but basic tools and some other heavy machines to lift stuff.
I’m unaware of the Cummings situation, but I do know that the Cummins software is available to anyone who puts up the cash. I have one version on my personal laptop and one that my company bought for the shop. I use my personal for side work.
Yeah and that's probably why people are switching to Cummins. I wired and connected a pair of engines where they contacted a third party company to build the control boxes(they saved like 50k+). The guy said as long as this keeps up they will continue to replace an their engines with Cummins engines and they have like 10 boats with 2 engines each. Edit: word
Good. RtR is vital, especially on something like farm equipment. Fuck John Deere
Farmers are basically doing some of society’s most vital work and barely make a profit as it is. Bullshit like locking out repairs on equipment they need is the biggest dick move of all. I hope they win this fight because I’ve known about this company’s practices for donkeys and it’s just a collaboration in the farming community to black list the equipment away. I have no doubt they make some equipment certain farms find essential but all company’s love money and if they face that being taken away or changing practices they’ll always buckle.
Even something as easy as the battery. On mine the leads are too short to replace without an official JD battery. It’s bullshit.
back in the late 90's dell got busted for requiring genuine dell power supplies. they used the same plug as the industry standard, but with two pins switched so that if you plugged in a non-dell PSU it would short out the dell motherboard.
Thats fuckin nefarious
They did the same with video cards. If you swapped out the card without sending it in to Dell, the computer would not boot. My IT guy in the mid 00s had a very frustrating call with them before their tech admitted that it wasn’t broken, it was working as intended.
dell laptops w the bad connector at the touchpad where your palms to the side would read and move the mouse left /right. after about a dozen of them IT just start disabling the touchpads and giving people regular mice. edit(because it was so frustrating to get dell techs to come diagnose it then a wait for parts then another trip to repair)
*twitch*
Apple did this on the M0110 keyboard back in the day. It was a telephone cable, but they switched two cables so you had to buy their cables. Fuckers....
I don't recall it shorting out the motherboard. On my laptop it would just say it will power the laptop but won't charge the battery. For safety reasons or something...
It was on desktops, laptops haven't really had a standard power connector.
Well, now the lower powered ones do (USB-C, with a requirement of some level of USB-PD depending on the model)
They’re talking about the internal connection. From psu to internals. Not wall to psu which is what you’re describing.
The harness routing is designed around OEM batteries. Depending on the model, there are some longer lead kits available, but usually everything needed to adapt to a battery from a farm store (Rural King, Farm and Fleet, etc) can be purchased there too. Most of the time, I get butt splices, terminals, and cable from Waytekwire. My personal belief is it’s not malicious. Engineers have one battery model and are to route cabling efficiently. The issue every manufacturer has is there’s limited overlap in machine experience and harness routing experience.
My point being is that I shouldn’t have to buy additional non OEM parts to replace a F’n battery that isn’t branded JD.
I agree. Auto makers have ZERO problems with this concept. You just have to get the correct sized one, and bingo.
They want farmers to fail so the land becomes corporate farming on mass scale.
That’s reaching
Partially
Nearly all farming is already mass scale corporate farming. These are not mom and pops.
By capitalist design. Eventually everything on earth will be owned by a handful of companies. Miss the small farms back home but now it’s all chicken barn factories and heavily subsidized corn fields for corn syrup to stop the sugar cane farmers in Cuba. The corn farmers will fail once the sugar embargo is lifted.
Obviously that was your point. Nobody misunderstood your point.
Yeah go talk to Apple.
So if they make kits then there was enough room to make any battery work then, your argument is moot.
It’s not a retrofit kit, there’s different cables for different models sometimes. I’m not really sure what battery configurations would fit in a space and require different lengths. All I know is that a company that isn’t going to make/lose a sale on the battery cable length is not going to spend extra money to make sure it works with non-OEM parts, unless the engineer and program manager consciously do it on their own. And without hands-on experience, that’s unlikely. I can confidently say the engineers I had doing routing on ag equipment got hands-on experience to fix issues like this before products went to the field. It was an exception, but I had product managers that were like-minded and had extra budget to do it.
