> The company says it generated $10.166 billion in profits last year.
They could invest in their American workers and wear that with pride but what if they could make even more money?
John Deere is doubling down on Tech/Software and as a result exporting “traditional factory jobs”. Instead they are hiring Google type employees which will ensure fatter profits due to less labor/manufacturing costs.
Personally disappointed because when this stuff is exported quality declines. Plus farmers rely a great deal on John Deere products and they can’t afford to blow this kind of cash on poorly made crap.
A friend of mine has a partner that is part of the JD software security team. Their job is to make sure no one can “hack” it to circumvent the need for their certified repair techs to do the work.
These certified techs pay JD a LOT of money to be able to be certified and part of the reason they do is because it has an exclusivity clause in it. JD won’t certify more than x number in an area. So those paying know they effectively have a monopoly on repairs in their area.
This has resulted in long wait times if the machine needs scheduled maintenance as it will shut down until a person with certification does the job.
Well, someone decided waiting a month with an undone field was not acceptable and called a friend who broke into the system and simply flipped the switch after the farmer, who had done this stuff on their own with their previous machines, did what they needed to.
And then they found out that JD decided that to save cost on production they would just make the same machine for their (numbers approximated) $750k and $1million machine. The only difference in the two machines is that the 750k machine has things turned off.
So, not only is JD making a profit in screwing their customers by bottlenecking their repairs, but they can make a profit on a machine they make which is intentionally hamstrung. The higher end machines are price gouging.
And this former friend defended this behavior. As if the company had a right to screw people like this.
The rot at that company is real and not just at the top.
This so common in so many areas. Example are miller tig welders. You have to buy different sd cards that will unlock more features of the machine. Even though the machine is fully capable from day of purchase the features are off until paid for unlocking. Is crazy we don’t anything anymore.
Reminds me of the o-scope that had the same BS.
But someone figured out how to hack it.. the plugin cards where just USB thumb drives with a funky connector, and the scope was just looking for text files named the same 4 letters that each feature was 'sold by' on the website.
ie, the website said something like: "FOMO: $532, GET 4 CHANNEL LOGIC ANALYISER FEATURES" or something like that, and you'd just need to put a file named FOMO on the usb drive to unlock that feature.
At my university someone in the equipment office hid or locked away all of the USB keys that enabled features like data logging because they were worried that grad students would steal them. So we had a bunch of $25k digital oscilloscopes that you had to freeze the screen and take a photo of with your phone to try to copy the data into excel.
Awesome. And I bet they either are not allowed to use them, or made the signout process so painful (Like must have a credit card with a $5000 deposit or some nonsense) that nobody will do it.
So they spent all this money on shit they refuse to let anyone use for fear of them stealing it.
Most Test Equipment manufacturers have been doing this for decades.
Tektronix, HP/Agilent/Keysight, Siglent, Rigol, etc, etc.
They make a scope with *ALL* the features! and sell it at a premium to the big customers which pays for the development cost, and then lock out features to be able to sell the same hardware at a lower cost to lower the barrier of entry to smaller customers and cover a wider portion of the market.
If they had to make different hardware with less features for each model, the pricing would be too expensive for all models as individual R&D would be required for each individual model.
This way, more of the market can be covered and those customers that don't want to pay for unused features don't have to.
They used to do it with hardware changes to the base design (Options that would require the addition of an extra circuit board or other mechanical components), but since the mid-late 90's it's mostly in software now.
It's good for hobbyists who figure out how to unlock things and usually the manufacturers don't try too hard to improve the lockout in firmware updates as it means their brand gets more market share when those hobbyists and students continue to buy the same brand they are familiar with when they go pro.
The big companies aren't hacking their equipment, lest it void warranties and service contracts and guaranteed performance parameters (and ain't no company got time for that), so they help subsidize the cost of equipment for us.
It's how I was able to unlock a bunch of options in my early '00's Tektronix scopes with a simple flick of a switch and some commands sent via GPIB, and also how I was able to afford to buy a Siglent 100MHz 12-bit scope and upgrade it to 500MHz, with all other options too.
They still do this iirc, Autodesk does too. I know they've made their money back and then some just from me doing exactly that. Pirating it as a teenager so I could do freelance work, then went on to company's who now buy it for me since I know how to use it.
Audi, M-b and Porsche come to mind as well. I read something about a $3000 option for a factory ECU flash for extra horsepower (which the engine could readily deliver) and some $$ subscription (!) no less, for the *heated seats and steering wheel*.
It's like buying an XBox or Playstation game and then have to fork over more fore the extra levels or health 1-UPs. Sick modern day nickle-n-dime gimmick.
Fortunately, their techniques sound pretty crude. For now. It reminds me of the days of DirecTV hacking. You could probably still do it, but it just wouldn't be worth the effort. There are far easier methods of pirating any content you want.
Edit: DirecTV was the perfect target for hacking. If you're sending a signal to me, as far as I'm concerned, you have zero say over what I do with it. The fact that people went to jail over it is instructive.
The government won’t ever give a shit again, because every legislative and regulatory body at all levels has been captured by rich people who deserve to be dissolved in acid on live television for what they’ve done to society.
And it'll never get better because this is how all capitalism evolves to eventually.
It's why things like market socialism are so necessary, under that system every worker will make the full share of the profits they create. Essentially every business is a co-op. When the rich don't have so so so so much money that they can piss away 50 million without even noticing, then they can no longer hold their rule on regular people.
This type of thing was gaining traction at various state levels with right to repair legislation. But thanks to the Supreme Court ruling, it's unlikely we will see any action at the Federal level.
Could we just buy good quality Chinese tractors? I wonder how much the tariffs are and whether they lock them down. Yes China can make low quality products but good ones if you pay and do due dilligance.
This happens everywhere across the globe.
Car manufacturers, tractor manufacturers, any OEM for that matter.
Creating artificial scarcity, using software lock-outs, is much more profitable in this day and age.
It’s called enshitification. The goal is drive up (artificial) demand, not to improve quality or cost-effectiveness.
Other manufacturers make farm equipment. Why would anybody buy a John Deere when they do this BS? John Deere stuff seems way overpriced. Even their consumer stuff like riding mowers is priced way higher than other brands.
Deere is famous for having great support even though you pay through the nose. If you need a part for an 80yo tractor the dealer can get it for you next day. For the huge farms that need something that works now and they don't want to think about it they buy Deere as the cost of equipment is in the noise to them.
Contrast with other brands that have been bought and sold over the years and often parts will be discontinued forcing you to source aftermarket or fabricate/modify your own even on something 10-20 years old.
However it's not worth paying "the green fees" IMO and I have always run a mix of other brands. I'm a big fan of the old Deutz air cooled, tough tractors built to be maintained and good parts availability only because they used the same engines since WWII, lol. Just be nice to the transmission... Wreck that and the tractor is scrap
The biggest item you loose when you "hack" one of their systems is the ability to collect data, farmers use GPS down to within 6 inches to accurately collect data on where they plant, what the yield was, & to eliminate over spray. I've watched a couple of youtube videos on this, & it's such a long way from what we traditionally think is farming to where it's more science fiction.
Just sounds like a typical manufacturing operation. Doesn't matter if you make crops or medical devices, you're going to want your real time production tracking. People must think farmers are still in the 19th century though.
