GEAR UP with BigIron for Husker Harvest Days in Grand Island, NE! Mark and Ron Stock chat with Regional Sales Manager, Ryan Harbur in this week's episode about Husker Harvest Days past, plans for this year and the exciting Dealer & Farmer Auction coming up on September 17th with equipment on-site at Husker Harvest Days for public viewing. Listen and find out more about how Husker Harvest Days has been an integral part in the growth of BigIron Auctions. GEAR UP and listen in today.
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Transcript:
Mark Stock 00:19
Hey everybody. Mark Stock here with another special edition of our gear up podcast. And got Ron Stock with us here today. And our special guest is Ryan Harbur, who is a region manager at BigIron, and he actually lives kind of you probably live closer to Husker Harvest Days than we do, and we're only an hour away. So how far are you away?
Ryan Harbur 00:42
I'm only about 40 minutes away from the Husker site. So
Mark Stock 00:45
So where do you live?
Ryan Harbur 00:46
I live in Elm Creek Nebraska, right west of Kearney.
Mark Stock 00:50
And how long have you been with BigIron?
Ryan Harbur 00:52
I have been with BigIron just about seven years. It'll be seven years on November 20.
Mark Stock 00:58
And then in what capacity?
Ryan Harbur 01:00
Initially, when I applied at BigIron, I applied to be an independent sales rep. When I went to the interview to be a sales rep, they asked me to come to another interview, and I actually signed on with BigIron, initially as a district manager. And so I was a district manager for the first four years that I worked here, and then I've been a region manager the last two and a half to almost three years now.
Mark Stock 01:21
And where did you come to BigIronfrom?
Ryan Harbur 01:24
Prior to BigIron, I had a pretty long standing career with a large dealer group, John Deere dealer group, in central Nebraska. And so I spent, you know, about 16 years in the John Deere dealer business in several different capacities. I was in parks for a little bit. I was in sales for a little bit, and then ultimately, I was in location management towards the end of my career there. So,
Mark Stock 01:49
So you managed the store.
Ryan Harbur 01:51
I did
Mark Stock 01:51
And you'll kind of,your region. Tell us where your region is now, so people that are listening get an idea. Paint that picture with your your boundary lines.
Ryan Harbur 01:58
Sure. So my region has changed recently, but the past 11 months, I've been covering Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho and Utah. So lot of good things going on west of Nebraska. A lot of business growth opportunity there, and a really good team that we've got in place there over the last few months to really kind of take that business to the next level and hopefully arrive in the same place that we have in Nebraska.
Mark Stock 02:28
Well, we're talking today about Husker Harvest Days.
Ryan Harbur 02:31
You bet
Mark Stock 02:32
That's going to take place here that the second week in September, like it has been done for years and years, actually, Ron's wedding anniversary is always
Ron Stock 02:41
Seems like it's always over Husker Harvest Days. Yeah, we always celebrate Kristin and I at Husker Harvest Days. We go to the big M supper club, and she always gets a quarter pounder with cheese, no onions.
Mark Stock 02:52
Well, I know BigIron has been at Husker Harvest Days for a number of years. We our first stint in Grand Island Nebraska dates way back, probably some 30 years ago, where we went as Stock Realty & Auction Company.
Ron Stock 03:07
I'd say even more than that mark. I'd say like 40 years ago, our dad took us to Husker Harvest Days. Our dad was an exhibitor at Husker Harvest Days. He sold T & L center pivots, and us as little boys, we got to go with him a few times to Husker Harvest Days. So I'd say it's been 40 years at Husker Harvest Days. Well as exhibitors I never want to be accused of understating anything, see.
Mark Stock 03:32
But in real life,
Ryan Harbur 03:34
Back to reality. Now.
