Page 211 - Peterson 85 Years and Going Strong
P. 211

 For years, we were green as green could be. But
things have changed. Now
I’m on my ninth Claas combine. They just work better in grass seed.
– Mark Parker, owner, Parker Farms
  In 2013, Phelan’s two businesses combined were the single largest purchaser of Massey-Ferguson (AGCO) 3x4 balers in the United States. Both operations typically run in excess of one hundred pieces of equipment, not counting transport trucks. “Peterson has helped us a lot by being an excellent partner. I’ve rented, leased, and bought machinery from them since 2005. They help us understand what option is best based on what we want to do with that equipment.”
“When I first met Rod, he was buying and leasing sixty to a hundred machines a year. And I had sold him some of that equipment,” says Grimes of his years with New Holland and John Deere. When Grimes came to Peterson, Phelan followed, based on all those years of trust. In 2005, Phelan rented fifty machines from Grimes, which brought Peter- son immediate credibility. “I trusted Randy. I knew him well enough to know that he wasn’t going to ask me to use a product if he didn’t believe in it. And the price point was fair.”
Other customers noticed. If Rod Phelan trusted Peterson, then they could too. “Rod gave us an opportunity to quote and sell him basically ev- erything he has. Peterson’s exposure went from virtually nothing to hundreds of machines in the market in three years,” says Grimes. “Rod is a very significant part of our success. He was the main catalyst that got us back into the ag market in Ore- gon. His reputation and regard within the industry
got us exposure that would have taken a lot longer for us to do on our own.”
FROM GREEN TO YELLOW: PARKER FARMS (2014)
Parker Farms is another customer who embraced Peterson early on. Mark Parker was the first farm- er in Oregon to switch from all green to all yel- low equipment—in just twelve months. It simply came down to relationship. “If you don’t like the person you’re dealing with, you’re probably going to quit dealing with them,” says Parker, who runs a three-business operation out of Halsey, Oregon. “The local dealer did some things that irritated me, and I never really got over it. Once Peterson moved in and I got to know Randy [Grimes] and Spencer Whitlow, I really liked those guys. And things just took off from there.”
Parker and his son, Tyler, run a 6,000-acre farming operation in the Willamette Valley, near Albany. And they do just about everything themselves— cultivate, plant, harvest, process, clean, bag, dis- tribute. And they repair their own equipment. “It’s never a forty-hour workweek. During harvest, we work seven days a week, from daylight till dark.” That work ethic has earned a lot of respect from their older neighbors. “Many of the farmers in the area see you working hard and when they retire, they want you to take over their property.” That’s
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