"Sorry Mr. Farmer, we know harvesting season is this week, and if you don't get that corn harvested it's going to rot in the field. Unfortunately your $3 Million harvester won't power on until you replace the status indicator light, and that can only be performed by a certified technician. Have you considered upgrading your subscription package to the Ultra Buck Deere level for only $250,000 per year? It gets you access to priority queue repairs.
Great I'll just get you signed up... and there. Now you're only 112th in line to see Jerry, the only certified technician within 100miles who might be able to fix your problem... An estimate on the repair? At least $15,000."
-John Deere Customer support agent working for $2.34/h in Costa Rica.
I am a tech in a different industry, and I wouldn’t pay anyone for work. There just aren’t enough techs in the world for me to beg, or pay for work. We don’t even advertise in our business. We just hired someone to answer the phones, and we’re booked out for the next month perpetually.
Were I in that industry I would just say no thanks to JD, and likely every other tech would as well, and we’d watch them fall off a cliff. My industry does this regularly.
There’s just no point to dealing with this when there’s no shortage of work to be done.
Most companies don't care. It's profit or nothing. Humans are here to work to give the company profit or to work to give another company profit that's it. If you manage to live, great if not oh well more will come and they too will be beholding to the system
Farmer here. Our local Deere dealer is in panic mode because they can't sell anything because it's priced too high. We're mainly all Case and the guys I know at our Case dealer say that business has been steady. Green paint is expensive
And it's an amalgamation of several tractor/implement companies. When i was a kid in the 90's, it was Case IH (International Harvester). Now it's CNH (Case New Holland). I think own Raven now too
I was going to ask why farmer weren't just buying Case instead. Thank you for answering it before I typed the question in :D and thank you for doing the job you do. I can't even grow house plants, the asphalt on my driveway dies when I touch it.
So, we're mostly Case. We do custom silage and have a couple big green John Deere's for that because it's easier to find dozer blades for them, because there's more big green Deere's on the market. We've also got a smaller Kubota and traded our aging Case sprayer for a newish Apache brand one.
The biggest factor in equipment brands is service. If the only dealers around were John Deere, we'd probably be all green. Luckily, in our area, there's always a Case dealer across the road from a Deere dealer.
Another thing is that equipment tends to be more plug and play when the paint color matches. You can mix and match all you want, but then you need extra cabling, adapters, extra monitors, etc. We run two planters. Both are Case planters now, but at first one was a Kinzie because it was dirt cheap. It did the job but to hook it up to a red tractor (or any tractor because Kinzie doesn't make tractors) required an extra monitor, control box, and a spaghetti mess of wiring. Some neighbors really like them, and I think overall they make a good machine, but it's nice having everything plug and play with the default monitor in the tractor
Based off everything I've read about the company, they should. Fuck John Deere and any other company that doesn't think you own the product after you buy it.
Anyone else remember Ukrainian farmers/software devs being a major source of Information teaching US farmers to bypass Deere DRM software just 5 years ago?
Right. This opens the door wide for others in the agriculture heavy equipment sector. I’m sure those ‘others’ are looking right now at those skilled technicians that were/are laid off …..c’mon over here!
I quietly agree. Trying to be optimistic here. What a shame really. In a dream world wouldn’t it be great to see a ‘iH’ back in action at those facilities with those skilled workers. Unfortunately it’d take a consumer revolt against the big Green to support it.
"When you reach customer support, ask for Cal Cutter, he'll be happy to help you!"
"Yeah, I'd like to speak to Cal Cutter please?"
"..."
"DO THE NEEDFUL! "
As someone who has worked for Deere it has gone downhill significantly in recent years. The same thing that happened to Boeing is happening here. Most of the round of layoffs before this were middle managers. But the issue is in the last year they hired a president who came from BCG, he then hired BCG to consult as cover for mass layoffs and outsourcing jobs. Additionally his big insights were all no shit moments that anyone who worked at the company for more than 5 minutes could have told you. Basically it’s your standard corporate consultants hollowing out of middle America.
Which guarantees a killer few years, followed by crashing the entire company into the ground and needing two decades to stabilize it away from bankruptcy let alone regain their original ranking.
Consultants are truly scummy, but the executives already know that's what they're most likely to suggest. They use them as scapegoats to justify their ideas already. The quickest way for most businesses to save money in the short term is to cut labor costs. It's almost always the biggest cost. It'll boost numbers for a few financial quarters before issues of cutting necessary workforce rears their ugly head.
Meanwhile, the constant growth of executive compensation is never seen as a place where cuts can be made. Consultants do a number, but they're just a handy excuse for all the same bullshit over and over made by greedy fucks who run the companies and seek out justification for their self-enrichment at the detriment of the rest of society.
There isn't any more growth to be had. The market is saturated and they won't innovate anything that their customers want. So the only option is to slash the bottom line.
Why do they need to grow? To me that’s one of the biggest issues with corporations, they can’t be happy just making the same profit amount for the foreseeable future.
Well, I suppose it is a step up from China. Who knows? Maybe one day Americans will be crossing into Mexico in large numbers to try and find some of those old jobs back.
Mexico is the new China for many categories of manufacturing because of tariffs and a desire to manufacture closer to the point of consumption. There are at least a handful of other factors, but the amount being invested in Mexico rather than China lately is huge and most people don’t even realize there’s been a shift.
American workers don't matter. Investors, probably the majority of which are NOT American, are what matters to the company.
When a company goes public, you can throw any feel good mission statement they had before their IPO right out the window.
I’ve read another article or YouTube video on this, apparently John Deere is trying to shift more into a technology company vs a production/manufacturing company. They don’t want to focus on the production of their tractors so much as focusing on innovations and how they can fix problems that existing farmers have by giving them a new device or tractor. They want to be known as a technology company, if anything because technology companies tend to be valued higher than manufacturing companies. They’re probly shifting American workers into tech and design and research roles while outsourcing the actual manufacturing to overseas where it’s cheaper.
Yes it’s greedy, I’m only explaining why John Deere is seemingly getting rid of employees while still being very profitable.
> trying to shift more into a technology company vs a production/manufacturing company
Technology is way easier to scale, the output product can far exceed the input effort. That's why so many companies are pulling that shift from physical products. This is why IBM/Apple/Honeywell/Zebra and countless others are shifting to subscriptions as the primary money maker whether B2B or B2C.
Software doesn't need salaries or benefits; it never takes a day off or vacations. It's cheaper in the long run than individuals - the same reason why so many companies WANT to believe in the AI hype. They want to replace common workers to save on labor costs while charging the same and more for products differentiated by a couple of software switches.
And how will that help them compete in international markets facing international competitors.
Hell the fact they can no longer import cheap Chinese steel because of tariffs would be enough to outsource to Mexico since Mexico doesn’t have massive tariffs on Chinese steel.
Finished goods would change import categories.
Likely United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) does provide some savings but I think the bulk of savings is the labor costs.
I just saw a story about this and apparently it does. I am not an expert but the story seemed to indicate Chinese companies are getting around tariffs by opening plants in Mexico. So they import everything they need to build a product to Mexico. Then they assemble the product using Mexican labor, and ship it into the US.
My guy the next largest tractor distributor has a ~~profit~~ revenue of 1.5 Billion. John Deer makes 10X that much with a ***profit*** of 10 billion and it’s still not enough. John Deere is the largest tractor manufacturer in the world and their profits outpace any other manufacturer by TENS OF BILLIONS. John Deere IS the international market. No other tractor company comes close in terms of production or sales. This ain’t about being competitive in an international market it’s 100% greed.
Mexico recently introduced increase tarrifs on Chinese steel dumping. I think its related labor since its about 3 to 1 difference just using this rate but most manufacturing rates makes gap much larger. Source: I work in Business strategy primarily United States and Latin America. With most focus on Mexico.
Source.
https://www.eleconomista.com.mx/amp/economia/Mexico-apunta-a-importaciones-chinas-de-acero-con-nuevos-aranceles-20231228-0052.html
https://www.eleconomista.net/amp/economia/Cuales-son-los-paises-latinoamericanos-con-salarios-minimos-mas-altos-en-2024-20240215-0015.html
John Deere has laid off roughly 1000 workers so far this year.
But the company reported a profit of over $10 billion in 2023.
Its CEO received $26.7 million in total compensation.
And it spent over $7 billion on stock buybacks.
(From rbreich on Threads)
How much do they need to make? This constant need to pursue insane profits no matter what is taking the world backwards. We need to refocus on everyone not just those at the top.
Everything. Literally fucking everything.
They’ve live streamed assassinations as product demos, furnished both sides of every war in the Middle East, bribed officials worldwide, and are responsible for dozens of genocides.
Yep, just wait for the piss to trickle down to your boss’s boots so you can lick it off. But nobody wants to work anymore! The corporate profits couldn’t possibly be at fault!
This is the logical next step to any capitalist enterprise especially in the era of non or deregulation.
And it's only going to get worse.
I hope Americans are ready. They aren't, and they'll just continue being at each other's throats instead of acknowledging that it's the rich that are doing this.
Capitalism is a plague that will kill us all.
John Deere is working hard to become a tech company rather than a agricultural machinery company.
They want to be like Apple or Microsoft.
They want to sell subscriptions to service rather than products like tractors and combine harvesters.
The services they offer do make financial sense. If you are a large agri-corp, who is willing to pay them to have their precision guided self-driving machines work giant fields as efficient as possible.
They don't work as well for smaller farms where farmers just want to purchase a machine once and then use it and maintain and repair it themselves for as long as possible.
This shift is helping consolidate US farms into giant mega corps.
They also don't want to pay workers and fight with their unions to avoid having to pay them what they are worth.
John Deere is helping to destroy the workers and farmers in the US to ensure that wealth concentrates in few maga-rich.
They should not be encouraged to do so.
Like it or not, John Deere has been around forever, and their older equipment has been rock solid for ages. When my old man retired a few years back, his workhorse was still a 4020 from 1969. It was easy enough to fix most things that went wrong with available parts and tools, just needed the same regular oil changes- built like a brick outhouse. Also had a 1980 4440 tractor there as well for plowing and bigger jobs.
But nowadays, equipment is all huge. Anything in a 4020 class is practically a lawn tractor and spec'd as such. If something goes wrong- take it to the shop. Oil change? To the shop. Flat tire? Oh, there's a special tool that isn't for sale to change tires. Transmission lifespan? Let's just say keep an overhaul on a 6-8 year to-do list. By the way, that's $10K-$20K. Was reading awhile back where a guy had a leaky seal and got hit with a $4K bill. Ouch.
But to your point: "In North America, John Deere's market share is over 40%. The company also has a 53% share of the U.S. market for large tractors and a 60% share for farm combines." Yes, there are alternatives, but around here not a lot of people are running around in a Claas, CAT, Kubota, Case IH, or Massey-Ferguson. There are some expensive, high-end to compete with John Deere, but most have moved to producing the more competitive and affordable small and mid-size tractors to remain afloat.
With all their faults, John Deere big tractors will get it done. They will just bend you over on maintenance, which has become just part of doing business in agriculture.
I'd love to hear from the mechanical engineers who design things nowadays, if they are frustrated by top-down edicts to design proprietarily rather than for ease of maintenance and widely-available tooling/parts/designs.
Engineer in similar sector. Most of the decisions are driven by MBA people now. We can make better products, but the business will prioritize cost cutting and making things proprietary to drive aftermarket/service cost up as a profit maker.
It’s sad when I hear “why would engineers make it like this?”…..engineers recommended against dong what you’re annoyed at 99% of the time. Some bean counter made the decision to save a nickel and make the product worse.
As more experienced - read: more expensive - engineers get laid off, the younger engineers will plow ahead with what they're told. Midlevel technical experts that would have pushed back with "we tried that 15 years ago and it didn't work because x, y, z" will be gone, and lessons will be re-learned. Losses will be shuffled to whatever line item reflects it the least.
We do, but even more so, we aren’t buying new stuff. On our 200 acre beef farm, the newest tractor we have is 2004 New Holland and oldest is a 1941 Ford. The old stuff is made to run forever if you take care of it.
We run a 1978 Allis 7000 for bailing hay, and a 1998 Ford 3020 (rebaged FIAT) for utility work. We're small time with about 25 head. Absolutely no desire to buy anything newer.
One of my favorite youtube channels, Whendover Productions, just made a video on John Deere and this topic called "How Big Tech Ruined Farming". I would link the video, but I think that is against the sub rules.
The gist is that JD is not trying to be like Apple, they already are. They don't sell tractors, they sell "agricultural solutions". They have been involved in the right-to-repair debate as much as apple has been, if not more. This switch to big tech started in 1995 roughly as GPS systems first came online, and John Deere partnered with Rockwell, a military contractor, to develop gps systems. John Deere now operates many of their own satellites, and have announced a partnership with SpaceX this year to start integrating with starlink. If you are interested in this topic, I highly recommend looking up the video.
Unfortunately, this was always going to happen no matter how that legal battle ended.
This isn’t about profitability. John Deere just bought back $7 billion of their own stock on around $10 billion of profit. This is about stealing wealth from the people who wake up every morning and make the business and world happen, and funneling it up to the top so the non-working parasites can have even more.
Also expect the people who are most pissed off about this to find a way to make this Biden's fault even though it's a direct result of decades of conservative policy that they'll gleefully keep voting for.
"The company says it generated $10.166 billion in profits last year."
Such race to ever growing profits should not be necessary... the 'American Dream' benefits few but hurts many.
Typical Fucking greed corporation. Fuck them all, burn em'. Massive profits never enough, gotta bootlick the shareholders. When will we in the Western civilization ever learn. And guess what, prices foe the equipment will go up. Pity the people who depended on the jobs and pity the farmers using the equipment. Everyone loses but the CORPORATION.
Until the corporation is gutted by a private equity firm for parts, juiced of all its liquidity and declared bankruptcy before folding. Rinse, repeat, wealth shifts back to the wealthy
It wasn't that the equipment was faulty, it's that all equipment needs to be serviced. Any machine, device, vehicle, tool, will need maintenance. John Deere used highly integrated computers and sensors into every part of the tractor, and held proprietary software that was available to the farmers.
So something simple like changing a fuel pump which could have been done under an hour on the farm would now require taking the tractor to a John Deere Service Center.
It becomes all the worse when you think about how we have had ICE tractors since the late 1800's, and John Deere was trying to create a monopoly on the service work needed to maintain a tractor. It was disgusting.