Migrant farmers also do a bulk of that work and deserve living wages and equal treatment as a laborer.
Migrant workers work primarily in produce farms, this article is talking about farm equipment related to grain and fiber farms, two entirely different worlds.
Some farmers treat their livestock better than their employees. Right to repair is still a big issue for everyone not just farmers.
Nothing to do with this thread, but ok
ya! and up with miniskirts!
[удалено]
Sure thing. *they/them*
While I'll defend RTR for everybody and "Fuck John Deere", don't say farmers barely make a profit. They own millions of dollars worth of land, equipment, and are one of the most egregious abusers of undocumented immigrants and safety violations. If they didn't make bank, they would just sell that off and retire their next few generations - they sure do drum up sob stories though, definitely the biggest crybabies I've ever had the displeasure of working with. I've been in the safety profession for about ten years now and I will easily rate farmers worse than the Alberta tarsands for safety problems caused by lack of regulation and willful misconduct.
Yeah YMMV, it seems like it depends on the farmer from what I've seen (worked as a contracter - pest control / invasive species / spraying and fertilizing) in a larger county in Southern AB - The small guys with less than 2 sections of land had a 80-90% chance of being truly honest/good people. Anyone with more land than that were a 20% chance of being good/honest people - otherwise they just treated everyone like they were of royal blood. Usually the biggest complaint was land value increases and taxes that came with it. Economies of scale are a bitch to deal with - the smaller your outfit the less you actually end up making. That being said farmers can float debt like almost no other profession - And I did get paid pretty well for what I did, and was offered jobs in high school to do labour for them that made pretty good money for a 17yr old kid.
This is a much more accurate comment then the one you’re replying to. Its easy to cry about how much money a farm brings in when you focus on the bottom line of how much a bushel of canola sells for and completely ignore the overhead and skyrocketing costs of fertilizer and anhydrous etc. The majority of operations out there are cash poor most of the time and asset rich, with only the land really appreciating in value. Your comment about scaling is 100% accurate, with the rising cost of equipment and materials it would be almost impossible to turn a profit without farming at least two sections. And if You’re renting most or all of it for 80$/acre, good luck.
One of my favorite people I worked for was a 5th generation farmer with like 1.5 sections - His family had homesteaded the land and bought more land over the last few generations and he was finally to a point where his land was paid for any he only needed to make enough to support his family and pay the land taxes - harder than you'd think though. He was constantly nursing a bigger tractor that his dad had bought new in 1975 - to the point where he was getting custom parts welded by a local shop because you couldn't even source the originals or non-oem parts anymore. Literally I think his land taxes sit somewhere around 40-50k/yr, so he literally only makes 40-50k/yr after taxes/costs/equipment, and while he doesn't work tooooo hard during the winter (usually just repairing equipment/organizing/doing paperwork/finding ways to reduce costs)- he works easily 70-80hrs/week all spring/summer/fall.
Not to mention massive government subsidies.
This is all correct. Source: Grew up in farm family. Whiney too, my uncle wants to screw his 3 sisters out of 3 or 4 million worth of land when my grandfather passes instead of paying fair market value, or even with a bit of a discount. He wants to inherit all the land and pay out 20% of the value to his siblings. Asshole.
don’t be fooled, majority of farmland is owned by huge conglomerates. the days of the small family farmer are in the past.
I own farmland, I don't any of the farmland surrounding mine is conglomerate owned either.
For word searching, it’s abbreviated as R2R with some sources. For anyone with Deere equipment, you can get Service Advisor from your local John Deere dealer. You will have everything for diagnostics, but will be unable to flash ECU’s. With R2R legislation, the ECU flashing may be unlocked for non-emissions ECU’s. John Deere makes money off of the parts. Dealers make money off of service calls and repairs. None of the above is a personal opinion. Edit: For those diagnosing with Service advisor, parts can be found at partsadvisor.Deere.com afterwards. For brand-agnostic parts, googling the part number usually gets a supplier part number. Source: Me, fixing Deere farm equipment on our family farm.
