The used equipment buying season remains active as spring planting takes off. Farm equipment that is only a few years old with low operating hours continues to draw strong prices at auction.
Machinery Pete noticed that trend last week via a few record-setting transactions. At a Kiko Auctions sale in Diamond, Ohio, a pair of blue tractors and a blue planter raised the bar higher:
A 2013 New Holland T7 260 tractor with only 1,226 hours on it brought $152,000, which blasted past the previous record high for that year/model by over $19,000.
A 2015 New Holland T5 115 utility tractor with a loader (765 hours) brought in $75,000, beating the previous record high by $7,000.
A 2024 Kinze 3505 8/16 row planter with just over 170 acres planted on it sold for $100,000. That set a new record by $17,500.
“There’s a similar pattern here. Whether its blue, green or orange, if it’s got a few years on it with low hours and in nice condition, those prices are very strong right now,” Pete says.
Moving Iron host Casey Seymour, who has over 20 years of experience in the farm equipment dealership space, says there are more farmers hitting auctions than heading to the dealer lot, and that’s typical of a down cycle in the farm economy.
“Things at auction have a higher demand signal than what you see on the lot. When I was working at the dealership, I would see these sales and think, ‘Man, I’ve got five just like that sitting on my lot that I would sell to you for $10,000 less than what you bought that one for.’ But nobody’s coming to the table, and that’s just where we’re at right now,” he says.
Order-Writing Season For New
Aaron Fintel, used equipment specialist with 21st Century Wholesale – a John Deere dealer with 26 storefronts across Colorado, Nebraska and Kansas – joined the podcast to talk about the soon-to-open new machine order-writing period.
Fintel says it’s not something many think about when it comes to buying new, but farmers getting re-approved for financing has “been a process” this year.
“It’s kind of a two-edged sword. If you went and got that new machine at 0% interest at the end of last year because the accountant said to do it, I don’t care that it’s 0% because its also $450,000 sitting on the balance sheet,” he says. “That’s been a huge factor.”
Commodity Markets Update
Chip Nellinger, owner of Blue Reef Agri-Marketing, joined Seymour to wrap up this week’s episode with an update on the commodity markets.
When it comes to corn and soybean futures, Nellinger says there is still “a lot of uncertainty and volatility in the market” but he is seeing some potential upside with President Trump softening on the tariffs against China.
“The stock market seems to be signaling something has changed, and the bean market has been pretty resilient here over the last couple of days,” he says. “There has been a fair amount of activity in planting, and I think that’s why corn has relaxed. We’re ahead of average planting pace at 12% and that’s probably delayed a little bit. So, we should see a lot more progress in next week’s report.”
Nellinger says to keep an eye on the South, where higher-than-average moisture levels have delayed corn planting, and farmers might flip acres to beans or cotton – or even take prevent plant insurance.
Want more Moving Iron? Click this link to watch the episode in full here.
