Farmers Face Uphill Battle in Right to Repair Tractors

Good article!
Poke here

This is why I am avoiding the "newer" tractors....
of course for bigger operations it is not likely an option.
All the electronics are a huge pain.

Hey, I thought politics wasn't allowed here? *lol*

I can't believe we've come to a point like this in the world - where people have to go to court to be "allowed" to repair their older equipment. What part of "That's Insane" does the rest of the world not understand?? If this keeps up, pretty soon they'll forego any medical care for people and just recycle us every time we get the flu or something, then replace with a newer model. :roll:

Thanks for the post Greg. ...Sure never would have thought this possible!

Might be time for the aftermarket suppliers and maybe even computer hackers to step up to the plate.

This will get interesting as it plays out. It may end up similar to how the lawsuits about farmers keeping their own seed for replanting. When the patents expire there will probably be some companies make something that will replace the current dealer software and computers.
In the mean time it's sad for the smaller producers. One of the main reasons that small farmers have been able to remain profitable is the ability to do our own repairs. If that is taken away then smaller farmers may be forced out of business when it comes time to replace their outdated equipment. If that happens the consumer is likely to see a hit at the grocery store.

Seems like every time the farmers make some headway with "right to repair " legislation the opposition lobbies, and outspends them and get it to not pass. Interesting the medical industry is also on the side of manufacturers. The farmers are going to lose.

The story seems a bit short on facts and long on emotions.

With my tractors that's one thing I don't have to worry about

didn't GM try to push this for their cars a couple years ago?

It will be a HUGE mess is it goes thru. Can you imagine if ALL tractor repairs had to go thru one of the OE dealers? You'd have to wait 6-12 months to get simple things done. WHo gets sued because their equipment broke down and deere couldn't get it fixed in time for planting or harvest? can you get insurance for that nonsense?

with deere going to fewer and bigger wallymart type dealers you have less selection to get stuff fixed and less leverage to give the dealer incentive to do a good job quickly and for a reasonable price.

who will police this? IF you have a local dealer that wants your business back they're not going to turn you in to mother deere but then mother deere may not honor your warranty. BIG mess.

definitely will be buyer-be-ware at auctions on newer stuff. a reason to lease equipment and turn in before the warranty is up.

around here its hard to find good help let alone help that knows which end of the screw driver to hold on to. Where will the dealers get the staff of qualified mechanics to do the work?

i see the OE side of the safty stuff. if some idiot didn't fix something and someone got hurt regardless, unfortunately, the OE company would get sued.

It has been my experience that if something sounds outrageous, it probably is. Fact is, if you own it, you can do anything you want to with it. But like many products (such as Stihl chainsaws), the manufacturer will not honor a warranty if work is accomplished by untrained hands. That is downside of purchasing highly technical equipment.

You have it backwards . The farmers are pushing "right to repair " laws and getting defeated by the manufacturers.

As always, follow the money trail. The opposition is spending crazy multiple amounts to defeat this.

I know several around here that have canceled new tractors.

I guess maybe the only way around it would be to never actually BUY the new machine. Either lease it, or rent it as needed.

Can you imagine these past 100 years not being able to make your own repairs or do diagnostics on your own Ford, Chevy or Volkswagon and only the OEM shop can do the repairs? And at $100+ / hour at todays rates!!! And you have to pay full list for parts from them instead of Pep Boys, Carquest or O'Reilly's auto parts stores? You are not allowed to modify your own vehicle (property) with engine, transmission or suspension parts because the OEM says you will jeopardize safety or emission standards?

This is the excuse John Deere wants use to gain total market control for those repairs on both parts and labor. And in most cases, owners are only asking for the repair manuals and software to do their own work to repair the machines back to standard operating condition. I don't think many are trying to modify these machines or bypass safety systems and if they did...so what? The machine is their property and their own business if they want to wreck it or mess it up. They also get to pay the bill if they end up having Mother Deere fix their screw-ups. This is America! They should have the right to make their own mistakes first.

Those of you who think this is not a problem because you do not own a newer tractor are not seeing the big picture. If this goes through it's just a matter of time before the auto industry follows along with every other tech industry. This is wrong in so many ways. And in the case of the farmer in the article, how about when Mother Deere just up and decides to no longer offer parts, software or repair manuals for a fairly modern tractor? You gonna send a $100,000 tractor to the scrap yard because Mother Deere would rather you to buy a new $250,000 tractor instead? If the software that controls EVERYTHING in a modern tractor is considered Mother Deere's intellectual property, not yours, and they can shut it off or not update it or not service it at any point of time in the future at their whim for any reason and render your tractor worthless because nobody else is allowed by law to have a repair manual or access to software information, then is that really the direction you want this country to go in?