Mark Stock 03:36
In real life, I remember that we had a we had a booth, and we had so much business, we didn't go the next one or two years because our calendar, sale calendar was stacked full. And then we hired a guy by the name of Ray Becker who come to us from retiring for long career with Monsanto, and he was always at Husker Harvest Days, and he said, Guys, you got to get back there. You got to get back so we said, okay, Ray, we'll get back there, but it's your baby. You run the show. And he did,
Ron Stock 04:11
Talking about our first year at Husker Harvest Days, we had a big prize, wheel spin the prize. We had a microphone set up. And I don't think we've ever done a better job at gleaning leads. We had them contained in a row, and we were getting the postcards and marking them yes or no. And like Mark said, we never went back because we could not get to all those people. There's like, six or seven of us at the time we we did not get to all the people that said, I'm interested.
Ryan Harbur 04:33
Wow
Mark Stock 04:34
Yeah. But I mean, over, over the last 30 years, we had all kinds of different things. We introduced at Husker Harvest Days, and one of those was our charitable donations to St Jude, which, I think over the period of time, we raised a little over three quarters of a million dollars for St Jude with our auctions that we had, and a lot of the vendors would donate their wares or products and some of their services that we would auction off, and we were always grateful for that. And then, of course, the one year that we didn't go was the covid year, and that pretty much, you know, slowed everything down, stymied, you know, the St Jude charity sale.
Ron Stock 05:21
The St. Jude's auction was like a three month deal, and mother was very proud of it. Our mom was very proud that we did that. But literally, we would start way before the farm show started, and we would send out letters to the vendors again. I don't know if we've ever done a better job than when we when we were doing that, we sent out letters to all the vendors ahead of time saying we're going to do this auction at St Jude's in Grand Island. Then we would go to farm shows ahead of Grand Island, and we would see them vendors and say, Can we count on you? It just took incredible amount of time. But that's that's the challenge of that takes a lot of time to do all that.
Mark Stock 05:54
And then another thing that we've done at Husker Harvest Days is really help promote and elevate the FFA students into the new innovations that are always at these shows. Because I remember going when I was a senior in high school in a field trip type of a setting, and that was great. You know, we had this little check sheet list that we had to go to so many places, whatever, because it was supposed to be an assignment. And then the day after we went, we all had to get up in front of our in our, my ag classroom. We had to talk about what we did there. But so we started saying, you know, FFA was good to to most of the people that work in our organization. So what can we do? We started giving away T shirts, and we started mailing them out. I don't know. Do we have 1500 T shirts? 1600 that we mailed out already, and these young students will be coming off the bus if they if they're wearing their shirts, and they come over to our tent, and if they take pictures of themselves in the big iron shirts throughout Husker Harvest Days, single settings or group settings, and they hashtag BigIron, then our wonderful marketing team will be looking at all these hashtags. And I think there's either five or six different chapters are going to win $500 compliments of of BigIron and the marketing team. Because we're just trying to, we're just trying to show the kids, if they go out there and have a good time, they can also earn something for their chapter too, because that's what it's all about.
Ryan Harbur 07:38
It's funny that you guys bring bring that up because one of my first experiences at Husker Harvest Days was going with FFA, and I remember it so distinctly, because it was the year that John Deere introduced the 8000 series tractor, and they had these huge ride and drives, ride and drive events. And me, and like three of my buddies that are diehard farm kids, like we were, all we cared about was driving this tractor, getting to drive one of these tractors. And so they gave us the little check card, you know, hey, you need to spend all day going around and talking to these folks. We just checked the boxes because we spent all day at the ride and drive. So we had to ride this bus away from the site to go to the ride and drive site. And it was just funny, because I was thinking about what you guys were saying. I was like, Yeah, I was like, Yeah, I was guilty of just checking the boxes, because we were pretty intent on,
Ron Stock 08:26
Now you're selling now you're selling the 8000 series,
Ryan Harbur 08:28
Yeah,
Ron Stock 08:28
Every week. So
Ryan Harbur 08:29
Yep, that's right. So
Mark Stock 08:30
Well lets talk about what's going on at Husker Harvest Days this year. I know you have put together Ryan Harbur, put together with his team, a fabulous auction event, and when is that going to take place, and tell us about some of the stuff you're selling.
