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Colorado passes agricultural Right to Repair

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Re: Colorado passes agricultural Right to Repair

#91

Post by thomasjb »

chongli wrote: post #51
crabmusket wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without knowing about the industry, I like to wistfully think that a cooperative would be the way to structure a company that cares about this. Not just worker-owned, but customer-owned as well. If you're buying an asset you expect to last decades, having a stake in the manufacturer doesn't seem like a completely bad idea.

It’s very difficult to start a worker cooperative in a capital-intensive industry. In most companies, the difference between workers and owners is that the owners provided the capital to get things started. A factory that builds modern tractors is a pretty huge investment. It’s very large and has a ton of very expensive robotics. It also has a huge supply chain that delivers a wide variety of parts to the factory for…

I was under the impression that tractor manufacturing was down to bolting together bought in components at this point, such as the various Turkish Perkins engine + ZF gearbox + Carrero front axle + random cab companies cab, with a bit of fabrication to make parts to hold it together. A coop building a highly repairable tractor could make this their value proposition by publishing the diagrams for the fabricated parts, and the full list of parts they bought. There's little reason that a fairly normal fabrication shop couldn't be making tractors, and making them competitively with mainline manufacturers

Re: Colorado passes agricultural Right to Repair

#92

Post by bluGill »

michaelt wrote: post #83
zamnos wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That only saved you $4,750 if your time is worth $0/hr. Assume it was two eight-hour days, times two people, or 32 hours of labor. If you make $149/hr, it's cheaper for you to pay the quoted cost. If you don't, it's cheaper for you to do it. Which it sounds like it was. But thinking you just "saved" $4,750 doing it yourself isn't the right way to look at it.

> If you make $149/hr, it's cheaper for you to pay the quoted cost. If you're salaried at Google for 40 hours/week with no paid overtime and no side gigs allowed, the median value of your time is $149/hr but the marginal price is $0/hr because working an extra hour doesn't make you any extra money. I suspect farming is similar - it's not like you can take that free hour, add 4 square feet to your field and produce $1…

Depends, at planting or harvest time not working on planting or harvesting when the weather allows costs a lot more than $500/hour. However in the middle of winter there is plenty of time where the farm has nothing you need to do and so the value of your time is zero.

Re: Colorado passes agricultural Right to Repair

#93

Post by baremetal »

thomasjb wrote: post #91
chongli wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s very difficult to start a worker cooperative in a capital-intensive industry. In most companies, the difference between workers and owners is that the owners provided the capital to get things started. A factory that builds modern tractors is a pretty huge investment. It’s very large and has a ton of very expensive robotics. It also has a huge supply chain that delivers a wide variety of parts to the factory for…

I was under the impression that tractor manufacturing was down to bolting together bought in components at this point, such as the various Turkish Perkins engine + ZF gearbox + Carrero front axle + random cab companies cab, with a bit of fabrication to make parts to hold it together. A coop building a highly repairable tractor could make this their value proposition by publishing the diagrams for the fabricated parts…

> There's little reason that a fairly normal fabrication shop couldn't be making tractors, and making them competitively with mainline manufacturers

Economies of scale.

We don't live in a fantasy land where things work a certain way just because it would be nice if they did.

Re: Colorado passes agricultural Right to Repair

#94

Post by GordonS »

lb1lf wrote: post #82
GordonS wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also worked with subsea companies for a long time, and can concur - they'd do anything to get new engineering and manufacturing contracts, then make the margins later on aftermarket service. It wasn't a secret either, people were quite open about it.

Oh, it is no secret, I believe everyone lives well with this approach - it is a tacit understanding, I think. Customers work hard to bring initial cost down as far as possible, even bringing up in contract negotiations that 'Hell, you'll make this back in service, anyway!' - seeing as when said is said, done is done, the equipment is installed and doing its thing - having downtime is so expensive that no matter what…

> I once was in Rio de Janeiro

> They insisted on paying the $5,000-ish fee we usually charge to send someone from Norway to Brazil

You work for Aker/Kvaerner, by chance? :)

Re: Colorado passes agricultural Right to Repair

#95

Post by lb1lf »

GordonS wrote: post #94
lb1lf wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, it is no secret, I believe everyone lives well with this approach - it is a tacit understanding, I think. Customers work hard to bring initial cost down as far as possible, even bringing up in contract negotiations that 'Hell, you'll make this back in service, anyway!' - seeing as when said is said, done is done, the equipment is installed and doing its thing - having downtime is so expensive that no matter what…

> I once was in Rio de Janeiro > They insisted on paying the $5,000-ish fee we usually charge to send someone from Norway to Brazil You work for Aker/Kvaerner, by chance? :)

> You work for Aker/Kvaerner, by chance? :)

Oh, heavens, no!