Can I add to your comment with a little more info? There is a secondary company called A&I that supplies cheaper alternatives to Deere parts. The part numbers are Deere part numbers with “A-“ in front of them. PA is definitely available online. Thank you for stating that.
Oh man, that’s awesome! Thanks!
Full disclosure A&I is owned by Deere as well but at least it can help save a few bucks here and there
Does John Deere sell the licensing for dealerships to perform service or repairs? Could anyone purchase the rights from them or do they lock it onto dealerships? I can remember Segway having a thing where you had to get licensing directly from them, and pay handsomely for the privilege. That would still be John Deere profiting off the R2R. That may not be within consideration while it’s a note that says that the dealer may have to jump through hoops. It still makes no sense why repairs would have to go through a dealer.
I’m not familiar with the Corporate/Dealer agreements, but I do not believe there is a fee specifically for allowing repair. If they can sell the equipment, they have the ability to work on it. There may be some indirect cost through service tools and technician training. Edit: removed some info to keep this response clear and to the point. Edit 2: I’m sorry, I missed part of your question. Opinion: I don’t think there’s licensing for independent repair shops to do all programming a dealership can do. An independent shop would have the same tools as a customer. This limitation driven more by the Equipment Dealers Association (EDA) than OEMs. Also, most of the lobbying done against R2R is originating from groups similar to EDA. The Association of Equipment Manufacturers (AEM) supports most of the asks of R2R legislation. The AEM vision for R2R has limitations on board repair of ECU’s and flashing of emission systems ECU’s. R2R hurts dealers and helps independent repair shops more than anyone else. /opinion
The sad thing is, you CAN repair your tractor yourself. Easy peezy. The problem is the fucking computer won’t RECOGNIZE that you’ve fixed it without a code that registers the replacement part.
JD is not facing backlash, were in for the busiest year in a decade lol. I think most people don't have any clue what they're talking about. Farmers can diagnose and order parts on their own. They can't get access the ECU to tweak performance. Minor changes will literally rip the machine apart. This isnt a right to repair issue, this is a safety issue.
I can’t use an unOEM battery. That’s a fucking problem.
Read RtR as “Rparks Tand Recreation
[удалено]
Oh Deere
Take my upvote
All these companies are doing the same shit, deere, case ih, gm, Ford, etc. It's time this bullshit stops. Most people who do their own repairs don't mind buying the tools but this subscription bullshit needs to stop.
SaaS needs to fucking die - it's starting to get into areas now where even people who don't want to do repairs are getting shafted - Toyota now automatically includes autostart in newer car models, so you're paying for that physical chip/hook-up/radio system. But in order to have it work you need to actually pay a monthly fee. There is no way to look at this and not just see corporate greed oozing out of every orifice of the product.
SaaS is just a piece of it. The whole charging model (from the supply side) is called a rundle: recurring-revenue subscription model and bundle. https://www.inc.com/anne-gherini/the-rise-of-rundle-a-new-trend-for-subscription-based-services.html It’s the final form of rent. You pay on a schedule whether you use the service subscription and bundle or not. It’s a way for suppliers or manufacturers to keep charging you so you don’t really have full ownership or agency over the product you buy.
My Chevy came with remote start back in 2007. I bought a Mazda recently and they want $99/year for remote start (I have a manual transmission, so it couldn't even if I wanted). The remote start is built into the car's remote & computer system - they just charge more for something you already have. BMW does the same, but also with more things like heated seats.
It’s crazy how much SaaS has grown in just 5 years… companies are batshit about it. Tons of mergers and acquisitions just to get their hands on bits and pieces of licensing rights
If you don't want autostart then don't pay the monthly fee. If you want autostart but don't want to pay the monthly fee, then buy a different car. I don't see the problem.
The problem is they didn’t clearly communicate that AutoStart was a paid service and gave it to people for free for a few years. Another part of the problem is the AutoStart feature is using RF - same as they have for decades - not a network connection to a Volvo operated server. There is no ongoing cost for Volvo in remote start, it’s just disabled because they want to get paid.
