(upbeat music) - Welcome to "A Shot of Ag."

My name is Rob Sharkey.

I'm a fifth generation farmer from just outside of Bradford, Illinois.

I started a podcast which led into an XM Radio show, which led into a national television show, which led into me being right here today.

But today, today is not about me, today is about Chris Rupiper.

Welcome to show the Chris.

- Thanks for having me on, Rob.

- You're from Henry.

- Yes, big town, Henry, Illinois.

- It's the best dam town there is or something like that?

- It is the best dam town that no.

See I messed it up.

The best town in Illinois by a dam site.

- I like mine better.

- I know, that's true.

- It's I don't know.

Now, is that where you're from originally?

- I grew up there.

I was actually born in Princeton.

- [Chris] Oh, I'm sorry.

- So we only lived there for about a year and a half before he moved down to Henry.

- So you grew up there?

- Yep, grew up in Henry.

- The damn fine town.

That's so sad, I don't even know where the dam site is in Henry.

- If you go across the bridge, you'll see it, it's kinda like right there.

There's a marina on that area, but that's kind of where the dam site is.

- That town has got the smallest bridges in the world.

- Yes.

- I think two bicycles would still hit each other.

- Yes, and ironically, there are still guys trying to get large equipment across that, they more race across that bridge before any traffic can kind of meet 'em on the other side.

- I bought a bean head down in Bloomington and I brought it through, luckily, it was really late at night and no one else.

I'm like, "If I meet somebody, one of us is gonna have to stop."

- That bridge has eaten many bean snoots over the years.

- [Chris] Has it really?

- Yes.

- You are the CEO of Prairie State Tractors.

- Yes.

- It's a large John Deere dealership.

What do you call it?

Company, organization?

- Yep.

It's an eight store location in North and Central Illinois.

We're just over a year old.

Prairie State Tractors, yes.

So it was formed just over a year ago with the merger of Kelly Sauder Rupiper Equipment, which was three stores, and Holland & Sons, which was five stores.

- Okay, y'all came together and here we are.

- We came together and here we are.

- That happens a lot in, not just John Deere, but basically all of the red dealers, the blue dealers, I dunno, whatever Gleaners are.

- If you look at the industry, it sort of follows a law on the lines of what customers are going through.

I mean, look at the number of farmers that were around 30, 40 years ago, and then all the dealers supporting them.

And then as we come up with time, machines have gotten bigger, they're able to farm more.

You see that same type of consolidation happening within the dealer network as well.

- You grew up in the business though?

- Yes, I did.

- So your dad had Rupiper, which I remember as a kid.

- Yep.

- Where was that based out of?

- So my dad actually got a start with White Farm Equipment.

- [Chris] Really?

- Yes.

So he worked for White as a territory manager for I believe five years, from like '74.

- White is another brand?

- Yep.

- Kind of like KSIH, Deere, White?

- Exactly.

- Are they still around?

- No, they've kind of been absorbed a couple of times through everything and the White brand is kind of gone.

- Like everybody else except for Deere.

- Exactly, that's right.

I gotta say that.

So anyway, but he was a territory manager and then called on a dealer in Henry and then got to know that owner and ended up investing in that business, and that's when he started Rupiper Equipment, and that was in a location just south of Henry on 29.

- And then that eventually got absorbed into Prairie State today, right?

- In the Rupiper Equipment at that time, actually from '79 to like '88, my dad was a, I describe it as everything but green and red.

So it was the Deutz, the New Holland, all those other brands through the 80s, which was a difficult of time.

So, he ran equipment business through a very difficult time in the market.

- That was horrible, no one was buying it.

- Exactly, very difficult.

And then in '88 he had an opportunity to move to Lacon, Illinois and actually switch over to John Deere at that time, and that's what he did.

And then it was Rupiper Equipment in Lacon as a John Deere dealer from '88 until 2003, where it merged and became Kelly Sauder Rupiper Equipment.

- So were you involved at all as a kid?

- Yeah, I remember running around the store in Henry, just as a little kid, being there.

And then I really remember the Lacon store growing up there.