We are talking about tractors today, but it'll be your cars and trucks tomorrow, then your appliances, cell phones and just about anything that has a software program in it. Also keep in mind that the vast majority of people will find today's machinery too complicated to work on themselves anyway but that's besides the point. You should still have the freedom to be able to choose the shop you want to work on it, the parts supplier you want to use for the parts AND have access to the information you need to make the repairs.

Today is the 6th of June, anniversary of D-Day and I should think that all of those fine men who fought and died for our freedoms would be turning over in their graves at how we are loosing yet another of our everyday freedoms that used to be a God given right that we now have to clutch and claw at to fight to hold onto. I find this whole business just sickening.

It sounds like the farmer in the story wants John Deere to support an obsolete out of warranty GPS system that he could replaced for less than the cost to repair the old unit.

Is the issue about the right of the buyer to do routine maintenance and repairs (oil changes, clutch replacements, engine and transmission overhauls) or is the issue about writing new laws that force all manufactures to offer low cost or below cost support for obsolete machines, equipment, appliances and other products long after the market for the old machine had fallen to where the old machine can be replaced by either a new machine or another used machines for less than the cost to make the repairs? In today's climate of changing governments to be more business friendly, I doubt that the second option will get much traction.

The fight is over getting access to the information to do the repairs.

The auto industry is required to make available to the aftermarket the same information that is available to their dealers. They can charge for it but it must be available for those that need it. Deere is fighting to not have to release the necessary information to make repairs on their equipment.

?Allowing untrained individuals to modify equipment software can endanger operators, bystanders, dealers, mechanics, customers, and others,? said Ken Golden, a Deere spokesman. He added that customers, dealers, and manufacturers ?should work together on the issue rather than invite government regulation that could add costs with no associated value.?

If the owner of the tractor cannot access the software, the tractor is virtually worthless if it breaks down without the OEM providing the needed information. In today's tractors, EVERYTHING is controlled by the software. Engine controls, emissions, DEF fluids, transmissions, hydraulics, hitches, front-wheel drive engaging, front-axle suspension, GPS, auto-steer, mapping, variable rate capability, the list goes on. I've literally spent thousands on my two modern tractors and combine for repairs and can think of only a handful of times I actually physically broke anything. Most times it was a computer or software glitch that had to be straightened out so the component it controlled would act properly. If you have no say in who can work on it then you are pretty much a slave to the OEM. If the machine is under warranty, who cares? But get some age on it and they decide to not support any component or software AND....won't let anyone else have access to the repair information.....now we have a problem.

And when the Deere spokesman says that customers, dealers, and manufacturers "should work together on the issue", Deere's version of "working together" is for all of us to bend over and let them screw us out of our right to own our machinery software and our right to hire whoever we want to work on it. Make no mistake. This is NOT what they want. And I'll say it again, this is the beginning. All of your auto OEMs will follow suite under the same guise of it being a "safety issue" or an imaginary perceived threat to the environment such as an "emissions issue". Gotta scare the soccer moms and tree huggers to get them on their side of the argument. I thought Deere would be above this kind of crap but I guess they also have been too far removed from the farm and rural towns to have any moral values left anymore. Right and wrong be damned. Corporate greed is thy new master.

i was thinking the OE's were pushing for legislation to prohibit working on your own tractors "if it goes thru".

what i meant was it would be a huge mess if the OE's get their way and we loose the right to fix our own stuff.

surprised we can still change our own oil. might drop a drop on the ground because we're not too bright. (ha ha)

Just who determines when a component/part/system becomes obsolete.
Yesterday I was talking to my friend and owner of a CNH dealer here in central NY. CNH has made parts NLA for tractors and combines that are still being actively used by farmers in this region.
Examples. MAXXUM Tractors and Flagship Combines, 1600-2000 series. The other thing CNH is doing is selectively not allowing dealers to order combine parts of any kind if they are not BIG combine dealers. It will be a sad day when an farmer/owner of a 2166 combine here in NY has to go to a dealer in Iowa to buy combine parts. THAT IS JUST BS!!!!!! Just to add to it, what happens if the needed part has to be dealer installed. That would be a really big service bill.
Just to enhance on this point a bit more, at the annual CNH dealer meeting, the company was telling how their business plan would make dealers parts and service departments "Profit Centers" They made no mention that the dealer sales department would be a profit center also. They only want to see sales numbers, and could care less about their smaller dealers.
My friend took on Kubota, as did many other Case-IH and Ford dealers back in the early 90s. Kubota, and some other major short lines keep these dealerships viable today.
The other problem facing our local dealers here is service personal. There is no colleges teaching Ag mechanics any more, and as Jon has said the truck repair industry has the same problems.
All any repair person knows today, is replace to repair no fix to repair, anything, and it will only get worse.
Loren

