At The Farm Gate

November 2011

By Joanie Stiers



Parts runs keep farmers running



A farmwife told me she once suggested that her husband hang all the farm’s “retired” triangular-shaped corn snouts from the farm shop’s walls like banners at the school gym. He could mark them by year, signifying the number of replacement snouts she had to pick up for the corn head -- that pointed corn-picking attachment on the front of the harvesting machine. The husband seemed less than amused at the gymnasium-style decorating suggestion, which rather poked fun at the number of parts runs she made to replace damaged snouts during the harvest season.

The parts run: The act of a farmer or relative driving to a retail location, often a farm equipment dealership, to buy a part and return it to the farm to repair a machine that needs maintenance.

Regardless of today’s farm modernization, the necessity of parts runs is as old as the advent of farm machinery. Machines still occasionally need fixing, and you’d be hard-pressed to find a farmer who never made a parts run for at least a drive chain or hydraulic hose during this corn and soybean harvest season. Sometimes spouses and farm moms commonly are dubbed the “gofers” (those who “go-for” the part), as an attempt to keep other laborers in the field. Most farmers still try to fix their own mechanical problems. When the problem is beyond their skillset, the mechanic is called for on-site diagnosis and repair.

The nature of the parts run can vary. For example, the “rainy day parts run” often is for parts that either are related to general maintenance or to fix something less critical to the machine’s function while the rain prevents farmers from harvesting. Most pressing is the “emergency parts run,” during which gofers abandon what they’re doing to get a part, with no opportunity to piggy-back extra errands on that trip to town. You get there. And get back.

The parts run attitude depends on the part’s price tag, the scope of the problem or simply the person fetching the part. Ask the representatives who work behind parts counters and they will have grouchy farmer stories only spouses should have rights to share.

Yet, some grumpiness is most expected in the thick of the season. The part costs money; the break down causes delay. As Sir Topham Hatt says on our son’s Thomas the Tank Engine videos, the equipment is not being “really useful” when it’s sitting still.

A machine in repair means lost time during harvest season, an intense multiple-week period to gather the crops that pay your bills and make your living. Lost time could mean lost yield and missed opportunity to harvest a crop during favorable weather. Farmers just want the crop in the storage bin. Metaphorically, the crop is money sitting in the field, waiting to be gathered. And sometimes a part can determine how fast it gets there.