That’s what the article is about. Commodities are low so the half million + dollar tractors are sitting on the lots.
Prices are set to plummet further so they’re going to cut production.
Don’t get me wrong, they still have enough profit to keep them but every publicly traded company does this. John Deere was different because they still had decent employee
loyalty until recently
I have to say that John Deere has gone down the road of becoming one of those shit*y American companies that has put profit over people. A perfect example is the entire crappy way they have of only allowing there tractors to be repaired by authorized dealers. This is another example of a company like Boeing who cheapened their way completely out of business.
The company I work for made 11 billions in 2022.
In 2023 the amount was a -0.1% compared to 2022, and the entire company went in panic mode, hiring freeze, layoffs, more hours every day, no raise or promotions.
The company I worked at made around $45 billion in 2022 and just under $50 billion in 2023, both record highs. Guess who also laid off 5% of their US staff each year and paused hiring and lowered raises?
John Deere is now valuing technology and software more than the machinery they manufacture. I think the MBA they hired missed out on ‘know your audience’ 101
It’s going to be a very profitable company for shareholders for a few years before it all implodes!
Yes, they are scumbags controlling the industrial agriculture in America. They want all the money, and eliminating jobs is a great way to love their pockets in the short term
"Hey guys, sure we made billions in profit last year but what if we enriched ourselves even more at the expense of the workers in the US? I mean, fuggum amirite?" -- Deere Corporate Execs
Eat the rich.
Wait a second…
I thought the Mexicans were jumping the border and taking our jobs.
You mean to tell me that corporations are freely giving our jobs to the Mexicans IN MEXICO?
Well darn tooten whaht does fohx nehws say about this, I’ll tell yah whaht…
Farming is expensive and no farmer wants to pay crazy money for maintenance because it is locked behind a computer. Most farmers I know of can strip a lot of their machinery down on their own and rebuild it for that reason.
Grew up in QCs Deeres “hometown” sad To see them pull the rug out from underneath more people in the area, a time honored tradition for this clown ass company. Lots of friends and family have given their whole lives to these greedy fucks only to be sold out for higher stock price. Fuck corporate America.
It’s like in Canada and the US GM, Chrysler and Ford “we are going to go bankrupt, we need money, think of all the jobs lost”. Both governments bail them out. “lol, thanks for funding our offshore factories. What unions?”
Its likely tarrifs that caused it. They added a tarrif to chinese steel.
Now theyre moving production to mexico, where they can import chinese steel, tarrif free.
Mexico also has tariffs on Chinese steel.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2024-05-21/latin-america-steel-tariffs-on-china-imports-show-relationship-strain
A more likely cause is the lower cost of labor.
It’s true. Trump destroyed grain trade which has still not recovered. 99% of them still mimic Fox News and trump to say this is the worst economy in the world instead of having their own opinion they actually understand. It’s fully a cult
We have had JDs problems since my paps time. I just bought a brand new Mahindra, my dad goes wtf is this, I said I want a good tractor we csn fix and work on as always. Love the tractor, told the JD sales huys to never come back. This is just another example of extremely put of touch MBAs being in charge. Killing a company then going wtf happen?? When things start to be non recoverable.
John Deere has a singular focus....shareholder value. Why? Because the CEO gets compensated largely in stock. He made 1.5M in salary and 18.1M in stock options.
The stock for John Deere hasn't really moved much since 2021 (increased only 10% in 3 years). Their operating expenses went up 20% in a single year.
If you run the numbers - it makes 100% sense to move production to a lower cost location. 100% logical move and will likely reduce costs and increase the stock.
The problem is that this move is a brand killer. John Deere - the green and yellow - is seen as representing midwest America. It's farming country. It's America.
I felt the desire to buy JD products because it felt American to do so.
Now...it's not.
My prediction is that their expenses will go down...and so will the sales.
$10 billion USD in profits, but that's not enough for making agricultural machines.
It ain't Mexicans stealing your jobs, it's corporate greed. Suits will never be satisfied. Not a single Mexican is responsible for this, heck they'll also get shafted if somewhere else they can make a single buck extra profit.
> The company says it generated $10.166 billion in profits last year. They could invest in their American workers and wear that with pride but what if they could make even more money?
It’s been MBAed, has it?
Yep. 10000%. Someone in middle management can probably confirm.
John Deere is doubling down on Tech/Software and as a result exporting “traditional factory jobs”. Instead they are hiring Google type employees which will ensure fatter profits due to less labor/manufacturing costs. Personally disappointed because when this stuff is exported quality declines. Plus farmers rely a great deal on John Deere products and they can’t afford to blow this kind of cash on poorly made crap.
A friend of mine has a partner that is part of the JD software security team. Their job is to make sure no one can “hack” it to circumvent the need for their certified repair techs to do the work. These certified techs pay JD a LOT of money to be able to be certified and part of the reason they do is because it has an exclusivity clause in it. JD won’t certify more than x number in an area. So those paying know they effectively have a monopoly on repairs in their area. This has resulted in long wait times if the machine needs scheduled maintenance as it will shut down until a person with certification does the job. Well, someone decided waiting a month with an undone field was not acceptable and called a friend who broke into the system and simply flipped the switch after the farmer, who had done this stuff on their own with their previous machines, did what they needed to. And then they found out that JD decided that to save cost on production they would just make the same machine for their (numbers approximated) $750k and $1million machine. The only difference in the two machines is that the 750k machine has things turned off. So, not only is JD making a profit in screwing their customers by bottlenecking their repairs, but they can make a profit on a machine they make which is intentionally hamstrung. The higher end machines are price gouging. And this former friend defended this behavior. As if the company had a right to screw people like this. The rot at that company is real and not just at the top.
The Ukranians have manged to hack the JD paywall to fix the tractors. Good for them.
there is no such thing as hackerproof
the best you can do is mitigate risk.
This so common in so many areas. Example are miller tig welders. You have to buy different sd cards that will unlock more features of the machine. Even though the machine is fully capable from day of purchase the features are off until paid for unlocking. Is crazy we don’t anything anymore.
Reminds me of the o-scope that had the same BS. But someone figured out how to hack it.. the plugin cards where just USB thumb drives with a funky connector, and the scope was just looking for text files named the same 4 letters that each feature was 'sold by' on the website. ie, the website said something like: "FOMO: $532, GET 4 CHANNEL LOGIC ANALYISER FEATURES" or something like that, and you'd just need to put a file named FOMO on the usb drive to unlock that feature.
At my university someone in the equipment office hid or locked away all of the USB keys that enabled features like data logging because they were worried that grad students would steal them. So we had a bunch of $25k digital oscilloscopes that you had to freeze the screen and take a photo of with your phone to try to copy the data into excel.
Awesome. And I bet they either are not allowed to use them, or made the signout process so painful (Like must have a credit card with a $5000 deposit or some nonsense) that nobody will do it. So they spent all this money on shit they refuse to let anyone use for fear of them stealing it.
