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| I've got to say I agree with his thoughts that the industry needs to work together more.
I see the problem being misguided sales managers who think that if they can lock up things enough so that you have to come deal with them then they will have the proverbial leg up on everyone else.
Look how long it took for everyone to finally go to ISO hydraulic fittings and for the compact loader market to migrate to the Bobcat quick tach. Relatively speaking those two things are just baby steps compared to what we're talking about in precision ag.
I still see it with Deere. Last spring they had a "training meeting" for precision ag at our local dealer. Yes it had a little training, a lot of hype and was more of an excuse to let their new crop insurance guys promote their product more than anything. They have this vision of yield monitors tied directly to crop insurance records and everything else on the farm. That only works if you have their equipment, their software, their insurance, I'm sure you get the picture.
That's not what I'm looking for. I want precision ag to be as easy as hooking up brand x disk to brand y tractor. I'm not interested in being pushed into using someone's inferior product just because they have made it so it won't work with anything else.
In my post below I had hoped that maybe beyond some wild dream that Ag Leader could use the GS sensors, or at the very least replace the AL components and be able to plug into the same wiring harness to take the data to the cab. Looks like that's not so. Probably never will be.
I do know I am very disappointed in both Deere and my local dealer. Speaking from the standpoint of someone who never ran very much green equipment growing up and in most of my adult life and then migrating to it based on the need to have a good local dealer with good service, it's one of those situations where the grass is not as green on the other side of the fence as you thought it was (no pun intended).
Yes, I do believe that both Mother Deere and our local dealer dropped the ball on some of the things associated with the GS equipment we've got. We've also had problems with another machine where we were given a fax from Deere about the problem and have since found out that Deere lied about what was wrong. I can handle them telling me they have a problem, but when they lie to me about what the problem is and we find out differently that Pi$$s me off.
I'm beginnning to think the days of farmers trusting everyone they deal with as if they were their next door neighbor are over. Maybe we just live too close to the city and to commercial development, but almost everyday there is someone out there trying to take advantage of us. When I'm in the truck there is at least one incident a day where someone makes a bonehead move. Just last week a van came down a ramp where two ramps merged before getting on an interstate. I was in front of him, he had the yield sign he almost ran into the side of my truck just behind he cab, I honked, he swerved, sped up, cut in front of me and then proceeded to roll down his window and flip me off like I had done something wrong.
Have a good day folks,
Ray
Edited by Ray (ecks) 9/22/2006 09:05
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reality check...