Actually I painted the showroom when I was 13.

- Did you?

It doesn't look that good.

- Yeah, right.

No, my dad takes a lot of pride in how that location looks and everything, and then we maintain it today.

And then through high school washed combines, worked down there, did general maintenance, the typical dealer owner son stuff that you do around the dealership.

- Well, I mean, not every dealer owner son.

I mean, some of 'em just go right to being CEO without doing all that other stuff.

You probably know a couple of those.

- There might be some around.

- So the Prairie State Tractors, the eight locations are kind of Lacon up right in the state.

- I mean, all of 'em, I'll just name 'em off.

Lacon, Streator, Pontiac, and then Mendota, Princeton, Dixon, Freeport Geneseo.

- Except for Bradford.

- Not Bradford.

- Bradford is Martin.

- Correct.

- Now do you look at another Deere dealership like that as competition or just, it is what it is.

- It is what it is.

Obviously, they're called inline competition, that's what it's known in the industry, because you are selling the same product to kind of the same customer base.

But it's just inline competition.

- I did buy a trailer for you though.

- Yes.

- That sharp looking, isn't it?

- It's a very sharp looking trailer.

- It's not a Deere trailer, it's Thunder Creek.

And it's got a custom paint job that you did.

- It looks very nice.

- Much better than when you painted the showroom.

- Probably.

- All right, so I can't even go on with the interview because beforehand you said you had a really cool story about this and that you weren't gonna tell me until we got to the interview and now that's all I can think about.

- So what is this?

- You tell me.

- So this is an X485, it's a little hurdle model of it.

And the special story is this was given to everyone on the design team.

- That designed this mower.

So you helped design this mower?

- Yes.

- Which part?

- So there was a team of actually nine of us that were the original design team on this one.

So that was my first job right out of college is I worked for Deere.

And I went to Horicon, Wisconsin.

- [Chris] Did you meet him?

- Who?

- [Chris] John.

- Uncle John, that's what everybody called him.

- Uncle John, he's been gone for a while.

- He's been gone for a while.

- Made a plow out of a saw blade or something.

- Something like that.

He hammered into something.

- Anyway, we're back to you designed this.

- So I was a design engineer on this program as my first job outta college.

So what's neat is I was able to come into this program right at the prototype stage.

You know where you kinda do that first concept build, saw it through the whole development cycle into production.

And this actually went into production in 2003.

And this model, it's changed a couple of model numbers over the years, but essentially this tractor is still made today.

- Is this the one that everybody complains about that the engineers made wrong and it's so hard to work on?

This is it.

- Yeah, that's exactly it.

I tell this story, but I don't like to actually tell people that a lot, because anytime I tell anyone, "Hey, you work for Deere.

You're an engineer?

Hey, how come on insert model here, the engineer did insert problem here."

That becomes first thing.

- I've got a few of those.

- I'm sure.

They're roll through your mind right now.

So that's why I tend to kind of hold that back because we get into those discussions.

- So if you look at this, can you say, all right, I was in on what?

The steering wheel.

- I was in on underneath the frame a lot of the linkage from, for the control pedals and everything else, the seat, fuel systems, help with the frame, some of the steering stuff.

- Is this the one where you got the back and forth pedal?

- Yep.

- And what year was this?

- This would've been 2003 is when this series came out in full production.

- That was about when the back and forth hydro set was really getting popular, right?

- No, the model before this actually had the twin touch.

- How fast can that go?

- I think it was eight and a half miles an hour.

- Can you do anything?

I mean, you built the thing, you might know some secrets to.

- Really kind of move it forward.

Yeah, absolutely.

- [Chris] Rain's coming, we need to get it moved.

- And then everybody ask me, "Okay, how do I jump her?"

This safety system and this and this, and that's all the questions that I get about 'em too as well.

- That's one thing you should never do, because everybody hates it, but until you need it.

- Yes, it's exactly right.

- I mean, is that one thing you'd even joke about?

- Not really, but I get asked about it a lot.

I'd never do it.

- All right, you do work for Deere.