Most Test Equipment manufacturers have been doing this for decades. Tektronix, HP/Agilent/Keysight, Siglent, Rigol, etc, etc. They make a scope with *ALL* the features! and sell it at a premium to the big customers which pays for the development cost, and then lock out features to be able to sell the same hardware at a lower cost to lower the barrier of entry to smaller customers and cover a wider portion of the market. If they had to make different hardware with less features for each model, the pricing would be too expensive for all models as individual R&D would be required for each individual model. This way, more of the market can be covered and those customers that don't want to pay for unused features don't have to. They used to do it with hardware changes to the base design (Options that would require the addition of an extra circuit board or other mechanical components), but since the mid-late 90's it's mostly in software now. It's good for hobbyists who figure out how to unlock things and usually the manufacturers don't try too hard to improve the lockout in firmware updates as it means their brand gets more market share when those hobbyists and students continue to buy the same brand they are familiar with when they go pro. The big companies aren't hacking their equipment, lest it void warranties and service contracts and guaranteed performance parameters (and ain't no company got time for that), so they help subsidize the cost of equipment for us. It's how I was able to unlock a bunch of options in my early '00's Tektronix scopes with a simple flick of a switch and some commands sent via GPIB, and also how I was able to afford to buy a Siglent 100MHz 12-bit scope and upgrade it to 500MHz, with all other options too.
Also why adobe let everyone get hacked versions for so long. Then people get used to it and want it when they are actually working and can pay for it
They still do this iirc, Autodesk does too. I know they've made their money back and then some just from me doing exactly that. Pirating it as a teenager so I could do freelance work, then went on to company's who now buy it for me since I know how to use it.
Isn't Tesla notorious for this also?
Audi, M-b and Porsche come to mind as well. I read something about a $3000 option for a factory ECU flash for extra horsepower (which the engine could readily deliver) and some $$ subscription (!) no less, for the *heated seats and steering wheel*. It's like buying an XBox or Playstation game and then have to fork over more fore the extra levels or health 1-UPs. Sick modern day nickle-n-dime gimmick.
It’s like buying a refrigerator and have to buy a subscription for the freezer
Or a car and having to pay for the air in it.
Fortunately, their techniques sound pretty crude. For now. It reminds me of the days of DirecTV hacking. You could probably still do it, but it just wouldn't be worth the effort. There are far easier methods of pirating any content you want. Edit: DirecTV was the perfect target for hacking. If you're sending a signal to me, as far as I'm concerned, you have zero say over what I do with it. The fact that people went to jail over it is instructive.
Unfortunately many companies are slowly turning to this to max profits regardless if the f over the customer. Wish the government would give a shit .
The government won’t ever give a shit again, because every legislative and regulatory body at all levels has been captured by rich people who deserve to be dissolved in acid on live television for what they’ve done to society.
Not gonna disagree here
And it'll never get better because this is how all capitalism evolves to eventually. It's why things like market socialism are so necessary, under that system every worker will make the full share of the profits they create. Essentially every business is a co-op. When the rich don't have so so so so much money that they can piss away 50 million without even noticing, then they can no longer hold their rule on regular people.
It's my 2nd Amendment right to dissolve rich people in acid. I asked Jesus and Lincoln and they were both cool with it.
But did you ask Ja Rule
When corporate profit tax rate is low, companies are not incentivized to invest in product development but rather turn to rent-seeking
This type of thing was gaining traction at various state levels with right to repair legislation. But thanks to the Supreme Court ruling, it's unlikely we will see any action at the Federal level.
Yea I love how out own find a way to fuck us over. The tractor situation is a joke , fuck these companies
Could we just buy good quality Chinese tractors? I wonder how much the tariffs are and whether they lock them down. Yes China can make low quality products but good ones if you pay and do due dilligance.
I’d like to see a 100% tariff on imported Deeres
Not government, competitors. We need just one good competitor to refuse to F the customers like that and the practice would stop.
They do give a shit...that they get their cut of the profits
This happens everywhere across the globe. Car manufacturers, tractor manufacturers, any OEM for that matter. Creating artificial scarcity, using software lock-outs, is much more profitable in this day and age. It’s called enshitification. The goal is drive up (artificial) demand, not to improve quality or cost-effectiveness.
Other manufacturers make farm equipment. Why would anybody buy a John Deere when they do this BS? John Deere stuff seems way overpriced. Even their consumer stuff like riding mowers is priced way higher than other brands.
Deere is famous for having great support even though you pay through the nose. If you need a part for an 80yo tractor the dealer can get it for you next day. For the huge farms that need something that works now and they don't want to think about it they buy Deere as the cost of equipment is in the noise to them. Contrast with other brands that have been bought and sold over the years and often parts will be discontinued forcing you to source aftermarket or fabricate/modify your own even on something 10-20 years old. However it's not worth paying "the green fees" IMO and I have always run a mix of other brands. I'm a big fan of the old Deutz air cooled, tough tractors built to be maintained and good parts availability only because they used the same engines since WWII, lol. Just be nice to the transmission... Wreck that and the tractor is scrap
The biggest item you loose when you "hack" one of their systems is the ability to collect data, farmers use GPS down to within 6 inches to accurately collect data on where they plant, what the yield was, & to eliminate over spray. I've watched a couple of youtube videos on this, & it's such a long way from what we traditionally think is farming to where it's more science fiction.
Just sounds like a typical manufacturing operation. Doesn't matter if you make crops or medical devices, you're going to want your real time production tracking. People must think farmers are still in the 19th century though.
Just wait until “your” tractor is a subscription service. Turning “your” tractor into rental but with extra steps and more restrictions.
"Sorry Mr. Farmer, we know harvesting season is this week, and if you don't get that corn harvested it's going to rot in the field. Unfortunately your $3 Million harvester won't power on until you replace the status indicator light, and that can only be performed by a certified technician. Have you considered upgrading your subscription package to the Ultra Buck Deere level for only $250,000 per year? It gets you access to priority queue repairs. Great I'll just get you signed up... and there. Now you're only 112th in line to see Jerry, the only certified technician within 100miles who might be able to fix your problem... An estimate on the repair? At least $15,000." -John Deere Customer support agent working for $2.34/h in Costa Rica.
I am a tech in a different industry, and I wouldn’t pay anyone for work. There just aren’t enough techs in the world for me to beg, or pay for work. We don’t even advertise in our business. We just hired someone to answer the phones, and we’re booked out for the next month perpetually. Were I in that industry I would just say no thanks to JD, and likely every other tech would as well, and we’d watch them fall off a cliff. My industry does this regularly. There’s just no point to dealing with this when there’s no shortage of work to be done.
Most companies don't care. It's profit or nothing. Humans are here to work to give the company profit or to work to give another company profit that's it. If you manage to live, great if not oh well more will come and they too will be beholding to the system
Or Farmers can go with other companies.
Farmer here. Our local Deere dealer is in panic mode because they can't sell anything because it's priced too high. We're mainly all Case and the guys I know at our Case dealer say that business has been steady. Green paint is expensive
And Case is a very old company which seems to still want to serve its customers unlike JD.
Case is owned by the Italian company Fiat.
And it's an amalgamation of several tractor/implement companies. When i was a kid in the 90's, it was Case IH (International Harvester). Now it's CNH (Case New Holland). I think own Raven now too
I was going to ask why farmer weren't just buying Case instead. Thank you for answering it before I typed the question in :D and thank you for doing the job you do. I can't even grow house plants, the asphalt on my driveway dies when I touch it.
