Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Farmers Deserve the Right to Repair Their Tractors

farms.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 270 posts

Re: Farmers Deserve the Right to Repair Their Tractors

#251

Post by selfhoster11 »

taylodl wrote: post #192
mitchell_h wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in an extremely rural area. The Deere integrations are a huge reason. Another that's not talked about is Deere field service. It's just DAMN GOOD. If you're running a serious tractor(7-9 series ) and it's the middle of planting/harvest hours can be the difference between red and black margins. Deere will roll out a team with 30ft trailer of parts out in hours if you have an issue. CaseIH will sorta match this,…

Exactly, and at the moment in time you don't care about "right to repair" - you need to get back up and running now . Which has led me to believe "right to repair" is a ruse, but for what?

> Which has led me to believe "right to repair" is a ruse, but for what?

You what? Being able to repair and control your hardware is good in itself. It doesn't need to be justified, except as a means to counteract the much stronger lobby that is trying to destroy it.

Your point about this maybe being a ruse is like the one that maybe climate change is a ruse: so what if it is? The measures we introduced to combat the (perceived?) threat will result in a net benefit to society, the environment and individual freedoms. Boo, hoo I'm living in a better world unnecessarily. Very tragic.

Re: Farmers Deserve the Right to Repair Their Tractors

#252

Post by selfhoster11 »

nimbius wrote: post #173

diesel engine mechanic by trade here, and ive followed this topic with interest for about five years now. Its similar to large over-the-road trucks in that its ultimately manufacturers catering to large fleets instead of owner/operators. most farms in America are corporate monoliths. "farmers" here want mttf, mtbf, metrics, and a projection of how many cam chains, PTO knuckles, lockout converters, etc... they will ne…

> they become a market that manufacturers refuse to tap, because it cannot be fully exploited to the disadvantage of the operator.

Sounds like a market failure if there is money left on the table but no competitor who wants to grab it for themselves.

Re: Farmers Deserve the Right to Repair Their Tractors

#253

Post by DubiousPusher »

debacle wrote: post #237
DubiousPusher wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that simple. There are features of these high end tractors such as automation and satellite guidance that allow you to change the scale of your operation. In a sense, you have to make a choice about what kind of business you're going to be at the same time as you're choosing your equipment.

There are aftermarket solutions for that as well. Deere is for people who want a deluxe brand that is all encompassing vs users who don't mind fiddling with their hardware.

Yeah but if you're running a fleet, then you have to scale your outfitting and maintenance to handle that. It's not practical for a lot of people. A lot of businesses lose their ass by trying to focus on too many things at the same time.

I'm not saying this is the right way for ag. to go forward. But all our incentives right now are to either specialize a small farm around high margin product or scale as wide as possible on low margin product. That is going to set a lot of people on the course of basically renting their equipment and deferring the maintenance to the provider.

We probably should create some incentives for farmers to be more self reliant. That would probably be good for our sustainability but I don't think we should ignore that currently the choice isn't black and white.

Re: Farmers Deserve the Right to Repair Their Tractors

#255

Post by theshrike79 »

olyjohn wrote: post #246
theshrike79 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A similar thing is happening with EVs. Many car dealers don't make their money from selling cars, they make most of their money from being the only authorized repair shop for said car model. And to keep the warranty valid, you need to service the car at an authorized shop. EVs, by design, don't require as much maintenance or as often as ICE cars. This will result in a disruption in the existing chain at some point. W…

I keep hearing this thing about EVs not needing as much maintenance. Apparently nobody has looked at their maintenance schedule on their cars. Most cars don't need anything except a few oil changes by 100,000 miles. So many dealers throw in free oil changes now... and you can still have them done by Jiffy Lube if you want for about $50. People regularly hit 200k miles just doing oil changes, and changing out all the…

200k miles? That's over 320000 km?! There's exactly zero chance a statistically significant number of combustion engines get that mileage with "a few oil changes".

I've owned cars with 200k km in them an I would describe them as "beaters" at best. I've had to replace clutches, radiators, turbos and god knows what else and they haven't even gotten close to the 300k km mark.

As for my EV, the first maintenance on schedule that isn't just replacing the air filter is at 160k km. I've saved hundreds if not thousands just from scheduled oil changes at that point.