Deere, I've gotta say, I run grain so I'm a fan of Deere.

Let's talk about right to repair.

- Sure, let's talk about that.

- I bet you couldn't wait for that question to come up.

'Cause the theory is out there that you guys, and I say you guys, John Deere is making equipment so complicated that I as a farmer can no longer repair it and I have to go to you and pay your exorbitant bills to work on equipment.

What's your thoughts?

- So I'm gonna share a story, 'cause I was involved with the conversation with the Illinois legislator where he was gathering information from the industry.

- A legislator?

- Yes.

- The governor?

- Not the governor.

- Who was it?

- I'm not gonna tell you who it was.

It was an Illinois legislator.

- What's his name rhyme with?

- Anyway, and he was fact finding because he goes, "I'm hearing things about right to repair, and I wanted to kinda see if some of these things are true."

And he shared a story with one of the, I would say, movements big pushers, that if he wanted to change a headlight on his tractor he had to call a dealer.

- Well, maybe he's not that bright.

- Maybe, but from the standpoint of it was touted to him that that's the state of everything right now.

And that's why we needed this change in there because that's what he's dealing with.

Is if he had to change a headlight on tractor, he had to call a dealer, which is completely false.

- Okay, there's things it might, and the tractors today are, they're giant computers.

I mean, they steer themselves.

It's unreal what they do.

So like if I have a code come up and it says, "Hey, your transmission is misaligned."

I don't know, whatever.

It's not gonna let me go in there and plug my computer into it and fix it because I shouldn't be able to, because that is a major thing.

That's something that you guys come out and fix.

Everything else, I mean, I can't think of too much that I have not been able to fix on my own equipment.

- I would agree.

And I would say the biggest misinformation here is, it's all being touted as a right to repair.

But in my opinion, there's behind the scenes, there's more a push to right to modify.

- What do you mean by that?

- So let's say the ability to go in and actually get a little more horsepower out of it.

Back in the old day you can turn the injection pump to get a little more juice out of it.

- Now you got our attention.

How do we do that?

- Yeah, we're not gonna do that.

But there's a lot of aftermarket things available for people wanting to get into embedded code and be able to one, maybe bypass safety systems.

Two, maybe we're looking at bypassing emissions control type systems.

- [Chris] You got my attention twice.

- Yeah, exactly.

But the problem with doing that is all of that takes that machine out of operating conditions it was never meant to do.

So, my pushback to like a farmer, someone that buys equipment, knows equipment, in your opinion, if you knew something was running 15, 20% more horsepower for the first two, 3,000 hours of its life, does that have less value than one that has never been touched?

- I don't know if I'd even buy it.

A chipped tractor, I don't know if I'd buy one.

- Exactly.

- Because I am under the assumption that it can be done the right way, but by who?

I mean, did they get an actual professional out there or did they go on YouTube and go yee-ha.

- Or I'll tell you, we have had many instances come through our dealership, our repair shops of maybe it wasn't aftermarket upgrade for power or whatever the case may be, blown injectors.

Cylinder liners gone, the head gaskets.

And then trickle down, where it starts with the engine, then you start having transmission problems, then you start having rear-end problems.

And on our side when we're trying to value equipment on a trade in, that's information we need to know because a lot of the aftermarket stuff, especially when you're talking about code, how do you know what's been done?

If you're bolting something onto a tractor you know it's there.

But when you're changing something in code you don't really know.

- When we were growing up there was a lot of color wars.

I mean, you had the red guys, you had the green guys.

I mean, that was a split, right?

That farm is only a green farm, there's only gonna be Deere equipment.

You're gonna have KSIH or whatever.

Has that kind of gone away?

- I think as technology is integrating more into the equipment, we are seeing more try to kind of converge on what they're gonna be using on their farm.

So obviously all the manufacturers are trying to get to their own ecosystems that everybody wants to work with as far as equipment.

Because you know, the green, I'll just be honest.

I mean, the green on green solution is gonna work really well.

In the past, before we had all of the precision ag technology and things like that, you could maybe mix your brands a little bit more.

