Why Is Pay Lagging? Maybe Too Many Mergers in the Heartland<br />Working in farm equipment, he added, “you get more one-on-one time with customers — they become your friends.”<br />Mr. Gies, 30, who began tinkering with the equipment on his family’s farm in Berlin as a child, confessed to fitting this profile.<br />Of the seven John Deere farm equipment dealerships within about an hour’s drive of his house, the one Mr. Gies left<br />and refuses to work for, Riesterer & Schnell, owns four.<br />Brett Faivre, whose family sold two John Deere dealerships to Riesterer & Schnell five years<br />ago, said Deere had structured its contracts with dealers to encourage consolidation.<br />Pete Hoffman, a longtime farm equipment mechanic who teaches at Southwest Wisconsin Technical College, said there was another important factor in the disparity: Many mechanics in states like Wisconsin grow up on family farms<br />and are keen to maintain their connection to agriculture.<br />But ever since he quit his job more than three years ago at a John Deere dealership — where he worked<br />too hard for too little pay, he said — he has struggled to find a position in the same line of work.<br />“The larger the dealership, the more of a discount you get on equipment.”<br />Ken Golden, a John Deere spokesman, said, “Dealership consolidation has occurred<br />as machinery has become more complex and customers have grown their businesses.”<br />According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the typical farm-equipment mechanic made about $18 an hour nationally in 2016.
