1st Quarter 2020 Report for Large Equipment Dealers

We’ve compiled information from our Tractor Zoom database from the first three months of 2020 to help equipment dealers better understand these tumultuous times. 

This report is divided into four sections summarizing auction sales data of four categories of the highest value, highly volatile pieces of equipment. The first two pages are for tractors. The first looks at 100+ horsepower tractors, and the second, four wheel drive tractors. The last two pages summarize combine and planter sales in Q1 of 2020.

Looking first at the large tractors, in the upper left section you can see what proportion of the 50 make/model tractors were sold in the first three months of 2020. The bubble chart to the right of that highlights where the sales took place along with the relative price, as shown by the size of the bubbles.

The biggest takeaway from this tractor report may be what is seen in the lower right with year-over-year average price trending. 2020 average prices are trending right along with those of 2019, and just slightly below 2018. Another notable point is the growth of consignment sales, as seen in the pie charts in the lower left. 

Drilling down to the large 4WD tractors, like the John Deere R series, showcases a consistent purchase price with the past couple of years. Because this particular report is so focused resulting in fewer tractors, the shift you see in the liquidation auctions in ’19 to retirement auctions in ’20, cannot be reliably extrapolated. This change is likely a random result of a few more tractors sold at retirement auctions these past few months. 

Moving on to the harvester category, you see more of these consistently being moved at retirement auctions. This makes more sense when you consider that this report only consider models produced in the last ten years and resold at prices above $90,000 (see the footnotes at the bottom of each report for specific applied filters). These high value combines are more likely to be owned by a financially secure farmer who is later into his farming career.

Again, looking at the price trend, there is a dip in March, but it is still well within the variation of the last two years.

Finally, looking at planters as we enter this #plant20 season, you can visualize the increased number of manufactures producing for this market. 

The prices so far this year have trended along with the last two. Yet the devil is in the details with planters, especially with these later models where you can now spend more than $3,000 per row on various options. The best analysis here would be to dive into the Tractor Zoom Pro database to find all available comps and pick the ones that have the options you are looking at.

The biggest takeaway from this report may be that the farm equipment economy has not (yet?) gone into decline along with most other markets during the COVID-19 epidemic.

Keep in mind that most of this data was collected prior to the stay-in-place orders by the state governors. We’ve been monitoring the effects of this, and will continue to do so as more auctions take place online. 

If you would like a PDF version of this report email Jeremy Hewitt at JHewitt@tractorzoom.com