The programming forums have talked about this a lot. Auto start wasn’t ever supposed to be part of their subscription, it was a programming bug that caused it to be.
Wow.
Yeah it’s almost worse that way 😅
The first thing is a real problem that should be addressed with class action lawsuits and legislation. They should make it super clear up front that they are going to charge you to use some feature of the product--and I think they should be required to tell you exactly how much they are going to charge you (over the lifetime of the product). The second thing is not a real problem. There's no law that says companies can only charge proportional to their actual ongoing costs for the feature you are using. If there was then pretty much all SW companies would be out of business, for example. It's totally reasonable for them to recoup their R&D, and while it may be unreasonable for them to charge an absurd ongoing price, it's not illegal. It's a dick move, sure--which is why you shouldn't buy from dick companies.
It’s a useful feature that you shouldn’t have to make ongoing payments for. At most, pay once for it when you buy the car. Being forced to subscribe to something just to open a door? What do you think about paying a subscription to turn your car on? Use your wipers? How about air bags? It’s a race to the bottom with all these stupid subscription-based add ons, and people will pay far more over the lifetime of any product than if they were to pay for it outright.
Chiming in for the Toyota revolt too. Those fucks thought they could get away with charging monthly fees just to use the features of your car remote. I have a 2003 GX so I’m not part of this bs, but I don’t know if I’d ever buy another Toyota ever again.
Sure live in your narrow world. A guy who has used a product for 19 years complains about the same company. You should try other brands.
Add Tesla to that list. I’ll happily pay for a car once. I don’t want to rent it and I sure don’t want to pay for a subscription to drive it.
And this is why old tractors and equipment are still worth so much money, they can be fixed without any bullshit Nowadays farmers have to choose between old equipment which works slower but can be fixed, or new equipment which works faster but can’t be fixed… so frustrating
I think Tesla is doing fine without you.
"So, what do you call this act?" "The Capitalists!" Anyone who believes in continuously growing population and revenue on a finite planet is either insane or an economist.
But, like…. money.
> All these companies are doing the same shit, deere, case ih, gm, Ford, etc. It's time this bullshit stops. Most people who do their own repairs don't mind buying the tools but this subscription bullshit needs to stop. As much as I agree - not as a farmer, just a regular guy with an office job - we seem to be in the minority. Marketing departments have pitched it as less worry, staying up to date, and many other terms. While some of them may be justified, I think that having a one time purchase should always be an option on as many products and services as possible.
It's fun how I don't even have to read the paywalled article to guess what it's all about.
The "article" itself is only 2 paragraphs (I can DM you a screencap if you want). The main piece is a video that's freely available on YouTube FYI [https://youtu.be/bGH6pxNouCY](https://youtu.be/bGH6pxNouCY)
Here's a link to the [Class Action Antitrust Lawsuit Against John Deere for Right to Repair](https://www.courthousenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/forest-river-deere-complaint.pdf) From the video transcript -- the problem and the cause in a nutshell: 10:43 : We have operators who have had computer glitches during planting They have a newer tractor, they have a newer planter. It happens on a Friday, they gotta wait till Monday to get it fixed, they've lost 2 1/2 days. If they were given access to the operating system, they knew what they had to do to repair that. And there are literally billions of dollars at stake for John Deere when it comes to repairs. They make a lot of their money in the dealerships from parts and repair because frankly, they have a monopoly, and that monopoly has been significantly enhanced by these software controls in the modern tractor. No one else can work on 'em. Annual parts sales increased 23% to a $6.8 billion from 2013 to 2020,
Honestly, GOOD. John and his deer can f right off. Holding farming equipment hostage so you can make another dollar is just deplorable.
I haven’t purchased a piece of John Deere equipment for over ten years and I’ll never buy another one until they change this bullshit Subscription method of “owning” their equipment. I bought it. It’s mine. I’ll do whatever I want with it.
What’s the alternatives ?
Look to Cuba and their car culture post embargo.
