Every year there are several agricultural shows, where there are by invitation-only events. This year we got several invitations because we acquired several tractors. Many of these events are boilerplate stuff, but over beer, after one event I was talking with several farm equipment dealers, and that's when it clicked for me. Dealers were all saying that over the past 18 months, they've quintupled the spare parts inventories. I asked them how they could justify these costs, and one said, they could not afford to have their clients waiting for months because parts were unavailable. They had learned a hard lesson during the pandemic.
During the peak of the pandemic, it was almost impossible to find oil filters for our tractors. At one point belts were difficult to source, and acquaintances told us that the wait time for new tires was weeks. Old diesel engines were marvels of simplicity, but our Case tractors are computer-controlled marvels of engineering. We cut, thresh and bale our hay. We operate a large fleet of UTVs/ATVs to maintain the property. In all, we have five large tractors and ten quads. We change the oil, grease the fitting and do the basic maintenance. When there is serious breakage specialists are called in. The equipment is too complicated and there are too many computers for us to be able to repair them ourselves. Granted, the mechanics come to you, and it is usually a five to ten-day affair, hence we have redundancy in our fleet.
The pandemic scared us because at one point we were down to two functioning tractors (three if we did not need the PTO). Our spare parts reserves have grown exponentially since then. Tractors breakdown and we remain concerned because the great majority of our spare parts are manufactured in China. Yesterday, I was reminded of the risks as another vessel got stuck in the Suez Canal.
We have a fully stocked machine shop to repair, replace, or solder broken equipment. One of our neighbours is a master welder (Aluminum and Stainless Steel require great skills) and about 20 minutes away a farmer operates a very precise but ancient lathe where we have had several "impossible to find" bolts made to order.
I am ranting because yesterday we completed the spare inventory and turns out we have used up a lot of consumables that I assumed we still had in stock. I know how it happens, a tractor breaks down in the middle of a job, and you rush to the shop to get a spare part and "forget" to log it...
Still the Case dealer told me last night that it would be three weeks before my order was filled.
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