NFMS 2011

Thursday Aman and I went to Louisville to the National Farm Machinery Show. We walked a lot, saw a lot, I'm sure we missed a lot. I went with a few objectives. One was not getting totally disoriented like last year. I printed off maps and lists and figured out where the major displays were, as well as where certain booths were at I wanted to visit. For instance, I wanted to visit some of my AgTalk acquaintances at Dawn, Jensen Equipment, Soil Max, Oregon Seed, etc. I also had a couple booths I wanted to visit, such as Polar Air.
We made the show in good time, found pretty good parking, even kept an idea in our head where we were! I was wearing my fluorescent orance jacket and hat with a big AgTalk button on it
We had not made it to the display area before meeting up with an AgTalk member. By the way, the button is in the AgTalk store at http://www.cafepress.com/Newagtalk.332280713
I talked with Jim and Joe, but Phil and Denny were looking busy as 2 headed billy goats. Although I must say Phil was definitely upstaged by his help in the booth. He must be one heck of a salesman... I was a bit disappointed in missing some people. Jim at Dawn said I just missed MSB. And I stopped by the ******* booth but didn't catch Alan.

I ordered a few things. We had been talking about seed rebounders for the planter. We had looked at Keetons, but we decided to go a different route and ordered Schafferts (www.schaffert.com).
They look like they will still perform well when they are worn. In our highly abrasive soils that is a big factor.  Several years ago I bought a set of Lawson drill bits. A little pricey, but they worked fantastic. I haven't seen a Lawson sales rep in years. We stumbled across their booth and in a moment of weakness ordered a new set of bits.

I also ordered a new air compressor from Polar Air (www.eatoncompressor.com). It costs a little more than Rural King and Harbor Freight compressors, but this one is all US made. We had an interesting chat with a couple guys from J&M manufacturing (www.jm-inc.com). We made a suggestion for an improvement to the TF212

which the engineer we talked with seemed to understand. It was fairly minor, just a suggestion to relocate a grease zerk, but it is nice to know we are listened to.

Something I do not understand is why a company will make the kind of investment it takes to be at that show, but when a customer walks up won't talk with him! As an example, we recently bought a used belt conveyor. One of the first booths we came to was this company. Two of us stood inside the display area less than 5 ft from a salesman talking about our *** brand conveyor and not only did the salesman not even greet us, he was making a concerted effort to avoid us! Makes me want to come home and sell the blasted thing. I won't mention any names but it was as far south as you could be and not be on the outside of the wall.

But in all fairness to them, they were not the only ones we saw shunning customers. Mr and Ms sales rep take note: You are doing the company more good going to the lounge and drinking coffee than you are breathing customer's air in your booth and ignoring them.

On the other hand we did meet some reps who were happy to be there, willing to engage in conversation, and make you glad you came. For example the young lady at the Woods mower display (note: I have reached the age where young could mean under 50) who seemed genuinely interested in talking and even knew what an H Farmall was. Then there was the gentleman who showed us the belt grinder. It was not in my budget, but he cause me to consider it. We had a very interesting conversation with a couple guys with a sunflower head. We don't raise sunflowers, but if I did I'd look into one of their heads.

I should have taken more photos. Here are a few: