Podcast Episode: The Right to Repair—A Farmer’s Fight for Independence
Ron Ananian, The Car Doctor
In this powerful episode, Ron Ananian shifts the conversation on the Right to Repair from the garage to the fields, speaking with Jared Wilson, a multi-generation farmer from Missouri. Together, they expose the real-world impact of restrictive repair policies on American agriculture and the broader implications for all of us.
Key Highlights:
-
🚜 A Farmer’s Perspective on Right to Repair
Jared Wilson shares firsthand how being unable to fix his own John Deere equipment due to proprietary software and locked diagnostics puts his livelihood at risk. -
🛠️ Dependence on Authorized Dealers
Without access to necessary tools and software, farmers face:-
Costly repairs
-
Long delays during peak seasons
-
Operational shutdowns during planting or harvest windows
-
-
🌾 Beyond Tractors: It’s About Food Security
The episode makes clear that this isn't just a technical issue—it affects:-
National food production
-
Economic resilience in rural communities
-
The independence and sustainability of American farming
-
-
⚖️ Legal and Ethical Questions
Ron and Jared discuss how corporate control over repair rights raises serious concerns about ownership, fairness, and long-term viability. -
🔧 A Mechanic Meets a Farmer
Ron bridges the gap between his world of auto repair and the farmer’s reality, showing how the Right to Repair movement touches nearly every aspect of modern life. -
❗ A Warning for the Future
The conversation ends with a sobering question:
If we lose the right to repair today, what critical systems—agricultural or otherwise—might fail tomorrow?
Listen in to hear how one farmer’s story represents a growing nationwide struggle&mdas
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Ronanian, you can't assume or believe that you're the only
guy to ever see that problem.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
It's a big world out there, and somebody else has
seen it, and the value of community is really coming
full circle. And you can see it in a lot
of the organizations that are being set up for mechanics
to help mechanics the Car Doctor.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
I'm not afraid to drive it from Des Moines to Omaha.
I stay off of Interstate eighty system because when the
semi passes you at seventy mile an hour and you're
doing fifty, it has a tendency to stuck you off
the road.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Well, yeah, it's got to look pretty cool to a
thirty eight Chevy on Rude. That's got to be pretty meat,
you know.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
Welcome to the radio home of Ronanania, The Car Doctor.
Since nineteen ninety one, this is where car owners the
world overturned to for their definitive opinion on automotive repair.
If you're a mechanics giving you a busy signal, pick
up the phone and call in.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
The garage doors are open, but I am here to
take your call at eight five five five six ninety
nine hundred and now running and look at that another
week of.
Speaker 4 (01:16):
Voter repairs, you know this one.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
We're here ready to launch and talk about cars and
fixing cars. But in a way, we're going to change
it up this hour because we're going to be talking
to a gentleman. Well, I'll tell you what. Let's just
bring them right in Jared Wilson. Jared, thanks for taking
the time and spending some time here with us on
the Car Doctors. So we're very happy to have you.
Speaker 5 (01:34):
Yeah, thanks a loll for the invite.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
Ron Jared you are. Let me introduce you this way,
if you could tell us about it. You're a farmer
in Missouri, right, yeah, yeah, and how big is your farm?
Speaker 5 (01:46):
We're down here in Bates County, Missouri and road crop
right at four thousand acres and have a couple hundred
cowcaf bears.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
Right. We're going to talk about that, those those cowcaf
things later on because we were talking about it before
the interview today and it's it's kind of a fact fascinating.
But what led me to Jared Jared was recently in
the news as a result of and you're ready for this, listeners,
where have you heard this before? The Right to Repair?
Jared is helping the charge down there out of Missouri
(02:13):
Way talking about the right to repair and fixing his
John Deere tractor. Right, Jared tell us about it. I mean,
this is this is a big deal.
Speaker 5 (02:22):
Now.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
People complain because they can't get their sixty thousand dollars
car fixed. You've got what at one point was a
six hundred thousand dollars tractor and you can't get that fixed.
Speaker 5 (02:33):
Yeah, it's wild trip. You know. It kind of goes
back to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, as we've seen
these systems go from purely mechanical to so much software
integrated into the machine. You know, these companies have taken
the line that the software is theirs and we just
(02:53):
have an implied use license to use it. And so
with that, you know, they're maintaining that they have some
control over all of the software on the controllers of
these machines. And in twenty fifteen, through a process called
the Section twelve oh one Act, the Librarian of Congress
was allowed to give us an exemption so that we
(03:15):
can repair, diagnose, and even modify the software on these
machines because they're ours. Right, if you own a book,
you have the right to scroll in the margins of
the book. You have the right to highlight portions of
the book. And essentially these manufacturers are stating that we
don't have any of that right, and you know, with
that there's a whole bunch of legal ease. But essentially,
(03:38):
these corporations are hiding behind you know, copyright infringement to
create these giant repair monopolies where they make it so
that only dealership technicians have the ability to plug into
these machines. They actually sell some really expensive software now
that you can lease from them to do that, but
(03:59):
they still don't give us the right to the software.
So let's say I have even a mechanical component that
I need to replace on the device, specifically with the
emissions right like an exhaust gas for circulation VAPP. If
I need to replace that, you know I can unbolt
it and bolt it back on, but in many instances
you actually have to flash the engine control unit with
(04:21):
new software to get the machine to accept that part
and function properly, and only the dealership technicians can do that.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
Well, now wait a minute, now, wait a minute. So
you're driving your your your tractor and this isn't attractor
you called it something else in our pre interview. This
is remember the soybean crop story.
Speaker 5 (04:39):
Problem combines tractor.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Anything, right, right, and this doesn't necessarily have to be emission.
Just to backtrack a quick second, right, I think one
of the stories you told me was that the air
conditioning cut out and it got it got real hot
in the cab because you're out there in the middle
of well, this was the three one hundred acre portion
of the four thousand acre farm, and you're trying to,
(05:04):
you know, do your farming thing. And now it's broken
in the middle of the field and it's yet bringing in.
It will be four weeks before we look at it.
Speaker 5 (05:14):
Well, So that was interesting because that was part of
my retribution from my dealership for speaking out. I had
a couple of agricultural journalists on hand, and my compressor
had quit in my tractor, so I couldn't there was
no air conditioning. So since John Deere has consolidated all
of their dealership networks and made a lot of this
(05:34):
information proprietary, there's a lot less options for repair. So
when I have something fail, you know, like a compressor,
I don't have any recycling capability to extract the coolant
from the AC system, and there's not a lot of
independent mechanics out there, so I'm forced to rely on
my dealership for that. And so when I called in,
the guy at the dealership made me speak to the
(05:55):
store manager, who threatened not to repair my tractor. Said,
you know, you've been causing quite a few issues with us.
I had just testified, you know, in the Missouri House
on behalf of a Riker repair bill, and the same
manager had tried to hire a couple of my employees
away from me while they were at the store buying
proprietary parts for this stuff. So my advocacy has certainly
(06:17):
came at a cost, and you know, even if it
is something that we can repair. And by the way,
Jamie Hyman is the chief technology officer of John Deere.
He did an interview with Verge magazine twenty seventeen or
twenty eighteen, I think it might have been later than that,
and he stated that, you know, farmers can already make
ninety eight percent of the repairs on their own equipment.
(06:38):
And we found, you know, in court filings, and these
are publicly available that John Deere claims that it would
take them thousands of hours for their engineering teams to
figure out what repairs within their network can only be
performed by dealers and what can be performed by farmers.
So John Deeer's claiming that they don't even know. So
the reality is that there's probably a significant number of
(06:59):
these repairs that that you can't make. But back to
this air conditioning thing. Even if this is something that
I could do, which I mean, I could have pulled
the compressor, put a new compressor on, pulled the vacuum
and put coolan in the or put refrigerate in the system, right,
I could have done that. Sure, anything anything trapped in
the system. I didn't have a recycling uh you know,
device to to store that. So and those are really
(07:20):
expensive systems, right, So, uh, there's a limited number of
people who can do that, and even less because of
this this highly monopolized business model that John Deere has
invested in that has really called the independent mechanics out
in the countryside with the know how or the infrastructure
to do some of these repairs.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
So let's just play this back a second. Now, you're
you're you're you're combine tractor or whatever. The big green thing.
There was a lot of money that you know, keeps
the crops coming breaks down in the middle of three
hundred acres if it if it doesn't move in the
case of the ac it would move, but in the
case of a mechanical breakdown, and it's four weeks to
(08:00):
get it to the dealership because they can't look at
it till then. And just like an automobile, manufacturers have
made a proprietary that you know, the local John Deere
independent repair shop can't work on it necessarily. How do
you get it out of the middle of the three
hundred acres without removing you know, if we tow it out,
don't we ruin part of the crops.
Speaker 5 (08:23):
Sometimes that happens. Yeah, you're you're generally not really worried
about running over crops. If it gets to the point
where you've got to extract the machine from the field
because it doesn't have any hydraulic power or there's an
electronic issue. You know, there's procedures for taking steering cylinders loose,
and you know, attaching another hydraulic pump to be able
(08:44):
to get an articulated tractor to move, you've got to
toe it. I mean, there's a you know, it takes
half a day sometimes to get one of these machines
loaded up on a semi and extracted from a field
when they go down. So always trying to do field
repairs if you can to get it, to get it,
you know, movable. But some times that just it's not enough,
especially if you have to you know, overhaul a major
(09:04):
component or something. It's just too big to do some
of that stuff out in the field.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
Jared, is this a Jared Wilson problem, you know, Jared
Wilson's farm, Missouri Way Or are farmers across the country
going through this?
Speaker 5 (09:17):
No, Yeah, it's it's endemic. You know. The FTC is
also filed suit in this matter with attorneys general from
several states. They had tons of comments come in from
farmers regarding this issue. We've got, you know, over a
dozen people on this class action suit in federal court
that I'm a part of. So no, and you know,
(09:38):
I have neighbors and see the trials and problems that
they have. But it's really complicated, and there's some really
smart people that have set in their suits and boardrooms
and they thought about how to extract the most money
out of consumers that they can. And so when you
talk about the complexity of this. It really takes some
attention and some research to figure out because the problem
(10:01):
is it's not a surface level thing. And one of
the things that I've noticed is that people say, well,
just buy a different brand, right. Well, the truth is,
at the scale that I'm doing things, there's only three
manufacturers in the country that make the products that I need,
and that's John Deere, ad Co and c Inach Industrial.
And it's a classic oligopoly. John Deeer has by far
(10:23):
the highest market share of this equipment in North America,
and these other companies, rather than expand their repair policies
to try to gain market share, seem content to adopt
and mirror the oligopoly leader John Deear's market practices and
extract money in the same way because apparently they think
(10:43):
that's more profitable for them for gaining market share. And
you know, it's really hard for somebody to wake up
and say, well, I'm going to start an agricultural company
to build equipment and compete with these people, because the
barriers the entry are just so high, not only in
creating the factory to build the machines, but also in
creating the network of dealerships to sell and supply carts.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
It would be like creating a car company, like like
Tucker right back in the forties, just trying to come
up with his own brand of cars and owned plants
and uh, you know, to bring an independent car to market. Hey,
we're talking with Jared Wilson. He's a farmer out of Missouri,
and we're talking about the Right to Repair in some
of the problems that have extended into Jared's life as
(11:25):
a result of, you know, lack of being able to
fix the equipment he uses to harvest this crop. I'm
run an Ady in the car Doctor. We'll be back
right after this.
Speaker 4 (11:32):
Don't go anywhere, that's right.
Speaker 5 (11:43):
If you call and we're not live, you can leave
a message and we'll call you back to get you
on the air with Ron eight five five five six
zero nine nine zero zero. Speaking of Ron here, he.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
Is run an Ady in the Car Doctor. Here, we're
talking with Jared Wilson. He's a farmer out of Missouri,
recently in the news with about the Right to Repair
Act and how it's affecting him and everybody, all his
farmers around him and across the country with regard to
their tractors and combines and it's it's issues like this. Jared,
thanks for sticking with me during the break. You know,
you recently had your combine John Deere tractor, i'll call
(12:17):
it break down in the middle of a soybean harvest,
right three hundred acres of soybean crop that you were harvesting,
and tell us that story, you know, because because now
this is becoming it's not just hey my tractor broke.
Now it's I'm losing the crop and I can't feed
America anymore.
Speaker 4 (12:34):
That's a problem.
Speaker 3 (12:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (12:36):
No, I had over three Holland acres of soybeans at
that point. We just we just switched over from corn
to soybeans. My machine wasn't running properly. My combine. So
this is a big five hundred and forty three horse
combine with a forty five foot draper head on it
that you harvest soybeans with. And I didn't get any
error codes to start it. Just the machine didn't have
the power that it should. So I turned it off
(12:59):
and on against several times because it turns out that works.
And finally I got it to give me a code
that said I was de rated and the delta pressure
sensor needed attention. So you know, on the emissions of
these you have a couple delta pressure sensors that show
the differences in pressure on the exhaust whenever it's performing
regenerations on the soot canister. So, long story short, we
(13:26):
called John Dear said, you know, do we just replace
the sensor. Yeah, you can do that, So we did,
but they didn't realize there were two sensors on it,
so we had to drive like two hours to get
the second sensor. That didn't solve the problem. Then it's
out of my hands. Those are about the only things
I could do without a John Deere dealer. So the
dealer came out and there was something called a PIT,
(13:47):
which is a product improvement program, And essentially these machines
all have flaws when they come out from the factory,
and as you know, customers run these machines. John Gear
is able to see flaws across a product line and
in some cases, rather than issuing in general recall, they'll
issue what's called a fixes fail PIT, And what that
means is you don't get it fixed until you're out
(14:10):
in the field and it fails on you. And they
don't tell you about these until the pips are completed.
I've tried to ask my local dealership about what potential
pips are on my machines, just so I can get
a head start, you know, in off season work, and
they won't tell you what those are. So the PIPS
said that my ECU might be bad, the engine control unit.
(14:31):
So the technician took four he took It took three
or four days for an ECU to come in for
the technician to come out and put on the machine.
I could have physically put the ECU on the machine,
but he had to upload the payload file the software.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
Right, you can't flash it standing in the middle of
a field. You don't have the tool it.
Speaker 5 (14:49):
Yeah, exactly, well I can't. I can't do it at all.
I don't have the tooling in any place. Only the
dealership technician does. So he flashes the ECU and it's
not that wasn't the problem. The next thing in his toolkit,
his dichotomy tree of the diagnostic software he was using,
was to put a new exhaust gas for circulation valve
(15:09):
on it, which he did, and then he had to
flash the ECU again because that's you know, that's a
part that you have to pair with the ECU, I guess,
and that fixed the problem. And so this is just
an intersection of so many things. Michael Reagan, the former
administrator for the EPA, said to the National Farmers Union
(15:29):
in a letter in twenty twenty three. But according to
the Clean Air Act, manufacturers are supposed to provide us
all of the diagnostic software and tools necessary to fix
the emissions systems on these machines, because what happens if
you don't allow people to fix them, well, you had
delete them. And I'm tempted to delete mind, because it
took four days to get this thing fixed and I
(15:51):
couldn't do anything about it. And so what that means
is that as my soybean pods were drying out, I
had pods just opening and being shattering and falling on
the ground and there's there's no way to get that
product back. So the cost to me was tremendous. And
even knowing that there was a pip out regarding the
engine controller. Luckily, mine isn't the components that failed on me.
(16:14):
But I've got to wonder how many people that did
fail on and what the time was for them to
get that part fixed out in the field that no
one had told them was a potential failure point. And
what was it? Was it a manufacturing defect, was it
a software defect. We're not getting any explanations from the
manufacturers or third parties that get to evaluate some of
these problems. And you know, the manufacturer is a bad actor,
(16:38):
and they don't really care because they get to make
more money repairing this stuff than if they came up
and figured out what the actual cause of some of
these problems were trying.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
Or trying or trying to fix this stuff, which it
doesn't sound like they're doing too well.
Speaker 5 (16:53):
No, that's exactly right. And you know, the time it
takes to do this is enormous, and the economic loss
is enormous, and I lose money, me and John gar profits.
And there's so many scenarios where that's true.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
You know, Jared, we're talking with Jared Wilson, he's a
farmer at in Missouri. We're talking about the right to repair. Okay, Jared,
So when we come back, I want to talk about
a couple of things. Number One, I want to do
a little bit of a deeper dive into the economics
of all this because I think what everybody has to
understand is you know, when your tractor is down and
(17:25):
you know you're not harvesting your crops, there's an economic
loss on your side, all right. And that's on top
of yeah, the mechanical loss of the tractor, the cost
to repair the tractor and what that takes. That's that's
number one. And then number two if the tractor is
laid up tied up for too long a period of
time and they have to come out and get it,
(17:45):
the amount of crops that get ruined in the course
of the field. And then you know, number three I'm
thinking about, you know, if I lose a piece of
equipment in the shop, what do I do next when
I need it the next day? And the subsequent losses
of dat occur. So there's a lot of economic impact
here that I want to cover and talk about. We'll
do that on the return on Ronini and the card
Ockera here with Jared Wilson, and we'll both return right
(18:07):
after this. Don't go anyere. Having a great conversation this
hour with Jared Wilson. He's a farm from Missouri, is
involved in the National Right to Repair as it applies
(18:27):
to tractors, combines, you know, the agricultural equipment that we
we Americans, we get, we get to eat because of
gentlemen like this Jared. When we pulled away, we were
getting into the economics of this right you've had. You
were telling us about a couple of instances where you know,
your combine, your tract or your various equipment breaks down
and it takes it takes hours, days, sometimes longer. Sometimes
(18:49):
you've lost crops.
Speaker 4 (18:50):
You've had a.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
Big economic impact. That economic impact that affects us. I mean,
it affects you obviously firsthand, but that kind of wheedles
down to the American taxpayer right because of the lack
of right to repair support for farmers. How is that
affecting you and then us?
Speaker 5 (19:09):
Well, I mean, at my level, I'm trying to at
least break even every year. Would we'd like to do
more than that, but sometimes it doesn't work out that way.
And you know, the American people is invested in the
American farmer continuing to produce a crop every year. And
one of the biggest things that we do as a
country is the Federal Crop Insurance program. So we have
(19:31):
these insurance companies that provide crop insurance to farmers for
a variety of road crops. And you know what that
does is it spreads risk. So you know, if we
have people that are planting in Missouri and Iowa and Illinois,
maybe people and some of those more marginal plots of
(19:52):
ground wouldn't be planting there if we didn't have an
insurance program backing them. And you say, well, you know,
is that good for the American public? And I would
say that it is because we have so many different
factors that can you know, cause a loss of a harvest,
and so we want to spread production wherever we can
throughout the country. But in the end, if I'm not profitable,
(20:12):
the American taxpayer is you know, still paying some of
those subsidy dollars into the into these insurance programs. For me,
we get direct direct payment assistance if we have a
disaster year where it's clear that we had, you know,
a regional event where everyone didn't make any money, and
the taxpayer's paying for that, you know, billions of dollars
(20:34):
a year, sometimes thirty forty billion dollars.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
And so wait a minute, so you're telling me, and
I'm just going to paint the scenario here. Your tractor
breaks down. Your tractor broke down in the middle of
the three thousand acres of soybeans, right, and you couldn't
You couldn't get it fixed quick enough, and it took
a while as a result of lack of right to
repair as a lack as a result of you not
(20:58):
getting the proper information the way an independent repair shop.
I'm thinking about this listening to you talk. I as
an independent repair shop, I think I have access to
more repair information than you do.
Speaker 5 (21:10):
I'm certain you do for the things that you work on.
I mean, at any price point, I can't get the
software for my machines.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
Right, So you the guy who's feeding me, to be
as direct as I can for the guy who's feeding
me and everybody else. You can't fix your tractor. You
have a bad year financially because of the lack of
right to repair. Correct me where I'm wrong. I'm just
trying to understand this and make everybody aware where you
(21:38):
can't feed me. You have a bad year. That's costing
me the American taxpayer more money, right it is.
Speaker 5 (21:47):
And you know the companies that are maintaining this equipment,
they're getting to make even more repair dollars on the
back end of that, and they get to keep their
prices high because I'm receiving subsidy money that keeps me going,
and so it justifies this high price and high costs
for all of these repair tools that they're selling me.
So it's just a big it's a scam, that is
(22:09):
what it is, right, and no one is looking into
it or doing anything about it. I mean, we've got
several cases in the federal courts now, but those take years,
and we really need legislation that enshrine some of these
rights in law and deals with these thorny, you know,
copyright arguments that are going to take some doing and
they're going to take some legislation to sort this stuff out.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
So this is actually a monopoly, if you think about it.
Speaker 5 (22:37):
Which is it? It is, and that's that's one of
the tenets of these lawsuits is that it's it's a
very direct monopoly on the repair of the agricultural equipment.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
You know, And that's why you know, I, as an independent,
I'm supposed to and I do. Now for me, it
comes at a price, and it's it's more money than
I care to think about some days. But at least
I have access to the software to the OE software
where to the manufacturer software to be able to repair
these vehicles. And you know, the service information, it's out there,
(23:06):
it's been made available to me, and now it becomes
a business decision. But I mean, I don't necessarily see
Jared Wilson farmer becoming his own repair shop. But you know,
maybe there's a John Smith in is it Butler, Missouri?
Speaker 5 (23:23):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (23:23):
No, absolutely right, And maybe maybe John Smith becomes the
independent John Deere tractor repair guy and he buys the
five thousand dollars scan tool and he buys the annual
software subscription just sort of like the same thing independent
repair shops do, but for farm equipment. And that's that's
really what you guys are asking for, right to get
(23:44):
to that level, and you don't even have that.
Speaker 5 (23:47):
No, we don't have that. And it comes with an
onorous set of conditions when you think about it. I
think it was in twenty twenty two or twenty twenty
three when I don't know if you read about the
Russians stolen a bunch of Ukrainian tractors when they invaded Ukraine,
and John Deear actually remotely operated a kill switch and
(24:08):
made those machines inoperable. Well, the reality is John Dear
didn't know that those tractors were going to end up
in Russian hands when they produced them. But they had
a kill switch on all of our machines that would
enable them to remotely disconnect them. And so you can
think about the security implications of that. Who's monitoring John
Deere's network security to make sure that a bad actor
(24:30):
doesn't switch off all of our machines one, Well, yeah,
what if they no external check them?
Speaker 2 (24:36):
What if they get hacked? I mean in twenty exactly
in twenty sixteen, I think it was Chrysler got hacked.
Two guys showed how you could hack a Chrysler, a
Jeep Grand Cherokee and take over the actual operation of
the vehicle. And as a result, that's why now when
I log into a Chrysler product, I have to have
(24:56):
an authentication protocol where my scan tool shakes hands with
the cloud. The cloud recognizes that it's wrong and they
give me access to the vehicle to go in and
diagnose it. So, if Chrysler can get hacked, John Deer
can get hacked, and now we've got a bigger problem.
You know, this is a matter of national security. I
think my two cents.
Speaker 5 (25:15):
Well, the magnitude a bunch of Chrysler cars going offline
is pretty indescribable, But the magnitude of what we grow
our food with going offline at the wrong time of
year is catastrophic to think about.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
You know, it's it's it is catastrophic. You are telling
me a story and I don't know if we'll finish
it in this segment, Jared, So watch the clock. But
you were telling me a story beginning of the show
about I'm going to use the wrong words, So the
cow thing, right, I want everybody to understand what it
is that Jared Wilson does. So Jared does he's the
(25:52):
first guy in the line of producing a cow where
we can get stakes from. Is that a fair statement.
Speaker 5 (26:00):
Yeah, So, I mean we have cows or heifers that
get bread to bulls, and then they'll have calves, and
then those calves whenever they're weaned, you know, from the
mama cows, they'll go to either a backgrounder to put
weight on on you know, the front hill grasslands, or
they may go straight to a finishing yard. You know,
think about a big confined animal feeding operation. Where they
(26:20):
get fed out and then eventually slaughtered. So I'm the
guy that breeds the cows or the heippers and then
has the calves that go on down the production line.
Speaker 2 (26:30):
So if you go out of business, we're not getting
vegetables and we're not getting steak in its simple ast form.
Speaker 5 (26:39):
Yeah right, Or you know, we have continued consolidation within
my market segment, and we just have bigger and bigger
farms with all of the known problems that that creates.
Speaker 2 (26:51):
Right right, Hey, Jared, We're gonna we're gonna pull over,
take a pause. When we come back, we're going to
conclude and wrap all this up, and I want to
thank everybody for being staying with us this hour. I
know this is a different type of car doctor what
you guys normally expect, but you know, the key here
is right to repair for independent repair shops, right to
repair for farmers. It is a critical thing and it's
(27:11):
a matter of national security, and we're just gonna finish
talking about that in our next segment. I'm running Naming
of the Car Doctor. I'm here with Jared Wilson. He's
been very kind and generous with his time today, and
we'll both return right after this don't go away closing
(27:33):
argument time run a naming the car doctor here with
Jared Wilson or Missouri farmer right to repair as it
affects farmers like him and everywhere else in this great
country of ours. Jared, I had a fuck. You know
how long you been a farmer?
Speaker 5 (27:46):
I pretty well my whole life. I mean, I started
writing on the tractor when I was two or three
years old, and I first remember driving a tractor when
I was ten or eleven. But for this NBC thing
we did, my mom got some old photographs out of
I was pictured in front of this big three hundred
and twenty five horse Steiger when I was like four
or five, and she said, a couple of years after that,
I was actually running that tractors right, well, longer than
(28:10):
I remember.
Speaker 2 (28:11):
And how long has the family been, you know, farmers generation?
Speaker 5 (28:15):
I've yeah, at least five. I'm at least the fifth generation.
Speaker 2 (28:18):
Wow, that's crazy. That goes back to the mid eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 5 (28:23):
Longer than that, No, probably late eighteen hundreds into the
early twentieth century, but it could have been before that.
But that's just all I've got any records or family
you know, word of mouth sport still.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
A little further back than yesterday, you know, and they
didn't have half these problems, right, So you know, what
can we tell the listeners in our closing couple of minutes,
you know, is it is is this just one guy
complaining or is this a real problem?
Speaker 5 (28:53):
No, this is an endemic problem, and it's not just
in my industry. But you can see how, you know,
think about a guy who gets up in a blizzard
to go feed his cattle lets the tractor doesn't work,
and he can't fix his tractor, his cattle die, and
that raises the price of your food at the grocery store.
So it affects him, it affects you. And you know,
(29:13):
when it comes to our food, it's not the same
thing as your iPhone dying. It's a different level of importance.
And I just want people to be aware of that.
But also your iPhone dying is important too, and we
should just make it so that manufacturers are incentivized to
let us repair our own things, and maybe as a
product of that, they'll make things more durable so they last.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
You know how big of a problem this is the
right to repair and well for Jared, I'm directing this
is Jared, and then I'm directing this at you, the listener.
I ask Jared, you know, normally we close our segments
with where can the listeners go get information? And out
of all the questions I've posed to Jared in our
in our short two week relationship, here I'm culminating here
(29:55):
but not ending here, Jared said, there isn't one there.
There isn't a website specifically geared to help the American
farmer about right to repair. Now, there's there's there's one
for general right to repair. Right, there's there's a right
to repair website. Is it right to repair dot org?
Speaker 3 (30:14):
Well?
Speaker 5 (30:15):
Yeah, I mean I would direct people to iFixit dot com,
the Electronic Frontier Foundation, or repair dot org. These are
all really good groups, and I'm sure that there are
others out there, but you know, I know the three
of those. And the reality is it costs money. It
costs money to do these twelve oh one filings. It
costs money to file against these big you know, multinational corporations.
(30:37):
Everything in our society takes money. But hopefully we can
get some legislation pass that you know, can circumvent some
of that but they still have lots of lobbyists, and
so you know, calling your local elected representatives and officials,
you know, proclaiming how you want right to repair legislation
passed is one of the most important things that you can.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
Do, because it's not just affecting cars, it's affecting everything.
It's affecting the food we eat, the cars we ride in,
as you say, our iPhones not being able to repair them.
You know, it becomes it becomes a big issue. You
buy a new tractor next year, Jared.
Speaker 5 (31:12):
We don't buy a lot of new things here.
Speaker 2 (31:14):
Well, well, a replacement tractor.
Speaker 5 (31:17):
I'm just no, things are not very good in this
pharm economy. So I think we're probably just gonna run
what we have.
Speaker 2 (31:23):
What's a used combine cost these days? A new one
six hundred grand. You told me that.
Speaker 5 (31:29):
Six to eight hundred. The big ones are over a million.
Could use one, it'd be three four hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 2 (31:35):
So we're just going to go out and buy a
used four hundred thousand dollar piece of equipment and try
and make it work with software and manufacturing information that
you can't get access to to grow soybeans to feed
the American public.
Speaker 5 (31:50):
It gives you the warm food, doesn't it.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
Yeah, I tell you what, God bless your brother. You're
doing a heck of a job.
Speaker 5 (31:56):
You know.
Speaker 2 (31:57):
I'm just curious for my own information, probably nothing to
do with this interview. What time does the average American
farmer get up in the morning.
Speaker 5 (32:04):
I'd say it depends on what time of year, what
kind of farmer they are. I generally am up seven
eight o'clock, but sometimes I run late. Sometimes I'll run
till three or four in the morning if I'm in
the field.
Speaker 2 (32:16):
Right right, Well, it's real dedication, Jared. It's been a pleasure, sir,
And uh, thanks a lot. You know, you'll we'll have
you back again, and you got to keep us updated
and let us know what's going on. But it's been
an absolute pleasure. Thank you for all you do. I'll
ron An Ady and the car doctor. We are back
right after this, and of course, once again I want
(32:44):
to say thank you to my special guests this hour,
Jared Wilson. You know there's there's a man right he's
out there plowing the fields every day, trying to make
a living and feed us and take care of us.
Like so many of the other American farmers, and yet
they can't. They're six hundred one thousand or four hundred
thousand used or three hundred thousand used, whatever breaks, and
(33:04):
they can't get support from a manufacturer. And you know,
they have to either leave it out in the field
and hope somebody shows up to fix it, or they've
got to get it out of the field and take
it somewhere. And I can tell you from the pre
interview conversation I had with Jared, you know, we're not
talking about towing it out of the field on the
back of a flatbed. We're talking about, as he said it,
(33:24):
I believe he said it in the interview, that it's
you know, it can be a half a day thing
to get a vehicle out of the field and take
it somewhere. And then taking it somewhere it could be
a half hour away, it could be an hour away.
It's not it's not like they're local. It's not that
it's it's so quick and easy, and then they don't
even look at it for another two or three weeks
or four weeks, or you know, whatever mood besets them.
(33:45):
Because it doesn't sound like Jared's too popular with John
Deer folks anyway, unfortunately for him. So there's a guy
who's baring the brunt. By the way, I should also
say that, you know, if John Deere wants John Deere
is welcome to come on board. I'd like to hear
their side of it. I'm sure the listener would like
to hear their side of it too, But I don't
think there's a big case for them to stand on here.
You know, it's a monopoly being created. It is in
(34:08):
violation of right to repair. From my perspective as a mechanic,
having dealt with right to repair for so many years,
that you can't do what they're doing. You're making it.
You're making it difficult, if not impossible, for something that
you want to be serviced and taking care of. So anyway,
I appreciate everybody's time this hour. I appreciate your patience
and a little different kind of a car doctor. Next
(34:29):
week we'll go back to the usual stuff, the phone calls,
the questions, the comments. But till then, as always, I'm
here for you. I am Ron and Andy and the
car doctor, reminding each and every one of you good
mechanics aren't expensive, they're priceless.
Speaker 4 (34:41):
See it
Ronanian, you can't assume or believe that you're the only
guy to ever see that problem.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
It's a big world out there, and somebody else has
seen it, and the value of community is really coming
full circle. And you can see it in a lot
of the organizations that are being set up for mechanics
to help mechanics the Car Doctor.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
I'm not afraid to drive it from Des Moines to Omaha.
I stay off of Interstate eighty system because when the
semi passes you at seventy mile an hour and you're
doing fifty, it has a tendency to stuck you off
the road.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Well, yeah, it's got to look pretty cool to a
thirty eight Chevy on Rude. That's got to be pretty meat,
you know.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
Welcome to the radio home of Ronanania, The Car Doctor.
Since nineteen ninety one, this is where car owners the
world overturned to for their definitive opinion on automotive repair.
If you're a mechanics giving you a busy signal, pick
up the phone and call in.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
The garage doors are open, but I am here to
take your call at eight five five five six ninety
nine hundred and now running and look at that another
week of.
Speaker 4 (01:16):
Voter repairs, you know this one.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
We're here ready to launch and talk about cars and
fixing cars. But in a way, we're going to change
it up this hour because we're going to be talking
to a gentleman. Well, I'll tell you what. Let's just
bring them right in Jared Wilson. Jared, thanks for taking
the time and spending some time here with us on
the Car Doctors. So we're very happy to have you.
Speaker 5 (01:34):
Yeah, thanks a loll for the invite.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
Ron Jared you are. Let me introduce you this way,
if you could tell us about it. You're a farmer
in Missouri, right, yeah, yeah, and how big is your farm?
Speaker 5 (01:46):
We're down here in Bates County, Missouri and road crop
right at four thousand acres and have a couple hundred
cowcaf bears.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
Right. We're going to talk about that, those those cowcaf
things later on because we were talking about it before
the interview today and it's it's kind of a fact fascinating.
But what led me to Jared Jared was recently in
the news as a result of and you're ready for this, listeners,
where have you heard this before? The Right to Repair?
Jared is helping the charge down there out of Missouri
(02:13):
Way talking about the right to repair and fixing his
John Deere tractor. Right, Jared tell us about it. I mean,
this is this is a big deal.
Speaker 5 (02:22):
Now.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
People complain because they can't get their sixty thousand dollars
car fixed. You've got what at one point was a
six hundred thousand dollars tractor and you can't get that fixed.
Speaker 5 (02:33):
Yeah, it's wild trip. You know. It kind of goes
back to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, as we've seen
these systems go from purely mechanical to so much software
integrated into the machine. You know, these companies have taken
the line that the software is theirs and we just
(02:53):
have an implied use license to use it. And so
with that, you know, they're maintaining that they have some
control over all of the software on the controllers of
these machines. And in twenty fifteen, through a process called
the Section twelve oh one Act, the Librarian of Congress
was allowed to give us an exemption so that we
(03:15):
can repair, diagnose, and even modify the software on these
machines because they're ours. Right, if you own a book,
you have the right to scroll in the margins of
the book. You have the right to highlight portions of
the book. And essentially these manufacturers are stating that we
don't have any of that right, and you know, with
that there's a whole bunch of legal ease. But essentially,
(03:38):
these corporations are hiding behind you know, copyright infringement to
create these giant repair monopolies where they make it so
that only dealership technicians have the ability to plug into
these machines. They actually sell some really expensive software now
that you can lease from them to do that, but
(03:59):
they still don't give us the right to the software.
So let's say I have even a mechanical component that
I need to replace on the device, specifically with the
emissions right like an exhaust gas for circulation VAPP. If
I need to replace that, you know I can unbolt
it and bolt it back on, but in many instances
you actually have to flash the engine control unit with
(04:21):
new software to get the machine to accept that part
and function properly, and only the dealership technicians can do that.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
Well, now wait a minute, now, wait a minute. So
you're driving your your your tractor and this isn't attractor
you called it something else in our pre interview. This
is remember the soybean crop story.
Speaker 5 (04:39):
Problem combines tractor.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Anything, right, right, and this doesn't necessarily have to be emission.
Just to backtrack a quick second, right, I think one
of the stories you told me was that the air
conditioning cut out and it got it got real hot
in the cab because you're out there in the middle
of well, this was the three one hundred acre portion
of the four thousand acre farm, and you're trying to,
(05:04):
you know, do your farming thing. And now it's broken
in the middle of the field and it's yet bringing in.
It will be four weeks before we look at it.
Speaker 5 (05:14):
Well, So that was interesting because that was part of
my retribution from my dealership for speaking out. I had
a couple of agricultural journalists on hand, and my compressor
had quit in my tractor, so I couldn't there was
no air conditioning. So since John Deere has consolidated all
of their dealership networks and made a lot of this
(05:34):
information proprietary, there's a lot less options for repair. So
when I have something fail, you know, like a compressor,
I don't have any recycling capability to extract the coolant
from the AC system, and there's not a lot of
independent mechanics out there, so I'm forced to rely on
my dealership for that. And so when I called in,
the guy at the dealership made me speak to the
(05:55):
store manager, who threatened not to repair my tractor. Said,
you know, you've been causing quite a few issues with us.
I had just testified, you know, in the Missouri House
on behalf of a Riker repair bill, and the same
manager had tried to hire a couple of my employees
away from me while they were at the store buying
proprietary parts for this stuff. So my advocacy has certainly
(06:17):
came at a cost, and you know, even if it
is something that we can repair. And by the way,
Jamie Hyman is the chief technology officer of John Deere.
He did an interview with Verge magazine twenty seventeen or
twenty eighteen, I think it might have been later than that,
and he stated that, you know, farmers can already make
ninety eight percent of the repairs on their own equipment.
(06:38):
And we found, you know, in court filings, and these
are publicly available that John Deere claims that it would
take them thousands of hours for their engineering teams to
figure out what repairs within their network can only be
performed by dealers and what can be performed by farmers.
So John Deeer's claiming that they don't even know. So
the reality is that there's probably a significant number of
(06:59):
these repairs that that you can't make. But back to
this air conditioning thing. Even if this is something that
I could do, which I mean, I could have pulled
the compressor, put a new compressor on, pulled the vacuum
and put coolan in the or put refrigerate in the system, right,
I could have done that. Sure, anything anything trapped in
the system. I didn't have a recycling uh you know,
device to to store that. So and those are really
(07:20):
expensive systems, right, So, uh, there's a limited number of
people who can do that, and even less because of
this this highly monopolized business model that John Deere has
invested in that has really called the independent mechanics out
in the countryside with the know how or the infrastructure
to do some of these repairs.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
So let's just play this back a second. Now, you're
you're you're you're combine tractor or whatever. The big green thing.
There was a lot of money that you know, keeps
the crops coming breaks down in the middle of three
hundred acres if it if it doesn't move in the
case of the ac it would move, but in the
case of a mechanical breakdown, and it's four weeks to
(08:00):
get it to the dealership because they can't look at
it till then. And just like an automobile, manufacturers have
made a proprietary that you know, the local John Deere
independent repair shop can't work on it necessarily. How do
you get it out of the middle of the three
hundred acres without removing you know, if we tow it out,
don't we ruin part of the crops.
Speaker 5 (08:23):
Sometimes that happens. Yeah, you're you're generally not really worried
about running over crops. If it gets to the point
where you've got to extract the machine from the field
because it doesn't have any hydraulic power or there's an
electronic issue. You know, there's procedures for taking steering cylinders loose,
and you know, attaching another hydraulic pump to be able
(08:44):
to get an articulated tractor to move, you've got to
toe it. I mean, there's a you know, it takes
half a day sometimes to get one of these machines
loaded up on a semi and extracted from a field
when they go down. So always trying to do field
repairs if you can to get it, to get it,
you know, movable. But some times that just it's not enough,
especially if you have to you know, overhaul a major
(09:04):
component or something. It's just too big to do some
of that stuff out in the field.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
Jared, is this a Jared Wilson problem, you know, Jared
Wilson's farm, Missouri Way Or are farmers across the country
going through this?
Speaker 5 (09:17):
No, Yeah, it's it's endemic. You know. The FTC is
also filed suit in this matter with attorneys general from
several states. They had tons of comments come in from
farmers regarding this issue. We've got, you know, over a
dozen people on this class action suit in federal court
that I'm a part of. So no, and you know,
(09:38):
I have neighbors and see the trials and problems that
they have. But it's really complicated, and there's some really
smart people that have set in their suits and boardrooms
and they thought about how to extract the most money
out of consumers that they can. And so when you
talk about the complexity of this. It really takes some
attention and some research to figure out because the problem
(10:01):
is it's not a surface level thing. And one of
the things that I've noticed is that people say, well,
just buy a different brand, right. Well, the truth is,
at the scale that I'm doing things, there's only three
manufacturers in the country that make the products that I need,
and that's John Deere, ad Co and c Inach Industrial.
And it's a classic oligopoly. John Deeer has by far
(10:23):
the highest market share of this equipment in North America,
and these other companies, rather than expand their repair policies
to try to gain market share, seem content to adopt
and mirror the oligopoly leader John Deear's market practices and
extract money in the same way because apparently they think
(10:43):
that's more profitable for them for gaining market share. And
you know, it's really hard for somebody to wake up
and say, well, I'm going to start an agricultural company
to build equipment and compete with these people, because the
barriers the entry are just so high, not only in
creating the factory to build the machines, but also in
creating the network of dealerships to sell and supply carts.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
It would be like creating a car company, like like
Tucker right back in the forties, just trying to come
up with his own brand of cars and owned plants
and uh, you know, to bring an independent car to market. Hey,
we're talking with Jared Wilson. He's a farmer out of Missouri,
and we're talking about the Right to Repair in some
of the problems that have extended into Jared's life as
(11:25):
a result of, you know, lack of being able to
fix the equipment he uses to harvest this crop. I'm
run an Ady in the car Doctor. We'll be back
right after this.
Speaker 4 (11:32):
Don't go anywhere, that's right.
Speaker 5 (11:43):
If you call and we're not live, you can leave
a message and we'll call you back to get you
on the air with Ron eight five five five six
zero nine nine zero zero. Speaking of Ron here, he.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
Is run an Ady in the Car Doctor. Here, we're
talking with Jared Wilson. He's a farmer out of Missouri,
recently in the news with about the Right to Repair
Act and how it's affecting him and everybody, all his
farmers around him and across the country with regard to
their tractors and combines and it's it's issues like this. Jared,
thanks for sticking with me during the break. You know,
you recently had your combine John Deere tractor, i'll call
(12:17):
it break down in the middle of a soybean harvest,
right three hundred acres of soybean crop that you were harvesting,
and tell us that story, you know, because because now
this is becoming it's not just hey my tractor broke.
Now it's I'm losing the crop and I can't feed
America anymore.
Speaker 4 (12:34):
That's a problem.
Speaker 3 (12:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (12:36):
No, I had over three Holland acres of soybeans at
that point. We just we just switched over from corn
to soybeans. My machine wasn't running properly. My combine. So
this is a big five hundred and forty three horse
combine with a forty five foot draper head on it
that you harvest soybeans with. And I didn't get any
error codes to start it. Just the machine didn't have
the power that it should. So I turned it off
(12:59):
and on against several times because it turns out that works.
And finally I got it to give me a code
that said I was de rated and the delta pressure
sensor needed attention. So you know, on the emissions of
these you have a couple delta pressure sensors that show
the differences in pressure on the exhaust whenever it's performing
regenerations on the soot canister. So, long story short, we
(13:26):
called John Dear said, you know, do we just replace
the sensor. Yeah, you can do that, So we did,
but they didn't realize there were two sensors on it,
so we had to drive like two hours to get
the second sensor. That didn't solve the problem. Then it's
out of my hands. Those are about the only things
I could do without a John Deere dealer. So the
dealer came out and there was something called a PIT,
(13:47):
which is a product improvement program, And essentially these machines
all have flaws when they come out from the factory,
and as you know, customers run these machines. John Gear
is able to see flaws across a product line and
in some cases, rather than issuing in general recall, they'll
issue what's called a fixes fail PIT, And what that
means is you don't get it fixed until you're out
(14:10):
in the field and it fails on you. And they
don't tell you about these until the pips are completed.
I've tried to ask my local dealership about what potential
pips are on my machines, just so I can get
a head start, you know, in off season work, and
they won't tell you what those are. So the PIPS
said that my ECU might be bad, the engine control unit.
(14:31):
So the technician took four he took It took three
or four days for an ECU to come in for
the technician to come out and put on the machine.
I could have physically put the ECU on the machine,
but he had to upload the payload file the software.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
Right, you can't flash it standing in the middle of
a field. You don't have the tool it.
Speaker 5 (14:49):
Yeah, exactly, well I can't. I can't do it at all.
I don't have the tooling in any place. Only the
dealership technician does. So he flashes the ECU and it's
not that wasn't the problem. The next thing in his toolkit,
his dichotomy tree of the diagnostic software he was using,
was to put a new exhaust gas for circulation valve
(15:09):
on it, which he did, and then he had to
flash the ECU again because that's you know, that's a
part that you have to pair with the ECU, I guess,
and that fixed the problem. And so this is just
an intersection of so many things. Michael Reagan, the former
administrator for the EPA, said to the National Farmers Union
(15:29):
in a letter in twenty twenty three. But according to
the Clean Air Act, manufacturers are supposed to provide us
all of the diagnostic software and tools necessary to fix
the emissions systems on these machines, because what happens if
you don't allow people to fix them, well, you had
delete them. And I'm tempted to delete mind, because it
took four days to get this thing fixed and I
(15:51):
couldn't do anything about it. And so what that means
is that as my soybean pods were drying out, I
had pods just opening and being shattering and falling on
the ground and there's there's no way to get that
product back. So the cost to me was tremendous. And
even knowing that there was a pip out regarding the
engine controller. Luckily, mine isn't the components that failed on me.
(16:14):
But I've got to wonder how many people that did
fail on and what the time was for them to
get that part fixed out in the field that no
one had told them was a potential failure point. And
what was it? Was it a manufacturing defect, was it
a software defect. We're not getting any explanations from the
manufacturers or third parties that get to evaluate some of
these problems. And you know, the manufacturer is a bad actor,
(16:38):
and they don't really care because they get to make
more money repairing this stuff than if they came up
and figured out what the actual cause of some of
these problems were trying.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
Or trying or trying to fix this stuff, which it
doesn't sound like they're doing too well.
Speaker 5 (16:53):
No, that's exactly right. And you know, the time it
takes to do this is enormous, and the economic loss
is enormous, and I lose money, me and John gar profits.
And there's so many scenarios where that's true.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
You know, Jared, we're talking with Jared Wilson, he's a
farmer at in Missouri. We're talking about the right to repair. Okay, Jared,
So when we come back, I want to talk about
a couple of things. Number One, I want to do
a little bit of a deeper dive into the economics
of all this because I think what everybody has to
understand is you know, when your tractor is down and
(17:25):
you know you're not harvesting your crops, there's an economic
loss on your side, all right. And that's on top
of yeah, the mechanical loss of the tractor, the cost
to repair the tractor and what that takes. That's that's
number one. And then number two if the tractor is
laid up tied up for too long a period of
time and they have to come out and get it,
(17:45):
the amount of crops that get ruined in the course
of the field. And then you know, number three I'm
thinking about, you know, if I lose a piece of
equipment in the shop, what do I do next when
I need it the next day? And the subsequent losses
of dat occur. So there's a lot of economic impact
here that I want to cover and talk about. We'll
do that on the return on Ronini and the card
Ockera here with Jared Wilson, and we'll both return right
(18:07):
after this. Don't go anyere. Having a great conversation this
hour with Jared Wilson. He's a farm from Missouri, is
involved in the National Right to Repair as it applies
(18:27):
to tractors, combines, you know, the agricultural equipment that we
we Americans, we get, we get to eat because of
gentlemen like this Jared. When we pulled away, we were
getting into the economics of this right you've had. You
were telling us about a couple of instances where you know,
your combine, your tract or your various equipment breaks down
and it takes it takes hours, days, sometimes longer. Sometimes
(18:49):
you've lost crops.
Speaker 4 (18:50):
You've had a.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
Big economic impact. That economic impact that affects us. I mean,
it affects you obviously firsthand, but that kind of wheedles
down to the American taxpayer right because of the lack
of right to repair support for farmers. How is that
affecting you and then us?
Speaker 5 (19:09):
Well, I mean, at my level, I'm trying to at
least break even every year. Would we'd like to do
more than that, but sometimes it doesn't work out that way.
And you know, the American people is invested in the
American farmer continuing to produce a crop every year. And
one of the biggest things that we do as a
country is the Federal Crop Insurance program. So we have
(19:31):
these insurance companies that provide crop insurance to farmers for
a variety of road crops. And you know what that
does is it spreads risk. So you know, if we
have people that are planting in Missouri and Iowa and Illinois,
maybe people and some of those more marginal plots of
(19:52):
ground wouldn't be planting there if we didn't have an
insurance program backing them. And you say, well, you know,
is that good for the American public? And I would
say that it is because we have so many different
factors that can you know, cause a loss of a harvest,
and so we want to spread production wherever we can
throughout the country. But in the end, if I'm not profitable,
(20:12):
the American taxpayer is you know, still paying some of
those subsidy dollars into the into these insurance programs. For me,
we get direct direct payment assistance if we have a
disaster year where it's clear that we had, you know,
a regional event where everyone didn't make any money, and
the taxpayer's paying for that, you know, billions of dollars
(20:34):
a year, sometimes thirty forty billion dollars.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
And so wait a minute, so you're telling me, and
I'm just going to paint the scenario here. Your tractor
breaks down. Your tractor broke down in the middle of
the three thousand acres of soybeans, right, and you couldn't
You couldn't get it fixed quick enough, and it took
a while as a result of lack of right to
repair as a lack as a result of you not
(20:58):
getting the proper information the way an independent repair shop.
I'm thinking about this listening to you talk. I as
an independent repair shop, I think I have access to
more repair information than you do.
Speaker 5 (21:10):
I'm certain you do for the things that you work on.
I mean, at any price point, I can't get the
software for my machines.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
Right, So you the guy who's feeding me, to be
as direct as I can for the guy who's feeding
me and everybody else. You can't fix your tractor. You
have a bad year financially because of the lack of
right to repair. Correct me where I'm wrong. I'm just
trying to understand this and make everybody aware where you
(21:38):
can't feed me. You have a bad year. That's costing
me the American taxpayer more money, right it is.
Speaker 5 (21:47):
And you know the companies that are maintaining this equipment,
they're getting to make even more repair dollars on the
back end of that, and they get to keep their
prices high because I'm receiving subsidy money that keeps me going,
and so it justifies this high price and high costs
for all of these repair tools that they're selling me.
So it's just a big it's a scam, that is
(22:09):
what it is, right, and no one is looking into
it or doing anything about it. I mean, we've got
several cases in the federal courts now, but those take years,
and we really need legislation that enshrine some of these
rights in law and deals with these thorny, you know,
copyright arguments that are going to take some doing and
they're going to take some legislation to sort this stuff out.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
So this is actually a monopoly, if you think about it.
Speaker 5 (22:37):
Which is it? It is, and that's that's one of
the tenets of these lawsuits is that it's it's a
very direct monopoly on the repair of the agricultural equipment.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
You know, And that's why you know, I, as an independent,
I'm supposed to and I do. Now for me, it
comes at a price, and it's it's more money than
I care to think about some days. But at least
I have access to the software to the OE software
where to the manufacturer software to be able to repair
these vehicles. And you know, the service information, it's out there,
(23:06):
it's been made available to me, and now it becomes
a business decision. But I mean, I don't necessarily see
Jared Wilson farmer becoming his own repair shop. But you know,
maybe there's a John Smith in is it Butler, Missouri?
Speaker 5 (23:23):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (23:23):
No, absolutely right, And maybe maybe John Smith becomes the
independent John Deere tractor repair guy and he buys the
five thousand dollars scan tool and he buys the annual
software subscription just sort of like the same thing independent
repair shops do, but for farm equipment. And that's that's
really what you guys are asking for, right to get
(23:44):
to that level, and you don't even have that.
Speaker 5 (23:47):
No, we don't have that. And it comes with an
onorous set of conditions when you think about it. I
think it was in twenty twenty two or twenty twenty
three when I don't know if you read about the
Russians stolen a bunch of Ukrainian tractors when they invaded Ukraine,
and John Deear actually remotely operated a kill switch and
(24:08):
made those machines inoperable. Well, the reality is John Dear
didn't know that those tractors were going to end up
in Russian hands when they produced them. But they had
a kill switch on all of our machines that would
enable them to remotely disconnect them. And so you can
think about the security implications of that. Who's monitoring John
Deere's network security to make sure that a bad actor
(24:30):
doesn't switch off all of our machines one, Well, yeah,
what if they no external check them?
Speaker 2 (24:36):
What if they get hacked? I mean in twenty exactly
in twenty sixteen, I think it was Chrysler got hacked.
Two guys showed how you could hack a Chrysler, a
Jeep Grand Cherokee and take over the actual operation of
the vehicle. And as a result, that's why now when
I log into a Chrysler product, I have to have
(24:56):
an authentication protocol where my scan tool shakes hands with
the cloud. The cloud recognizes that it's wrong and they
give me access to the vehicle to go in and
diagnose it. So, if Chrysler can get hacked, John Deer
can get hacked, and now we've got a bigger problem.
You know, this is a matter of national security. I
think my two cents.
Speaker 5 (25:15):
Well, the magnitude a bunch of Chrysler cars going offline
is pretty indescribable, But the magnitude of what we grow
our food with going offline at the wrong time of
year is catastrophic to think about.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
You know, it's it's it is catastrophic. You are telling
me a story and I don't know if we'll finish
it in this segment, Jared, So watch the clock. But
you were telling me a story beginning of the show
about I'm going to use the wrong words, So the
cow thing, right, I want everybody to understand what it
is that Jared Wilson does. So Jared does he's the
(25:52):
first guy in the line of producing a cow where
we can get stakes from. Is that a fair statement.
Speaker 5 (26:00):
Yeah, So, I mean we have cows or heifers that
get bread to bulls, and then they'll have calves, and
then those calves whenever they're weaned, you know, from the
mama cows, they'll go to either a backgrounder to put
weight on on you know, the front hill grasslands, or
they may go straight to a finishing yard. You know,
think about a big confined animal feeding operation. Where they
(26:20):
get fed out and then eventually slaughtered. So I'm the
guy that breeds the cows or the heippers and then
has the calves that go on down the production line.