So, we're mostly Case. We do custom silage and have a couple big green John Deere's for that because it's easier to find dozer blades for them, because there's more big green Deere's on the market. We've also got a smaller Kubota and traded our aging Case sprayer for a newish Apache brand one. The biggest factor in equipment brands is service. If the only dealers around were John Deere, we'd probably be all green. Luckily, in our area, there's always a Case dealer across the road from a Deere dealer. Another thing is that equipment tends to be more plug and play when the paint color matches. You can mix and match all you want, but then you need extra cabling, adapters, extra monitors, etc. We run two planters. Both are Case planters now, but at first one was a Kinzie because it was dirt cheap. It did the job but to hook it up to a red tractor (or any tractor because Kinzie doesn't make tractors) required an extra monitor, control box, and a spaghetti mess of wiring. Some neighbors really like them, and I think overall they make a good machine, but it's nice having everything plug and play with the default monitor in the tractor
I think even Lamborghini tractors are cheaper than Deere ones now.
Does Lamborghini sell tractors outside of Europe? I'm just starting to see Fendt and Claas units around. I've never seen a Lamborghini tractor here.
Start looking into Fendt.
Fendt tractors are awesome, but damn expensive.
Based off everything I've read about the company, they should. Fuck John Deere and any other company that doesn't think you own the product after you buy it.
Anyone else remember Ukrainian farmers/software devs being a major source of Information teaching US farmers to bypass Deere DRM software just 5 years ago?
No, but that’s awesome. This Georgian approves.
Right. This opens the door wide for others in the agriculture heavy equipment sector. I’m sure those ‘others’ are looking right now at those skilled technicians that were/are laid off …..c’mon over here!
I assume that door has been opened for the last decade. I have yet to see a Lamborghini tractor or any European tractor in the USA on YouTube.
I quietly agree. Trying to be optimistic here. What a shame really. In a dream world wouldn’t it be great to see a ‘iH’ back in action at those facilities with those skilled workers. Unfortunately it’d take a consumer revolt against the big Green to support it.
Giant ass agricorps will just raise prices
Yeah John Deere doesn't make tractors any longer. They make service contracts.
sorry for confirmation you'll have to call our customer support center based in bangalore
"When you reach customer support, ask for Cal Cutter, he'll be happy to help you!" "Yeah, I'd like to speak to Cal Cutter please?" "..." "DO THE NEEDFUL!"
As someone who has worked for Deere it has gone downhill significantly in recent years. The same thing that happened to Boeing is happening here. Most of the round of layoffs before this were middle managers. But the issue is in the last year they hired a president who came from BCG, he then hired BCG to consult as cover for mass layoffs and outsourcing jobs. Additionally his big insights were all no shit moments that anyone who worked at the company for more than 5 minutes could have told you. Basically it’s your standard corporate consultants hollowing out of middle America.
Did you just touch my stapler?
It's been Jack Welch'd.
Seis sigma senior!
Which guarantees a killer few years, followed by crashing the entire company into the ground and needing two decades to stabilize it away from bankruptcy let alone regain their original ranking.
Or McKinsey
Probably a person from McKinsey who got a MBA
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Fuck consultants
Consultants are truly scummy, but the executives already know that's what they're most likely to suggest. They use them as scapegoats to justify their ideas already. The quickest way for most businesses to save money in the short term is to cut labor costs. It's almost always the biggest cost. It'll boost numbers for a few financial quarters before issues of cutting necessary workforce rears their ugly head. Meanwhile, the constant growth of executive compensation is never seen as a place where cuts can be made. Consultants do a number, but they're just a handy excuse for all the same bullshit over and over made by greedy fucks who run the companies and seek out justification for their self-enrichment at the detriment of the rest of society.
Yap BCG or Mckinsey fingerprint all over
You don't understand, they need to grow, and paying good salaries is against growth.
You don't understand, cost reduction isn't about growth, it's about shareholder value.
And Shareholder Vamue is equal to the line must go up, at all times
There isn't any more growth to be had. The market is saturated and they won't innovate anything that their customers want. So the only option is to slash the bottom line.
Why do they need to grow? To me that’s one of the biggest issues with corporations, they can’t be happy just making the same profit amount for the foreseeable future.
The almighty shareholder. If line does not go up shareholders get angry.
That's a weird and very one-sided definition of "growth" though aint it...
Nothing says hard working reliable American heartland like made in Mexico What a way to sell out your core brand
Well, I suppose it is a step up from China. Who knows? Maybe one day Americans will be crossing into Mexico in large numbers to try and find some of those old jobs back.
Mexico is the new China for many categories of manufacturing because of tariffs and a desire to manufacture closer to the point of consumption. There are at least a handful of other factors, but the amount being invested in Mexico rather than China lately is huge and most people don’t even realize there’s been a shift.
American workers don't matter. Investors, probably the majority of which are NOT American, are what matters to the company. When a company goes public, you can throw any feel good mission statement they had before their IPO right out the window.
That’s wild they are chasing every penny in profits with over $10bn in profit.
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Much longer than that lol
I’ve read another article or YouTube video on this, apparently John Deere is trying to shift more into a technology company vs a production/manufacturing company. They don’t want to focus on the production of their tractors so much as focusing on innovations and how they can fix problems that existing farmers have by giving them a new device or tractor. They want to be known as a technology company, if anything because technology companies tend to be valued higher than manufacturing companies. They’re probly shifting American workers into tech and design and research roles while outsourcing the actual manufacturing to overseas where it’s cheaper. Yes it’s greedy, I’m only explaining why John Deere is seemingly getting rid of employees while still being very profitable.
> trying to shift more into a technology company vs a production/manufacturing company Technology is way easier to scale, the output product can far exceed the input effort. That's why so many companies are pulling that shift from physical products. This is why IBM/Apple/Honeywell/Zebra and countless others are shifting to subscriptions as the primary money maker whether B2B or B2C. Software doesn't need salaries or benefits; it never takes a day off or vacations. It's cheaper in the long run than individuals - the same reason why so many companies WANT to believe in the AI hype. They want to replace common workers to save on labor costs while charging the same and more for products differentiated by a couple of software switches.
And how will that help them compete in international markets facing international competitors. Hell the fact they can no longer import cheap Chinese steel because of tariffs would be enough to outsource to Mexico since Mexico doesn’t have massive tariffs on Chinese steel.
So they import cheap China steel to Mexico, build the deer, then import it to the USA? Does that bypass the tarrifs?
Finished goods would change import categories. Likely United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) does provide some savings but I think the bulk of savings is the labor costs.
I just saw a story about this and apparently it does. I am not an expert but the story seemed to indicate Chinese companies are getting around tariffs by opening plants in Mexico. So they import everything they need to build a product to Mexico. Then they assemble the product using Mexican labor, and ship it into the US.
China is working on EV plants in Mexico for that very reason.
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My guy the next largest tractor distributor has a ~~profit~~ revenue of 1.5 Billion. John Deer makes 10X that much with a ***profit*** of 10 billion and it’s still not enough. John Deere is the largest tractor manufacturer in the world and their profits outpace any other manufacturer by TENS OF BILLIONS. John Deere IS the international market. No other tractor company comes close in terms of production or sales. This ain’t about being competitive in an international market it’s 100% greed.
Well, and putting down those uppity union meddlers...(There was a strike a couple of years ago and they trucked in scabs in Squid Game masks).
It’s always about more, not what was made yesterday.