I used to work for Rolls-Royce Marine, but have since jumped ship (or walked the plank!) and now work for a smaller, independent company manufacturing all sorts of offshore handling equipment.

I am of the firm opinion that life is too short for working at large corporations. Obviously, YMMV.

Re: Colorado passes agricultural Right to Repair

#96

Post by LinuxBender »

Gustomaximus wrote: post #23

What I don't understand is why a couple of the higher quality tractor companies have not started pushing hard to brand "we support repair" and having available online manuals and software to support this. This seems a perfect marketing/product platform for an underdog that also believes this. Massey, Fendt or similar could really differentiate themself and take market share on the back of this I suspect. Especially w…

Massey, Fendt or similar could really differentiate themself and take market share on the back of this I suspect.

I love the idea. I wish that were a thing but I suspect that it would be seen as a lack of profit model and businesses are more competitive than ever now.

I have a 1947 Fordson 2n tractor and there is a large community of people that support it as well as a couple 3rd party parts manufacturers that make parts for many old tractors. I suspect that even if Ford wanted to manufacture parts there are not enough of us to make it profitable. Adding to that modern tractors are much more complicated and have many more parts.

It would be really cool if some college were to take on a project to build the "most capable" yet "simplest" tractors that could do everything the modern fancy computer driven tractors can do but using as few parts and as simple and generic parts as possible and then license everything in a way that businesses could not make it proprietary. Perhaps I have an odd fantasy. Open Source Hardware so to speak. If it were to become popular enough perhaps that college could fund their entire department making human and robotic driven simple and pragmatic tractors if for no other reason than bragging rights. "Our $100K tractor can do everything your $2M tractor can do and more." Bonus if it has some Easter-egg hardware like many hidden beer bottle openers.

Perhaps colleges could get DARPA and similar funding in the name of international and national security for each country to create something like this to Feed the World as food scarcity becomes more of a thing. Make farming profitable again.

Re: Colorado passes agricultural Right to Repair

#98

Post by ttyprintk »

eru wrote: post #35

Hooray for even more regulation.. Surely this particular piece of well-intended regulation will go work out exactly as hoped for, and won't have any unintended consequences that stifle things in the longer run.

We’ll get to see! With Europe, Biden and some states on one side; and more-reticent states on the other.

As HBR put it,

“Will manufacturers follow a margin strategy and raise new product prices to capitalize on easier repair? Will manufacturers follow a volume strategy and cut new product prices to lure consumers into replacing instead of repairing a glitchy product?”

Or, in places without it, will farmers resort to crudely deleting emissions-control because it interferes in the long-term?

Re: Colorado passes agricultural Right to Repair

#99

Post by thomastjeffery »

eru wrote: post #35

Hooray for even more regulation.. Surely this particular piece of well-intended regulation will go work out exactly as hoped for, and won't have any unintended consequences that stifle things in the longer run.

...and the alternative had no consequences? Get your head out of the sand.

Re: Colorado passes agricultural Right to Repair

#100

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

lb1lf wrote: post #61
rtpg wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What I don't understand is why a couple of the higher quality tractor companies have not started pushing hard to brand "we support repair" and having available online manuals and software to support this. This seems a perfect marketing/product platform for an underdog that also believes this. My understanding is basically all high-capital machinery makes a _lot_ of money from support contracts and repairs. I think…

-This is very much my (anecdotal, but from several companies in the subsea business, ranging from huge multinationals to small fry almost mom-and-pop shops) experience, too: Service work is basically seen as a licence to print money. Contract negotiations for newbuilds are cutthroat, the most important parameter being price, price and price. Hence margins are as you'd expect. Except when it comes to service work, as…

The "break-even on initial install, make profit on recurring revenue" model is common in a lot of industries.

I've worked for engineering service companies where they'll take on a design at minimal profit, in order to secure the manufacturing contract that's worth far more. Or a medical device company that would provide the instrument (normally sold for around $750k) at cost, in exchange for a lucrative supplies & consumables contract that would be needed for over a decade of operation.

I honestly think there's more money to be made in services, generally speaking, than in manufacturing.

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