You had standard PTO, hydraulics, things like that.

But with all the integrated precision ag technologies the best solutions are becoming integrated and that's driving some of the customer base to kind of say, okay, I'm gonna try to get to a green solution here or a red solution there.

- Is there any limits out there anymore?

And you don't have to name names, but it's like back in the day, everybody could say, "Oh, that one tractor or whatever company was a piece of junk."

It just seems like everything is so good anymore.

I mean, if someone dropped off a red tractor on our farm, of course I'm gonna be out there using it.

- I think the difference is it's not so much say lemons, but it's more what is the support structure after the purchase?

That's probably the biggest differentiator now.

You can have a awesome product, but if you can't be supported after the fact that comes into play of whether or not you actually wanna to use it.

- So I guess that makes sense.

It is in what you're saying, I'm putting into my mind of what's going on on my farm.

'cause you got the monitors and I wanna to take that monitor, 'cause they're not cheap.

- Nope.

- And I wanna take the GPS receiver, which I finally got after two years.

There's about a two year wait for them because China and COVID and all this stuff.

I wanna to be able to take those very expensive pieces of equipment and take it from my combine and put 'em in my tractor.

I can't do that if I've got a red combine and a green tractor.

- I'd say it can be done, but it definitely is more difficult to do.

- I can't do it.

And I think that's probably what you find with a lot of people, right?

- Yes, yep.

That's exactly right.

- Some people just wanna do it to prove they can do it.

- Yes, there is some of that where they like the challenge of, hey, I can get this to work.

But most farmers are just like, "I just need it to work."

- How long have you been doing this?

- Doing what?

- Working with equipment.

I mean basically your whole life, but I mean, how long have you been selling and all this stuff?

- Well, I worked for Deere for 12 years.

So I was in Product Engineering the entire time.

And then almost exactly 10 years ago, I left Deere and came back to the dealership.

- What do you think the biggest change has been?

- Within the dealership or just?

- Either or, it's your question, man.

- Probably the biggest, I'll just answer from the standpoint after I left Deere and came into the dealer world, there was quite a bit of adjustment there just when you're coming from a large corporate environment and then working on product engineering to getting to the retail facing, customer interaction all the time.

One thing that people don't know it's, they actually hide engineers from customers, they do that on purpose.

- They should.

- You don't blame 'em.

- Will Smith, you know what I'm saying?

- Exactly.

- Joking, joking.

- But in product engineering you kinda get hidden from the customer.

So then you come back to the dealership and boom, you're in front of them all the time.

And that was probably just a big change.

It was a good one, but just something that you have to really adjust to.

- Well, and I'm a farmer, so I can say this, we do some really stupid stuff with our equipment at times.

And that magically becomes your fault because I don't wanna admit that I did it.

- I know.

I will tell you I'd be lying if I say we don't talk about those kinds of things every now and then within the do dealership as well.

- You're talking about me?

It's gonna be bad when that fuel trailer that I bought from you comes back in two pieces.

That's always the worst.

It's always the worst about having to take your equipment up to the dealership to get worked out because everybody's gonna see it there.

The dealerships seem like they, and I'm just going by the one that I know.

- Sure.

- Seem like it used to be a much more social place than it used to be.

I think lawsuits and the corporations being more protective of what's going on in the shop.

You used to just walk out in the shop and say, "Hey, what's going on with my tractor."

And they would show you and you would hold a wrench for 'em and all, kind of getting away from that.

- And there's reasons why.

I remember growing up, everybody was kind of walking around in the back of the shop and things like that.

But yeah, you get into commercial insurance requirements and having customers walk around.

And it is a, you do gotta be safe back there in our shops.

There's a lot of stuff happening.

But I think there's still, when I look at our locations, it's still a social atmosphere.

There's a lot going on in the showroom.

We still have customers stopping in all the time.

And especially after COVID.

It was like lockdown.

There was really not many customers coming in during that time.

And now they're really coming back in now that everything's opened up.

- I think everybody knows you can't be wandering around because there's parts laying all over in this.

The average age of the farmer is only getting younger.

So I think I understand it.

It's gotta be tough to be the CEO of a dealership that size, just all the moving pieces, even down to the apparel.

I can't believe the amount of apparel that you guys sell in your dealerships.

Is there people that just stop by to buy a John Deere shirt?

- Yes, there are.

We gotta keep stock of apparel.

People want apparel or a John Deere shirt or when couples come in and he's looking at equipment and then maybe the wife is walking around looking at apparel and she's buying something for a grandson or maybe a shirt for somebody else.

- You know that's not a bad idea.

If she goes in there and she's buying stuff, I could buy a tractor and she's like, "Did you just buy a tractor?"

"Well, you bought a t-shirt."

- Exactly.

- Gotta keep this stuff.

This is why you're the CEO.

There's gotta be rules though that come down from mother Deere, that have like what you can and cannot have in your store.

- Well, obviously we have a John Deere contract and so that kind of governs a lot of what we can do with John Deere.

And yes, they do have some say on what products that we can actually sell.

So you can't sell competitive products to something that Deere is actually selling as well.

- That gets a little squirly too, 'cause someone comes in and wants a trade in a red combine on a green one.

- Oh, that's great.

- Do you like that?

- Oh yeah, absolutely.

- But then you gotta sell the red one.

- That's no problem.

- Because they're so good?

- No, I mean, look at it from our perspective.

That's a good thing to happen because that gets a customer that maybe normally wouldn't be coming to us for parts and service and other things, they now would be if we can get them into a green combine.

- Yeah, I gotcha.

A while back I got upset with a sprayer company that rhymes with tardy.

And I went on social media and I... - You said tardy, rhymes with tardy?

Is that what you said?

- I said the company.

- You said that one on purpose.

- The company rhymes with tardy.

It's Hardy by the way.

And I just let people know what I thought about them.

That's gotta be tough too as a CEO because I mean, if I'm gonna have this, this is gonna break down and people are gonna go, "Hey, stupid John Deere mower won't work."

- Oh yeah, we get those comments.

- What do you do with that?

- So actually like within our business, we monthly get all of the customer comments.

So we send out surveys.

Actually, Deere sends out surveys for customers to fill out that have bought new equipment.

So they wanna know what's happening.

You've just bought this, what's your experience with it?

And then also send out surveys for customers that have had something maybe for three years.

And we get all those surveys back.

And then every month I personally roll up those comments and then share it with everybody.

So everybody knows that, we wanna make sure our customers have a good experience because everyone's gonna see what the comments are when they come back in.

But yeah, we get those types of comments.

- Are you guys on social media then?

- We are on a number of social media outlets.

- I mean, you almost have to be.

- You have to be.

And also from the standpoint of you have to have media outlets that go across the generations.

Things like TikTok, right.

- You got Matt Holland, he's on, he's doing list.

- Yes, he's got a lot of list going on in TikTok right now.

And that's with the younger generations, they are on TikTok a lot.

I know it because my two boys are on TikTok and they'll send me his videos.

So I know they're seeing it, they're watching it, but we still have customers maybe that use Facebook or we still have customers that like to get things in the mail.

So we have to be flexible with how we kind of distribute information out to our customer base.

- It's interesting that you got that too, because I mean, are the main people that are still buying tractors, are they still snail mail type of people?

- They can be.

They're still a number of them.

- If people do wanna find out about Prairie State Tractors, where do they go?

- Prairiestatetractor.com.

- Well, that makes it simple.

- That makes it really simple, exactly.

- And like you said, you could probably find you guys on social media too.

I always thought that would be really hard to have a company and have social media, especially when stuff's gonna break and people.

Again, I could have ran it into a tree and I get on my Facebook and tell 'em that it's your fault.

You ever just get on there and tell 'em to shut up.

- We don't wanna put that out in the public that's for sure.

- That's the difference between your company and mine.

All right Chris, it's been really interesting to talk to you.

You've spent a lifetime servicing and I mean, this is what agriculture is, this is what feeds the world.

So Chris Rupiper, thank you very much.

Everybody else, we'll catch you next time.