US Ag Slowdown Making Late Model Equipment Harder to Find

Tight profit margins are leading many farms to hang on to equipment longer before trading it in.

The major manufacturers have also slowed down production significantly, coinciding with the drop in demand for new iron.

And all of this means there’s less late model machinery hitting the market.

“It’s getting really hard to find a one or two year old machine at an auction with 200 to 300 hours,” says Rick Vacha, US ag sales director for Ritchie Bros, in the conversation below, filmed at the U.S. Farm Progress Show in Iowa.

While Canadian farms have been buffered by the low Canadian dollar and record high pulse crop prices, their American counterparts haven’t been so fortunate.

“A lot of guys who are normally trading out every year are now running their equipment two or three years, which slows the whole process down and puts a lot less used on the marketplace in due time,” notes Vacha.

They estimate between 80 and 90 percent of dealer’s new equipment sales involve accepting a used machine in trade.

Here’s his chat with Kelvin Heppner on trends in the US machinery and farm auction market:

Watch much more from the 2016 U.S. Farm Progress Show

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