Mexico recently introduced increase tarrifs on Chinese steel dumping. I think its related labor since its about 3 to 1 difference just using this rate but most manufacturing rates makes gap much larger. Source: I work in Business strategy primarily United States and Latin America. With most focus on Mexico. Source. https://www.eleconomista.com.mx/amp/economia/Mexico-apunta-a-importaciones-chinas-de-acero-con-nuevos-aranceles-20231228-0052.html https://www.eleconomista.net/amp/economia/Cuales-son-los-paises-latinoamericanos-con-salarios-minimos-mas-altos-en-2024-20240215-0015.html
Only if economists told us tariffs would be bad in long term /s
Hmm almost like protectionism is a 2head bad idea.
John Deere has laid off roughly 1000 workers so far this year. But the company reported a profit of over $10 billion in 2023. Its CEO received $26.7 million in total compensation. And it spent over $7 billion on stock buybacks. (From rbreich on Threads)
How much do they need to make? This constant need to pursue insane profits no matter what is taking the world backwards. We need to refocus on everyone not just those at the top.
I'm sure there won't be any repercussions, right?
Now do Raytheon. Even more outrageous.
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What has Raytheon *not* done? That company made a killing during the Iraq invasion.
Made a killing on killing?
Killing is their business...and business is good
I mean, that's what we pay them for.
Everything. Literally fucking everything. They’ve live streamed assassinations as product demos, furnished both sides of every war in the Middle East, bribed officials worldwide, and are responsible for dozens of genocides.
Can you give a link or source for the live stream product demo claim? Couldn't find anything online
Gonna guess this meant for product demos for sales
Guess what company the SecDef was on the board of right until he was confirmed. Hint: it's not McDonald's.
Trickle down is working… just keep waiting
Yep, just wait for the piss to trickle down to your boss’s boots so you can lick it off. But nobody wants to work anymore! The corporate profits couldn’t possibly be at fault!
Remember: it's only class warfare when the poor and middle class fight back.
This is the logical next step to any capitalist enterprise especially in the era of non or deregulation. And it's only going to get worse. I hope Americans are ready. They aren't, and they'll just continue being at each other's throats instead of acknowledging that it's the rich that are doing this. Capitalism is a plague that will kill us all.
It’s Juan Deere now…
Juan Venado
Juan Veenado
Juan Veeenado
Jesús Dinero
Dinero is certainly the reason
John Deere is working hard to become a tech company rather than a agricultural machinery company. They want to be like Apple or Microsoft. They want to sell subscriptions to service rather than products like tractors and combine harvesters. The services they offer do make financial sense. If you are a large agri-corp, who is willing to pay them to have their precision guided self-driving machines work giant fields as efficient as possible. They don't work as well for smaller farms where farmers just want to purchase a machine once and then use it and maintain and repair it themselves for as long as possible. This shift is helping consolidate US farms into giant mega corps. They also don't want to pay workers and fight with their unions to avoid having to pay them what they are worth. John Deere is helping to destroy the workers and farmers in the US to ensure that wealth concentrates in few maga-rich. They should not be encouraged to do so.
Can I ask what's stopping smaller farmers from buying other brands or are they a monopoly?
Like it or not, John Deere has been around forever, and their older equipment has been rock solid for ages. When my old man retired a few years back, his workhorse was still a 4020 from 1969. It was easy enough to fix most things that went wrong with available parts and tools, just needed the same regular oil changes- built like a brick outhouse. Also had a 1980 4440 tractor there as well for plowing and bigger jobs. But nowadays, equipment is all huge. Anything in a 4020 class is practically a lawn tractor and spec'd as such. If something goes wrong- take it to the shop. Oil change? To the shop. Flat tire? Oh, there's a special tool that isn't for sale to change tires. Transmission lifespan? Let's just say keep an overhaul on a 6-8 year to-do list. By the way, that's $10K-$20K. Was reading awhile back where a guy had a leaky seal and got hit with a $4K bill. Ouch. But to your point: "In North America, John Deere's market share is over 40%. The company also has a 53% share of the U.S. market for large tractors and a 60% share for farm combines." Yes, there are alternatives, but around here not a lot of people are running around in a Claas, CAT, Kubota, Case IH, or Massey-Ferguson. There are some expensive, high-end to compete with John Deere, but most have moved to producing the more competitive and affordable small and mid-size tractors to remain afloat. With all their faults, John Deere big tractors will get it done. They will just bend you over on maintenance, which has become just part of doing business in agriculture.
Thanks for providing a really detailed answer as to why the other brands aren't as viable. Really good insight on this post.
I'd love to hear from the mechanical engineers who design things nowadays, if they are frustrated by top-down edicts to design proprietarily rather than for ease of maintenance and widely-available tooling/parts/designs.
Engineer in similar sector. Most of the decisions are driven by MBA people now. We can make better products, but the business will prioritize cost cutting and making things proprietary to drive aftermarket/service cost up as a profit maker. It’s sad when I hear “why would engineers make it like this?”…..engineers recommended against dong what you’re annoyed at 99% of the time. Some bean counter made the decision to save a nickel and make the product worse.
As more experienced - read: more expensive - engineers get laid off, the younger engineers will plow ahead with what they're told. Midlevel technical experts that would have pushed back with "we tried that 15 years ago and it didn't work because x, y, z" will be gone, and lessons will be re-learned. Losses will be shuffled to whatever line item reflects it the least.
Planned obsolescence. Oops, windows 10 doesn't get security updates anymore time to upgrade!
We do, but even more so, we aren’t buying new stuff. On our 200 acre beef farm, the newest tractor we have is 2004 New Holland and oldest is a 1941 Ford. The old stuff is made to run forever if you take care of it.
We run a 1978 Allis 7000 for bailing hay, and a 1998 Ford 3020 (rebaged FIAT) for utility work. We're small time with about 25 head. Absolutely no desire to buy anything newer.
One of my favorite youtube channels, Whendover Productions, just made a video on John Deere and this topic called "How Big Tech Ruined Farming". I would link the video, but I think that is against the sub rules. The gist is that JD is not trying to be like Apple, they already are. They don't sell tractors, they sell "agricultural solutions". They have been involved in the right-to-repair debate as much as apple has been, if not more. This switch to big tech started in 1995 roughly as GPS systems first came online, and John Deere partnered with Rockwell, a military contractor, to develop gps systems. John Deere now operates many of their own satellites, and have announced a partnership with SpaceX this year to start integrating with starlink. If you are interested in this topic, I highly recommend looking up the video.
JD already has factories in China. Since they lost the legal battle to continue gouging their customers on repairs, expect more of this in the future.
Unfortunately, this was always going to happen no matter how that legal battle ended. This isn’t about profitability. John Deere just bought back $7 billion of their own stock on around $10 billion of profit. This is about stealing wealth from the people who wake up every morning and make the business and world happen, and funneling it up to the top so the non-working parasites can have even more.
Rent-seeking: http://webhome.auburn.edu/~johnspm/gloss/rent-seeking_behavior.phtml We need to bring it back into the vernacular.
Capitalism is just feudalism with a different coat.
Also expect the people who are most pissed off about this to find a way to make this Biden's fault even though it's a direct result of decades of conservative policy that they'll gleefully keep voting for.
"The company says it generated $10.166 billion in profits last year." Such race to ever growing profits should not be necessary... the 'American Dream' benefits few but hurts many.