Speaker 2 (26:30):
So if you go out of business, we're not getting
vegetables and we're not getting steak in its simple ast form.
Speaker 5 (26:39):
Yeah right, Or you know, we have continued consolidation within
my market segment, and we just have bigger and bigger
farms with all of the known problems that that creates.
Speaker 2 (26:51):
Right right, Hey, Jared, We're gonna we're gonna pull over,
take a pause. When we come back, we're going to
conclude and wrap all this up, and I want to
thank everybody for being staying with us this hour. I
know this is a different type of car doctor what
you guys normally expect, but you know, the key here
is right to repair for independent repair shops, right to
repair for farmers. It is a critical thing and it's
(27:11):
a matter of national security, and we're just gonna finish
talking about that in our next segment. I'm running Naming
of the Car Doctor. I'm here with Jared Wilson. He's
been very kind and generous with his time today, and
we'll both return right after this don't go away closing
(27:33):
argument time run a naming the car doctor here with
Jared Wilson or Missouri farmer right to repair as it
affects farmers like him and everywhere else in this great
country of ours. Jared, I had a fuck. You know
how long you been a farmer?
Speaker 5 (27:46):
I pretty well my whole life. I mean, I started
writing on the tractor when I was two or three
years old, and I first remember driving a tractor when
I was ten or eleven. But for this NBC thing
we did, my mom got some old photographs out of
I was pictured in front of this big three hundred
and twenty five horse Steiger when I was like four
or five, and she said, a couple of years after that,
I was actually running that tractors right, well, longer than
(28:10):
I remember.
Speaker 2 (28:11):
And how long has the family been, you know, farmers generation?
Speaker 5 (28:15):
I've yeah, at least five. I'm at least the fifth generation.
Speaker 2 (28:18):
Wow, that's crazy. That goes back to the mid eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 5 (28:23):
Longer than that, No, probably late eighteen hundreds into the
early twentieth century, but it could have been before that.
But that's just all I've got any records or family
you know, word of mouth sport still.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
A little further back than yesterday, you know, and they
didn't have half these problems, right, So you know, what
can we tell the listeners in our closing couple of minutes,
you know, is it is is this just one guy
complaining or is this a real problem?
Speaker 5 (28:53):
No, this is an endemic problem, and it's not just
in my industry. But you can see how, you know,
think about a guy who gets up in a blizzard
to go feed his cattle lets the tractor doesn't work,
and he can't fix his tractor, his cattle die, and
that raises the price of your food at the grocery store.
So it affects him, it affects you. And you know,
(29:13):
when it comes to our food, it's not the same
thing as your iPhone dying. It's a different level of importance.
And I just want people to be aware of that.
But also your iPhone dying is important too, and we
should just make it so that manufacturers are incentivized to
let us repair our own things, and maybe as a
product of that, they'll make things more durable so they last.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
You know how big of a problem this is the
right to repair and well for Jared, I'm directing this
is Jared, and then I'm directing this at you, the listener.
I ask Jared, you know, normally we close our segments
with where can the listeners go get information? And out
of all the questions I've posed to Jared in our
in our short two week relationship, here I'm culminating here
(29:55):
but not ending here, Jared said, there isn't one there.
There isn't a website specifically geared to help the American
farmer about right to repair. Now, there's there's there's one
for general right to repair. Right, there's there's a right
to repair website. Is it right to repair dot org?
Speaker 3 (30:14):
Well?
Speaker 5 (30:15):
Yeah, I mean I would direct people to iFixit dot com,
the Electronic Frontier Foundation, or repair dot org. These are
all really good groups, and I'm sure that there are
others out there, but you know, I know the three
of those. And the reality is it costs money. It
costs money to do these twelve oh one filings. It
costs money to file against these big you know, multinational corporations.
(30:37):
Everything in our society takes money. But hopefully we can
get some legislation pass that you know, can circumvent some
of that but they still have lots of lobbyists, and
so you know, calling your local elected representatives and officials,
you know, proclaiming how you want right to repair legislation
passed is one of the most important things that you can.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
Do, because it's not just affecting cars, it's affecting everything.
It's affecting the food we eat, the cars we ride in,
as you say, our iPhones not being able to repair them.
You know, it becomes it becomes a big issue. You
buy a new tractor next year, Jared.
Speaker 5 (31:12):
We don't buy a lot of new things here.
Speaker 2 (31:14):
Well, well, a replacement tractor.
Speaker 5 (31:17):
I'm just no, things are not very good in this
pharm economy. So I think we're probably just gonna run
what we have.
Speaker 2 (31:23):
What's a used combine cost these days? A new one
six hundred grand. You told me that.
Speaker 5 (31:29):
Six to eight hundred. The big ones are over a million.
Could use one, it'd be three four hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 2 (31:35):
So we're just going to go out and buy a
used four hundred thousand dollar piece of equipment and try
and make it work with software and manufacturing information that
you can't get access to to grow soybeans to feed
the American public.
Speaker 5 (31:50):
It gives you the warm food, doesn't it.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
Yeah, I tell you what, God bless your brother. You're
doing a heck of a job.
Speaker 5 (31:56):
You know.
Speaker 2 (31:57):
I'm just curious for my own information, probably nothing to
do with this interview. What time does the average American
farmer get up in the morning.
Speaker 5 (32:04):
I'd say it depends on what time of year, what
kind of farmer they are. I generally am up seven
eight o'clock, but sometimes I run late. Sometimes I'll run
till three or four in the morning if I'm in
the field.
Speaker 2 (32:16):
Right right, Well, it's real dedication, Jared. It's been a pleasure, sir,
And uh, thanks a lot. You know, you'll we'll have
you back again, and you got to keep us updated
and let us know what's going on. But it's been
an absolute pleasure. Thank you for all you do. I'll
ron An Ady and the car doctor. We are back
right after this, and of course, once again I want
(32:44):
to say thank you to my special guests this hour,
Jared Wilson. You know there's there's a man right he's
out there plowing the fields every day, trying to make
a living and feed us and take care of us.
Like so many of the other American farmers, and yet
they can't. They're six hundred one thousand or four hundred
thousand used or three hundred thousand used, whatever breaks, and
(33:04):
they can't get support from a manufacturer. And you know,
they have to either leave it out in the field
and hope somebody shows up to fix it, or they've
got to get it out of the field and take
it somewhere. And I can tell you from the pre
interview conversation I had with Jared, you know, we're not
talking about towing it out of the field on the
back of a flatbed. We're talking about, as he said it,
(33:24):
I believe he said it in the interview, that it's
you know, it can be a half a day thing
to get a vehicle out of the field and take
it somewhere. And then taking it somewhere it could be
a half hour away, it could be an hour away.
It's not it's not like they're local. It's not that
it's it's so quick and easy, and then they don't
even look at it for another two or three weeks
or four weeks, or you know, whatever mood besets them.
(33:45):
Because it doesn't sound like Jared's too popular with John
Deer folks anyway, unfortunately for him. So there's a guy
who's baring the brunt. By the way, I should also
say that, you know, if John Deere wants John Deere
is welcome to come on board. I'd like to hear
their side of it. I'm sure the listener would like
to hear their side of it too, But I don't
think there's a big case for them to stand on here.
You know, it's a monopoly being created. It is in
(34:08):
violation of right to repair. From my perspective as a mechanic,
having dealt with right to repair for so many years,
that you can't do what they're doing. You're making it.
You're making it difficult, if not impossible, for something that
you want to be serviced and taking care of. So anyway,
I appreciate everybody's time this hour. I appreciate your patience
and a little different kind of a car doctor. Next
(34:29):
week we'll go back to the usual stuff, the phone calls,
the questions, the comments. But till then, as always, I'm
here for you. I am Ron and Andy and the
car doctor, reminding each and every one of you good
mechanics aren't expensive, they're priceless.
Speaker 4 (34:41):
See it
Host
Ron Ananian
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy, Jess Hilarious, And Charlamagne Tha God!