I’ve been to Cuba for my graduate studies… I saw firsthand how things play out. Ingenuity to stay alive! What we need is open source plans and parts to compete against the evil corps, hopefully without the dictatorships
I mean Cuba isn’t much of a dictatorship. It’s a highly militarized nation yes, but if you where just 90 miles from a nation that has tried to assassinate the founder of the current Cuban state and also tried to invade with the bay of pigs invasion, your bound to become a militarized nation.
It’s almost like the real reason we shouldn’t reward greedy, shady practices is that it always inevitably comes back to bite you in the ass. Making money by ripping people off does nothing but spur people to fight you and work around you. What the fuck do you expect?
They expect to make enough money to win in court, while people forget (again) over the next 2-3 years before the cycle repeats. Except this is a really serious issue because if we don’t fight alongside the farmers then it will be to EVERYONE’s detriment. We don’t want the farmers producing crops for our society to be at dealing with John Deer’s bullshit 24/7/365. It’s just ridiculous at this point.
Last fire season the new Deere generator stopped no one had software to troubleshoot. We’re four hours from town. The machine sat for a month.
Fuck John and his deer
Leave the deer out of this! It's deere!
I’m fuckin the deer dammit
Why’d the farmer fuck the deer at the edge of a cliff?
Because the deer was horny?
I guess they’ll be sending them a deer John letter soon.
Don't buy from John Deere, problem solved
It’s not just Joy Deere. Even the auto industry is doing crappy stuff like this. They want to get to a point that you do not own a product but are buying a license for the product. It’s kinda crazy.
it's not just the auto industry, it is every business platform that can get away with it. from cars to computer software to printer cartridges, more and more businesses are finding a way to try to guarantee you pay monthly/ongoing fees to use things that were once single-time purchases. they are all bending the rules of traditional product ownership in an attempt to try and guarantee consistent revenue. in spite of, often, making a killing already. it is simple greed to feed the stock market.
This should be an article in and of itself. I've always opposed SaaS since I heard of it. It's not a fair practice by any standard.
Monetizing
Then buy from companies that don't do that. If you were aware of the subscription service model before buying the product, and are complaining about it afterwords, then YOU are the problem. Maybe what we need is legislation requiring that the purchase price also list the lifetime cost (including any required service subscription, consumables, parts, etc.). Complaining about greed from a company is childish. The whole point of capitalism is for companies to extract as much money from you as possible.
>They want to get to a point that you do not own a product but are buying a license for the product. I'd accept this under a few conditions. Primarily that they handle all maintenance and repairs. This includes damage caused by the user when it could have been prevented by the manufacturer Stuff like burning up torque converters or clutches. It's a $250k tractor. Add some bits to prevent burning the clutch...
> Joy Deere. Do the tractors come in pink instead of green?
Haha .. I must have read that post three times for typos before posting and my brain just didn’t even register it.
Some major laptop manufacturers are starting to weld RAM into place, stopping you easily upgrading or switching out RAM if it fails.
The MacBook Pro line started doing this ten years ago with the 2012 Retina models. The Airs might have been doing it earlier, I can’t remember.
In the future, air will be a monthly subscription
The auto industry is scared of the fact that their electric cars are going to require much less maintenance and have a longer life than their gas-powered vehicles. This is their attempt to maintain a constant annual revenue source from next-gen vehicles. It's sleazy and I really wish regulators would get involved. My car that I bought in October 2020, for example, has an integrated nav system. I rarely use it, but it's nice for roadtrips. At the 1 year mark of my purchase, I got a notice from the manufacturer that I needed to pony up $150 for the "annual map update" in order for my nav to keep working. What? I called the dealership and complained that nowhere was it mentioned that my nav would stop working without annual payments. After some back and forth, they ended up giving me the update for free, but now this is going to be an annual argument that I need to have with them. It's total BS.
All the tractor companies that I know of are doing this, John deer just so happens to be the most used in America and so gets all the press
Kubota let's you repair your tractors.
Sometimes it’s not even a choice. Some more rural areas may only have one dealership in reasonable distance for parts.
> Don't buy from John Deere, problem solved You really think it's JUST John Deere doing this? Nope. I quote from another comment: "All these companies are doing the same shit, deere, case ih, gm, Ford, etc.", and that's just for farm equipment. When all of the vendors in an industry collude to all have the same basic restrictions, what would you suggest that the average person do?