Ryan Harbur 08:45
So before I do that, I just want to talk a little bit about the evolution of the Husker Harvest Days auction. You know, a couple years ago we were approached with an, you know, an excellent opportunity to have and showcase customer equipment on a space inside the Husker Harvest Days site. And with a really, really small window of prep time, we were able to pull together a sale and pull together some equipment to put on display at the show site. That was year one. That was two years ago last year, way before we got to Husker Harvest Days time, we had customers asking, hey, I'm interested in putting my equipment on that lot. Are you guys going to do that again? And so we kind of had to run the same path again, of kind of a short window of time, but this time, we had a group of people that we knew we could go to that had indicated interest. Well, this year, year three, we've really outgrown the space. And so, you know, in the past couple years, we've had 20 items, 30 items on the site, within the grounds, because that's what the space could accommodate, and that's just what we had on short notice. But really, as this thing has continued to build out, now we're actually relocating to a place off of the Husker Harvest site grounds. So about two miles east of the Husker Harvest site is the Heartland Shooting Sports Park, and that's where we're going to have the equipment this year. And that equipment is going to sell the Tuesday following the show. So it'll be the 17th of September, is when we'll actually sell the equipment, but this year, we're going to be showcasing over 75 items, as opposed to what we've done in the past, with maybe 30-35, tops. And so again, with a short window of time to prep, we continue to see that increase in the size of that auction year over year. And I mean, who's to say what next year will bring? But it's highly possible that we won't have enough room again at some point. And so customers really see the value in putting those items on display and showcasing that for just the tremendous amount of foot traffic that comes to that show. Husker Harvest Days is such a Nebraska institution. You know, I can remember talking to friends of mine from the Sandhills that would talk about how Husker Harvest Days was where their family would go for vacation. And I'm like, Okay, I don't know about that, but, you know, and so just being able to bring a nice group of equipment, a nice put together, group of equipment that really showcases the versatility of what we do. I mean, we have some dealer participants in this auction. We have some farm farm customer participants in this auction, some transportation companies that are participating. So it just showcases the full gamut of what we do. I guess we got a few construction pieces in there as well. So, you know, we've really tried to put together a very diverse offering to really speak to our customer base as a whole about what we what we do, and what we can do for them. So
Ron Stock 11:51
I've got a question for you. So if I'm, uh, thinking about retire in the next few years, you know, corn prices are down, and I was going to retire at 65 but I'm going to retire at 60. Is somebody going to be there at that auction? You know, where you have them, 75 pieces from BigIron, somebody from BigIron going to be there so I could kind of talk to you kind of guys in private. You know, I don't want, I'm a like most farmers. I don't want everybody know. 100% of my business under that tent. It's a lot of commotion. Could I maybe meet you, Ryan, off site, by that equipment and talk to you about my retirement auction?
Ryan Harbur 12:22
Absolutely. So that is one tremendous advantage that we, we do have with that is, is, to your point, you know, we have a lot of sellers that prefer a little bit of anonymity, and they don't really want to broadcast it to everyone when they're starting to make those those plans. And so we will have some people, some representatives at that lot as well. Obviously, the bulk of our staff will be at the tent in the Showgrounds, but there will be some people. And obviously, I mean, I'll be around too, if there's anybody that wants to talk or wants to have one of those conversations, I'm, I'm happy to meet those folks wherever. So for sure, but yeah, it's, I think that's really important, because these shows are great to talk about those things, and it's definitely a place where it's on customer's mind. You know, they're coming into harvest. It might be their last harvest. They know that post harvest, they're going to have to make some pretty serious decisions, and they need to start having those conversations, if they haven't already. And so, you know, it's pretty remarkable as I think about the seven years that I've spent with BigIron, I've never walked away from that show without a handful of really, really solid retirement sale leads. It's positioned at such a time that people are really having to contemplate that decision and so.
Ron Stock 13:37
So how many retirement sales have you done in the past year across your region about I'm not going to hold you to an exact number.