I should clarify one statement I made about colleges. They are teaching Ag Technology, which is where most of this GPS farm tech. and electronic machine operating systems has come from. Problem is that they are focused on improvement and not on maintaining what they made yesterday.
Loren

Thank you for clarifying the issue Straw Boss. I understand your frustration, but be very very careful what you ask for. Debugging software and electronics is not easy, few trained people can do it well or quickly even in a well controlled setting. Some people can do it, but the vast majority of people can't.

Some farmers will not consider buying a diesel engine that has been overhauled in-frame by another farmer or truck owner during the off season. Would you ever consider buying a complicated used machine after another well meaning but confused and angry farmer (or anyone else) has spent several hours in the middle of a field breakdown rewriting codes, bypassing sensors, deleting interlocks, and eliminating lines that he didn't understand while trying to kludge together a quick fix to get his machine to operate? All without documenting any of the changes he's made? At start-up who knows what all will crash and break or burn out. It could take weeks to straighten out the codes and fix the damages. I'd run from that machine, so will Deere or any other manufacturer. I would not put that machine on my used equipment lot and I certainly would not warranty that machine.

The car and truck OEM's have been doing this for at least 25 years, the factory looks at the dealer as their customer. The dealer is buying the product, so the factory wants them to be successful, then they can buy more.

You farmers are the dealers customers, the factory is only slightly interested in what you want.

The profit center idea is from about 1974, GM went to the dealers, lots of which were failing in 1974, and told them to set up 5 centers:

New Car sales

Used Car sales

Finance and Insurance

Parts

Service

And they instructed the dealer on how to best maximize the profits in each one.

New and used cars sales used to keep the dealership afloat. But with the competition from other makes, they can't get the 10% profit margin they had back then.

So when the cars got computers, and only the dealer techs had the diagnostic equipment and training and information, they could really jump the labor rates to work on those cars.

Now a day parts and service generate more than half the profits in a dealership. So of course the factory is working to keep all the repair in house and squeeze the owner and aftermarket out.

Anybody that makes something is trying to monopolize parts and service; that's where the real money is made. They might get large dollar amounts when they sell a tractor, but the profit margin on parts and service can be 100% and or up to 10 times that. It's like selling dope...

A neighbor sells and services x-ray machines. About 10 years ago, GE and Phillips, biggest OEM's, cut him out of training, service literature, and most spare parts. So he had to rep for other OEM's that would make him the dealer.

"Fact is, if you own it, you can do anything you want to with it."

Did you post your message with a computer? While you may own the computer, you do NOT own the software that's on your computer. Try making 1,000 copies of your Windows operating system, selling the copies publicly and see if Microsoft just sits back and watch you sell them. Anyway, while you may own the tractor or combine you purchase from your dealer, technically you do NOT own the software that's on these machines. I don't agree with what the companies are doing, but if you don't like it, get the laws changed.

(quoted from post at 16:04:48 06/06/17) "Fact is, if you own it, you can do anything you want to with it."

Did you post your message with a computer? While you may own the computer, you do NOT own the software that's on your computer. Try making 1,000 copies of your Windows operating system, selling the copies publicly and see if Microsoft just sits back and watch you sell them. Anyway, while you may own the tractor or combine you purchase from your dealer, technically you do NOT own the software that's on these machines. I don't agree with what the companies are doing, but if you don't like it, get the laws changed.

Click to expand...

May not own the software, but you can do whatever you want with the machine itself without anyone saying a word. ...Unless it's under warranty. :wink:

And even with software, I've never heard of ANY legally-owned software having been modified for their own personal use, and then the software manufacturer sued them. It's one thing to copy en mass, but it's a different thing altogether to be able to do what you want with what you own, within reason.

Deere has this right for several reasons, but the big one is the safety after some jackleg monkeys with the code on a tractor with a guidance system. If I got hit by a tractor after a farmer had jack-wagoned the thing I would sue him until I owned his entire farm and he was living under a bridge eating government cheese.

No one is suggesting that farmers cannot do routine maintenance, but when it comes to highly technical things the manufacturers, rightly, don't want untrained people working on them.

The proposed requirement that the manufacturers have to share their proprietary information with independent shops is simple robbery of their intellectual property.

I read a article a couple of months ago that stated computer software/programs to repair these tractors are available from some overseas countries.
I wish I would have saved the article.

