Why Own a John Deere?

John Deere has an excellent reputation for reliability and solid workhorse-type longlasting machines in all its divisions and particularly in heavy equipment from those I've talked to.  One fella I've known for years, who is an operating engineer by profession and has operated lots of different kinds and who himself owns a dozer, skidder (both John Deere) and an excavator (sadly, not John Deere) says the John Deeres are thought to last 3 times as long as the Japanese and Korean machines made in  the last 15-20 years.  Apparently the Asian machines are only made to run 5000 or so hours for the indigenous market, by which time they automatically run afoul of the Asian EPA anyway and have to be either melted down or exported to some third world country (like Canada!) as grey market goods.  Beware the grey market machines!  Watch out for serial numbers that begin with EH-- that is one giveaway.  From Asian manufacturers like Hitachi Kubota Kobelco etc.  They sometimes sound cheap but it is for good reason--North American legit dealers hate them with a passion.  I hear horror stories how in most cases they won't even sell you the parts or do service for you on them, because they weren't imported legally in the first place, probably loaded into a container destined for gosh knows where in the middle of the night.  So owners of grey market machines have a very limited number of places they can buy parts and usually get hosed on the price as there is so little competition if any.

Of course there is no such thing as a grey market John Deere as they are built and sold in the good old North America.  It is true that there is some cross over with Hitachi in recent years on similar parts etc on some machines, but this still does not result in John Deere grey market, at least not over here.  So if you buy Cat or JD, you don't have to worry about grey market.

Another good thing about John Deere's is, parts are readily available even for older machines as there are so many of them out there still working.  Caterpillar is good too from my research and is also made in North America which is important to those like me who wish to support local jobs and industries.  It would have been my second choice, even tho' Cat parts are pretty darn expensive from what I hear (or at least they used to be, comparitively, some say not so much anymore) moreso than John Deere for some reason.  So far John Deere parts prices seem pretty reasonable to me and of course there is a huge aftermarket and rebuilding service available for John Deere machines which in many cases cuts prices even more. 

As one example of  great support and ease of availability, I was able to go to the John Deere website and order the operators manual, service manual and parts catalog for my 690B even though it is a 20 year old machine--John Deere maintains the availability of stuff like this long after many manufacturers (not mentioning any continents of origin!) have long since lost interest in offering such a service.  And the prices were very reasonable, in fact less than I had paid for comparable manuals for my International IHC 275B tractor, which incidentally is no longer supported by IHC, which probably doesn't technically exist as a company  anymore anyway.  John Deere is at least still very much alive and well.