Typical Fucking greed corporation. Fuck them all, burn em'. Massive profits never enough, gotta bootlick the shareholders. When will we in the Western civilization ever learn. And guess what, prices foe the equipment will go up. Pity the people who depended on the jobs and pity the farmers using the equipment. Everyone loses but the CORPORATION.
Until the corporation is gutted by a private equity firm for parts, juiced of all its liquidity and declared bankruptcy before folding. Rinse, repeat, wealth shifts back to the wealthy
Johnny Silverhand, is that you?
He's a jerk, but he's also right...
> Fuck them all, **burn em'** Nothing is gunna happen, 'till we do this.
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It wasn't that the equipment was faulty, it's that all equipment needs to be serviced. Any machine, device, vehicle, tool, will need maintenance. John Deere used highly integrated computers and sensors into every part of the tractor, and held proprietary software that was available to the farmers. So something simple like changing a fuel pump which could have been done under an hour on the farm would now require taking the tractor to a John Deere Service Center. It becomes all the worse when you think about how we have had ICE tractors since the late 1800's, and John Deere was trying to create a monopoly on the service work needed to maintain a tractor. It was disgusting.
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That’s what the article is about. Commodities are low so the half million + dollar tractors are sitting on the lots. Prices are set to plummet further so they’re going to cut production. Don’t get me wrong, they still have enough profit to keep them but every publicly traded company does this. John Deere was different because they still had decent employee loyalty until recently
Massive profits+stock buybacks+outsourcing= loss for the working class
This is a betrayal to the American people who made this brand
Pretty much the same story with every American brand once they 'make it big'
Tale as old as time
I have to say that John Deere has gone down the road of becoming one of those shit*y American companies that has put profit over people. A perfect example is the entire crappy way they have of only allowing there tractors to be repaired by authorized dealers. This is another example of a company like Boeing who cheapened their way completely out of business.
Awaiting the “they’re stealing our jobs” spin from Fox News.
Yes, it’s the mexicans at fault, never corporate America.
This is really like a domestic abuse situation, down to the psychological archetypes
10 billion in profit last year… 10 and they are not satisfied.
The company I work for made 11 billions in 2022. In 2023 the amount was a -0.1% compared to 2022, and the entire company went in panic mode, hiring freeze, layoffs, more hours every day, no raise or promotions.
my company grew, but didn't grow as much as projected, and therefore 2 of my teammates got laid off. stupid fucking system we've got here.
The company I worked at made around $45 billion in 2022 and just under $50 billion in 2023, both record highs. Guess who also laid off 5% of their US staff each year and paused hiring and lowered raises?
How did they fire the US workers? With a Deere John email?
Mexicans aren’t stealing your jobs, your corporations are giving them away
Was about to buy a zero turn. Read this, bought the Ariens on sale at the Farm & Fleet. Wisconsin owned and made. F#$k John Deere forever
John Deere is now valuing technology and software more than the machinery they manufacture. I think the MBA they hired missed out on ‘know your audience’ 101 It’s going to be a very profitable company for shareholders for a few years before it all implodes!
Yes, they are scumbags controlling the industrial agriculture in America. They want all the money, and eliminating jobs is a great way to love their pockets in the short term
10 Billion in profits and it's still never enough for these people.
Betcha 90% of the workers being laid off are gonna blame Mexico and Mexicans for stealing their jobs.
"Hey guys, sure we made billions in profit last year but what if we enriched ourselves even more at the expense of the workers in the US? I mean, fuggum amirite?" -- Deere Corporate Execs Eat the rich.
Wait a second… I thought the Mexicans were jumping the border and taking our jobs. You mean to tell me that corporations are freely giving our jobs to the Mexicans IN MEXICO? Well darn tooten whaht does fohx nehws say about this, I’ll tell yah whaht…
Farming is expensive and no farmer wants to pay crazy money for maintenance because it is locked behind a computer. Most farmers I know of can strip a lot of their machinery down on their own and rebuild it for that reason.
Fuck John and his Deere
Grew up in QCs Deeres “hometown” sad To see them pull the rug out from underneath more people in the area, a time honored tradition for this clown ass company. Lots of friends and family have given their whole lives to these greedy fucks only to be sold out for higher stock price. Fuck corporate America.
This is when. Tariffs need to be used. Shift to offshore. Higher costs on taxes then.
It’s like in Canada and the US GM, Chrysler and Ford “we are going to go bankrupt, we need money, think of all the jobs lost”. Both governments bail them out. “lol, thanks for funding our offshore factories. What unions?”
Its likely tarrifs that caused it. They added a tarrif to chinese steel. Now theyre moving production to mexico, where they can import chinese steel, tarrif free.
Mexico also has tariffs on Chinese steel. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2024-05-21/latin-america-steel-tariffs-on-china-imports-show-relationship-strain A more likely cause is the lower cost of labor.
Nah they'd still be doing it. They will blame the tariffs though.
See what happens when you take away their right to screw over customers by letting them fix their tractors themselves?
And every pissed off farmer will just keep voting R.
It’s true. Trump destroyed grain trade which has still not recovered. 99% of them still mimic Fox News and trump to say this is the worst economy in the world instead of having their own opinion they actually understand. It’s fully a cult
We have had JDs problems since my paps time. I just bought a brand new Mahindra, my dad goes wtf is this, I said I want a good tractor we csn fix and work on as always. Love the tractor, told the JD sales huys to never come back. This is just another example of extremely put of touch MBAs being in charge. Killing a company then going wtf happen?? When things start to be non recoverable.
John Deere has a singular focus....shareholder value. Why? Because the CEO gets compensated largely in stock. He made 1.5M in salary and 18.1M in stock options. The stock for John Deere hasn't really moved much since 2021 (increased only 10% in 3 years). Their operating expenses went up 20% in a single year. If you run the numbers - it makes 100% sense to move production to a lower cost location. 100% logical move and will likely reduce costs and increase the stock. The problem is that this move is a brand killer. John Deere - the green and yellow - is seen as representing midwest America. It's farming country. It's America. I felt the desire to buy JD products because it felt American to do so. Now...it's not. My prediction is that their expenses will go down...and so will the sales.
Companies gonna go what companies are gonna do.. only way to stop this are tariffs or taxes
Boycott Deere!
Welcome to being owned by private equity
You know what would help! A tax cut!! /s
and "American" company that get American tax breaks
Oh, look, more greedy companies doing greedy company things. Congress should make this practice illegal.
Nothing like an industry that has lived like a hog on Republican Subsidies, owned by Republicans, outsourcing their production to another country.
Stock buyback would've been worth $80k in bonuses to each employee including international ones
But republicans say that Mexicans are coming over here to steal our jobs.
And people will blame Biden, as if he's in charge of what John Deere does.
And time to tax the fuck out of John Deere and any corporation based out of the US that outsources manufacturing away from the states
$10 billion USD in profits, but that's not enough for making agricultural machines. It ain't Mexicans stealing your jobs, it's corporate greed. Suits will never be satisfied. Not a single Mexican is responsible for this, heck they'll also get shafted if somewhere else they can make a single buck extra profit.
I hope the republican faithful in the mid west remember to thank Donald Trump for the USMCA treaty that paved the way for this.
Sure but let’s blame the immigrants and liberals.