After some supercharged years, the used farm equipment market took a tumble in 2024 and farmers can expect to see a further correction in 2025.
That’s the take from Greg Peterson, the man farm equipment buyers and sellers more commonly refer to as Machinery Pete. Peterson has been tracking used equipment auction prices for 35 years and his commitment to sales data has made him the most trusted name in farm equipment.
At the Southwest Agricultural Conference this week at the University of Guelph’s Ridgetown campus, Peterson told a packed auditorium that the best evidence of softening of used equipment prices is the huge spike in number of late-model equipment being sold at auction. When it comes to 175+ horsepower tractors, for example, that number increased by 114 per cent in 2024 compared to the previous year.
Peterson says the market last saw this kind of move to the downside in mid-2013 to the end of 2015 when “late model used fell about 18 to 25 per cent year-over-year for two plus years, and then began to just flatten out.”
In this interview with RealAgriculture’s Bernard Tobin, Peterson shares what he’s been seeing at recent auctions and how prices are trending for different categories — from loader tractors to combines. He also shares why there’s tremendous value in four to seven-year-old machinery; why everybody wants 10-year-old machinery; how data takes the emotion out of the sales process and why it’s is the best way to determine whether farmers get a good or a bad deal.
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