Re: Farmers Deserve the Right to Repair Their Tractors

#256

Post by CogitoCogito »

taylodl wrote: post #192
mitchell_h wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in an extremely rural area. The Deere integrations are a huge reason. Another that's not talked about is Deere field service. It's just DAMN GOOD. If you're running a serious tractor(7-9 series ) and it's the middle of planting/harvest hours can be the difference between red and black margins. Deere will roll out a team with 30ft trailer of parts out in hours if you have an issue. CaseIH will sorta match this,…

Exactly, and at the moment in time you don't care about "right to repair" - you need to get back up and running now . Which has led me to believe "right to repair" is a ruse, but for what?

Nothing about "right to repair" would disallow you to use Deere field service if you want to.

Re: Farmers Deserve the Right to Repair Their Tractors

#257

Post by CogitoCogito »

freeopinion wrote: post #162
buro9 wrote: post #37

No-one wants to sell hardware any longer, it's not as profitable as providing it on a subscription (dare we say "rent") and forcing all support, maintenance and additions to go through your channels as part of the subscription package. Unfortunately this trend is everywhere now. It happened to servers, media, has started to happen to cars... but it's happened already to agricultural hardware. Super profitable if you…

Done right, this could actually be better. I own a lawn mower. In fact I usually own two lawn mowers--the new one and the one I just need to repair a bit. All of my neighbors own lawn mowers. We all use our lawn mowers about an hour per week. It's extremely wasteful to purchase 5 lawn mowers to perform 5 hours of mowing per week. We could all hire Suwanda down the street to mow our lawns, but that would cost a lot mo…

Have you talked to your neighbors about sharing lawn mowers? Why does Suwanda need to be involved?

Re: Farmers Deserve the Right to Repair Their Tractors

#258

Post by CogitoCogito »

defenestration wrote: post #202
freeopinion wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. I completely agree with everything you said. But I still see the benefit in other models. And I wonder what innovation might occur if we spent more time exploring options.

Absolutely! I guess the main innovation will be social. Thinking of a way that people feel responsible for shared tools, a non-awkward way of selecting neighbors who you are willing to share with and some kind of emergency-button if you need a tool now and all the shared tools are taken.

This reminds me of how all the city e-scooters are treated. Those rented by people with apps are treated terribly and thrown around like trash by their operators. Those actually owned by people are treated very well. At it's core it's basically a strong argument in support of private property (at least in this instance).

I would love it if you could solve this sort of social issue, but I wouldn't underestimate the difficulty of doing so. Successfully making people feel responsible for shared tools is almost equivalent to "building a better society". It's a worthy goal, but people have been trying to do so for basically all of human history.

Re: Farmers Deserve the Right to Repair Their Tractors

#259

Post by randomswede »

Casperin wrote: post #135
randomdata wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You must know my neighbour. He was running a Kubota for a year or two, but it didn't take him long to replace it with a Deere. I have most of the major brands in my shed. I don't particularly care much about what colour I'm using. Purchases have been made based on cost, which has included some green equipment when a great auction find has been found. My experience says that JD has the UX nailed. When you're spending…

This made me think of how many developers (who spend 10 hrs/day in front of their screen) choose Apples products. A linux machine might be better on performance, maintainance, and all that, but Linux does not care about UX the way Apple does.

An actual VT4xx or VT5xx is the best terminal. An xterm window is a decent substitute (and if it comes with the optional Tek emulator, has some small extra whistles, but I think that has mostly been ripped out of all xterms by now).

The MacOS terminal is... so-so. I mean, it's not horrible, but it is also not great.

I am not convinced that Apple kit has the best UX (and I am in the same room as two macs that I alternate between).

Re: Farmers Deserve the Right to Repair Their Tractors

#260

Post by tekknik »

silexia wrote: post #245
autokad wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also grew up in rural areas, and I agree with throwaway. your comments are condescending and also inaccurate. The more 'uneducated' farmers took pride in fixing their equipment, especially their tractors. Your comments are so far off I wonder if you even grew up in such an area or if you didn't really know your classmates at all. For one thing, who in the heck lives in a rural area knows that many types of farmers.…

We all need to fight for legislation that gives us the right to repair everything from our iPhones to our tractors.

Well there’s other ways of controlling this besides increased regulation, like using capitalism and stop using JD.

But back to the point, your parent stated the person was lying and you defended it. Do you mean to say we must say whatever and lie to advance an agenda?

Post reply on HN