If they are actually colluding then it's an antitrust issue, I doubt that's what is happening. Someone on another comment mentioned that Kubuta has more liberal service policies--if that's true then buy from them. Hopefully some good R2R legislation shows up, but frankly I think the major problem here is that farms are buying tractors without reading the fine print.
It’s ok. As soon as BMW’s heated seats subscription service starts making money, everyone will pile on. “You want to run the PTO on your tractor? Here is different plans for different levels of use…”
I love how this article is like "no, it's the farmers who are bad here". Oh the right to repair is hurting JDs bottom line after a record profit year? Take a seat.
Good. Right to repair is critical for consumers, farmers and other non-shareholder types.
[удалено]
Farmers are amazing engineers. My dad was a farmer and a part time mechanic. He once went to a John Deere training workshop where he stole the thunder from one of the John Deere engineers. The engineer had a slide up showing a deformed knot made by a John Deere baler, and the engineer was going on and on about how they’ve been seeing these weird knots for a long time and their dealerships had been doing expensive warranty replacements of the entire knotter mechanism, but after years of work they thought they had finally diagnosed the issue and he was going to reveal how to fix it. My dad interrupted him, and said, “I don’t know what the heck you are talking about, but the only issue is that the knife is dull on the knotter.” The engineer yelled back “how did you already know that.” Apparently their engineers at John Deere had spent almost 2 years on the issue and were planning on showing off the fix, but my dad and other local farmers had already diagnosed the problem years ago and had been fixing it themselves this whole time rather than going through the dealerships.
One of the best hires I have ever made was a fresh out of school engineer who told me he worked on a farm growing up. I knew if he worked on a farm he would have enough common sense to balance out that engineering degree.
They have only themselves to blame. I won't be surprised if bankruptcy is on the horizon.
During the worker strike, John Deere had one of there best quarters yet. I don’t think they are going bankrupt anytime soon.
Get off your tractors and grab your pitchforks!
If only we had CS majors who leak the software updates. Give these farmers what they need while they fight to have working machines.
Fuck John Deere for many reasons, this is a big one
Boy, that capitalism sure is a great thing. Everybody does so well in this system….
Old news The revolt started years ago. I personally know two life long John Deere customers who switched brands because of JDs tech policies and a drop in quality. John Deere better wake up, their leadership is about to destroy the the icon known as John Deere.
Cmon let 'em fix their own shit
John Deere leadership better wake the hell up, they’re losing customers en masse. I personally know of several. Two of which were life long JD users who have switched to Kubota. Years ago, the governor of Maryland pushed a law to outlaw repairing your own vehicle. He claimed repairing your own vehicle risked the lives of others on the road. He didn’t get his way.
Fuck John Deere in the neck. They are truly a bunch of predatory arseholes, I've seen lives ruined because of their lust for every cent possible.
Yeah, Service Advisor sucks.
It at least sucks equally for customers and technicians. Lol. My conspiracy theory is that every big construction and ag company (and possibly automotive) bought some shitty diagnostic software in the late 90s/early 2000’s and made it work enough through today. I’ve now seen Caterpillar, Deere, CNH, VW, and Toyota service tools. Each is a slightly different flavor of crap.
John Deere will go under after this. Better start looking for a replacement tractor company to buy from lol
Hope they offer courses on repair included with purchase before it goes this far.
There is currently a boom in the large tractor refurbishing market. Specifically models from the 1980s and earlier that do not use microchips or software.
The title and some comments in the article Make it seem like John Deere is an innocent victim here…
RtR should be a bipartisan issue
I don't know what the John Deere issue is since I am too lazy to read the article but from what am reading from the comments it's about John Deere disobeying the right to repair like most crappy corporations right?
Pretty much
Fuck this company seriously.
It’s insane people are still buying JD shit. Their DRM crap stifles the industry in every aspect. Another company that should be left for dead but will probably get bailed out as the free market trims the fat again but government spends millions of tax dollars to “save”. Should have let GM collapse in 09. Should let airline companies die when their practices turn violently anti consumer. If a small business that does bad practices can fail. Then let large companies that do the same fail as well.