Rollie, I've seen the same articles in several places online. It's just another form of "Redneck Repair", so to speak, as you never know the qualifications or capabilities of the folks making the repairs/adjustments.

I understand the safety factor, and I understand that such things cannot be warranted simply from a safety standpoint. But if that's the case, then don't overcharge for repairs and folks won't be having to consider hiring someone in some faraway land to re-work the programming!

Copying and reselling operating systems is pirating, much akin to pirating a DVD that you bought or rented. these are called intellectual property laws, you would be essentially illegally stealing this property. I have a friend that works for a JD dealership whose job is to advise and train purchasers of new JD equipment on use of sophisticated computer equipment of those tractors and drills. He said there is no laws that he is aware of that precludes a new owner from doing his own repairs or uses of that equipment, unless they do something that is against the warrantee.
But is that not how most every warrantee is written?

Loren many of the points you have made about CNH , are the exact reasons that I didn't replace my 5140 Maxum with a MXU or a MX125 . The company was already telling me that they would not have parts for my 5140 , and a friend bought a MXU , biggest pile of junk I have ever seen . Front axle went at 1100hrs , and then the Hydraulic pump shortly after. His next tractor, he bought a Fendt .
My dealer had CaseIH and Kubota , and dropped the CaseIH . The red and green guys seem to only want to deal with the really big farmers , and mostly only the cash crop style farmers , they don't care much for the Dairy-air I guess.Bruce

It's no more robbery than what has been going on in the automotive world for the last 20+ years. It's no different what so ever. The biggest thing I would like
to see is access to the diagnositc programs, such as Deere's Service Advisor, or CNH's EST, whether directly through the OEM, or through a company like Snap On.
I don't think Deere or Cat has a chance on this aspect of it. A precedent has been set in the automotive and truck industries, and eventually they will be
forced to release all of that information, and will likely be forced to adhere to something similar to OBDII. Of course Deere doesn't like it, but more so,
dealers don't like it, because right now they have that portion of the market locked down, but, competition is always a good thing, and this would, without any
doubt, create some competition in the market.

The other thing you're missing is that, for a lot years now, people have had the ability to mess with a vehicles programming. Programs(software and
hardware) such as EFI Live, give any person with $800 the ability to tune their vehicle to no end,(certain makes and models only) to change almost everything
the OE originally spent a lot of time coming up with in the first place. I have yet to hear of a case of where somebody changing something in their vehicle has
caused an accident. Not to say it has NEVER happened, but it's very certainly not the problem that Deere (and every other OEM) argues it is.

There's a reason that the Maxxum tractor parts are becoming NLA, and it has to do with the whole CIH-NH merger, and McCormick buying the Maxxum tractor line. This is not a problem for NH derived Maxxum. As far as 1600-2100 series combine parts being obsolete, those parts are few and far between. I'm not going to totally defend CNH, some of the parts you can't get, well, it's ridiculous sometimes. Flagship combine parts aren't obsolete. Those combines only came out a little over 10 years ago. (starting with the 7010, etc). As far as not having colleges to teach ag mechanics, that's an American problem. We have very good programs up here, with Deere actually having their own program. Block release apprenticeship. Regular program is 2 months, 2 months and 2 months, and then you write for your license. Deere's program is 4 months, 3 months, 3 months, and then you write for your license. You get the same license either way, but a apprentice learns a little more with Deere, but some of that extra time is spent brainwashing the apprentice into learning/thinking that Deere is the best, which means techs won't leave a green dealer for a better paying job.

It still comes down to you buy something and the manufacturer can arbitrarily decide they won't support it or allow the information out to allow it to be supported. They sell you the tractor but get to determine how long you can use it or if they want to continue to allow you to use your own tractor. That is a situation ripe for abuse

The colleges not teaching ag mechanics is a dealer problem not an "American" problem as you put it. Well, maybe an American dealer problem...

If dealers paid their mechanics a wage commensurate with the knowledge and skills they need these days to deal with these complex densely packed computerized monstrosities of machines, you'd have more interest. Nobody wants to work that hard for $11/hr while the dealer charges $150/hr. The only people who will are the most dedicated, that think they're not smart enough for anything else.

The dealers here are really no different. Pay as little as possible, while charging as much as possible and then some, and forever widen the
gap between the door rate and the tech pay rate. The options are limited up here as well. There's only one actual AG tech course in Ontario
that I know of. The same place and the same teachers teach both the Deere program and the regular program. It's not mandatory either, so
mechanics aren't just getting their license because they have to by law.
I get the impression that options don't exist down there. I've heard of this problem before, not only do they lack the colleges, they
also lack a proper apprenticeship program.