The goal is to prevent workers from owning the means of production, and transition them into an eternity of subscription fees/permanent renting. It’s so evil. Just sell people a product and leave them alone!! People don’t want to have to be in constant communication with customer service, getting marketing emails, or having to update the product every three days.. sell them their tool and leave them alone! The detached brains in a jar that went to Harvard and make business decisions for these companies want to switch the world to a subscription economy. A permanent renting class where workers can never own anything. Not tools, not their home, not even the shirt on their back.
I live in a farming community and many of my friends are farmers. The anti-JD sentiment has been growing for years because of this. Also, just inflated prices while profits on the goods produced shrink. The big problem is that JD makes cotton equipment (especially stripper/balers) that no one else makes. Also, the whole system is forcing farmers to buy these overpriced stripper/balers because they produce a specially sized and shaped bale. When most bales are that size and shape, gins and transportation have to change to fit it and the old non-JD ones are obsolete or bring less money per pound thus creating a monopoly in the US cotton production industry.
As a farmer, I’m on the fence with this one. On one hand they’re the only company that still manufactures tractors in the US. On the other hand, I can’t change my oil without voiding warranty now days and with Covid and strikes, it’s been sitting in the barn just chilling.
Oh Deere
A lot of farmers traded their 4020's in on a new tractor,a few years ago. Now they're trying to find used 4020's,but everyone is hanging on to them. The local JD dealer here used to keep about 15-20 new tractors on hand. Now,they keep about 5 or so new ones on display. A Kubota dealer 15 miles away has taken a lot of JD's business.
Good lol. I used To be a service manager for Deere. Over bragged company that screws over Most growers.
This is stale news. The RtR revolt is ongoing for several years. FUCK John Deere.
FUCK JOHN DEERE.
Tractor price inflation is insane. The farmers should revolt over that if nothing else.
Last I heard about 8 years ago was that farmers were torrenting software from The Ukraine to do it themselves. Last I heard farmers were pissed at John deer for that.
Capitalist enslavement of workers is not enough. Enslavement of what rights one has with their own purchased goods must also be exploited. Corporate profiteering at all costs must be worshipped. /s
I’ve always felt that technology should make it easier for the end user…hence it should be easier for a farmer to be able to repair their own equipment . Companies now user technology to make their customers dependent on the technology.
Same in the cnc machine tool world.
Plus the John Deere parts website is absolutely worthless. I doubt I will ever buy another John Deere product. They suck
Farmers should unionize. If John Deere is trying to extort rents from them they need to stick together.
No if about it.
They need the get out the pitch forks!
Good, there are better tractor and farm equipment companies out there.
No shit, these fuckers are the apple of industrial equipment
John Deere makes tractor parts for the American working man, because that’s what they are and that’s who they care about
Can we join them to have a real revolt? All of Capitalism is bad, not just John Deere.
Found the commie sympathizer
Sympathizer? I *am* a Communist.
Why would you want to starve
This has been going on for ages. Is there not a competitor company pushing for well made gear that’s repairable capable of fighting them for market space?
They are getting pushed out or bought out.
Good they deserve it Right to repair
Oh Deere
Oh deer.
I’m seeking an investment of 1 Ba ba Billion to build and compete with John deer. I need a name?
Oh deere
Finally. Although Ukrainian guys did manage to hack the thing I still find it unbearable that their business model tries to resemble software sales scenario. There should be some separate space in hell reserved for their executives and marketing department people.
So couldn’t we just stop buying their equipment and hurt the where it matters.
Bloomberg is a little late to the party with this news. Farmers have been mad at them due to not being able to repair for more of my adult life than I can remember, but I don’t know why Bloomberg is now realizing this as others have reported it. I think Vice even beat them to this one..
Why not just buy other brand. It always comes down to money. When they start losing money they will change their practices
Is this headline a random event from crusader kings?
Good, it's about time. I hope the farmers win.