Ryan Harbur 13:45
I mean within the region as a whole, I would say we've probably done, probably somewhere between 35 and 40.
Ron Stock 13:53
And I already know the answer to this, but tell our viewers how you make their retirement sale special.
Ryan Harbur 14:01
Well, it's it's their event, it's their day, it's their livelihood that we're dealing with. And so one thing that we are very deliberate and very intentional about is really listening to understand what it is that they want to accomplish. And any auction company can just go in and sell equipment, I mean, really, but it's about the personal experience, right? It's about the details. It's about making sure that everything is on point and that we really are doing everything that our customer is asking us to do, because we understood what it was that they charged us with doing. And so, you know, for me, it's really that relationship element of the business, like, I'm here to understand what you're looking to accomplish, and out of that, I can perform at a high level.
Ron Stock 14:47
I know you always have, like, an open house, you know, on the traditional auctions, which we've done, you know, hundreds, if not 1000 traditional auctions. The farmer always had his daughter there, his grandkids there, you know, at the sale. They're all huddled around each other. It's kind of like a changing of the guard. You do something to make that retirement sale special, so I can have my kids there, my grandkids there, and my retirement sale.
Ryan Harbur 15:09
Yeah, absolutely so there again. It's just another component of what we do, but absolutely on on the day of the sale, sometimes on the day of the sale, sometimes a couple days before the sale, we really try to host an event that would really bring the neighborhood community together, as well as the family together, to honor the legacy that that individual has built. And really our whole goal is to send those folks into retirement on a high note. And so hopefully we're that high note, right? Hopefully the sale and the performance of the sale is that high note for them, and that really puts the cap on their on the success of their career, because not only did they have a successful career, they had a successful auction that showcased the fact that they were top end producers. And you know, just that moment of being able to be honored by your family and your neighbors is a really important moment. So
Ron Stock 16:02
Very nice
Ryan Harbur 16:03
For sure.
Mark Stock 16:04
Well on this year's Husker Harvest Day sale, which will be the week following Husker Harvest Days, so people can stop by this lot that's two miles east. It's on Husker highway, yes, sir. On the north side of the road.
Ryan Harbur 16:16
It'll be easy to see. They're going to be seven foot diameter yellow, BigIroncircle signs right there.
Mark Stock 16:23
And they can pull in and park and walk around and look at this equipment and inspect it. And why don't you tell us some of the items that are going to be there? Give us the top 10 highlighters.
Ryan Harbur 16:31
That was 20 pieces, Ryan Top 10, the top 10, well, if you just said top five, I'd have had them. But no, actually, we've really got some nice equipment. So this year we've got three combines, three John Deere combines. We got a 2018 S770 John Deere. We have a 2012 S660, and we have a 2013 S670. We also have a 620 Case Quadtrac. That same seller has a K-Tec3100 pan scraper. So it's a 31 yard scraper. It's a monster. It's a big unit, and so that's kind of an exciting piece for us. The other thing that we actually that is built into this sale is we have a retirement sale for an individual just north of the site, owns a feed yard looking to downsize, and so within that sale, there's some really nice pieces as well. There's a 2021 Kenworth feed truck that's really nice, pretty low use, really nice, New Holland Skid Steer, Cat Excavator, Kenworth manure truck, John Deere drill. John Deere 8335R Tractor. So there's some nice pieces within that retirement sale that's built into this auction as well. The other thing that we do have that's really nice is we have a Case IH 340 MFWDtractor. It's only got 700 hours on it. And I mean, this tractor is immaculate. We got two really nice 389, extended hood Peterbilts that are going to be out there, several Grain Hopper trailers to to choose from varying in, you know, year make model. So we've got a couple of dealers that we fostered a really good relationship with that have been selling some trailers with us. And so we got some of their product out there, as well as Mitchell Equipment in Atkinson has brought us two JCB pieces as well, a JCB Teleskid and a small Wheel Loader as well. So there's a lot of stuff in there. Like I said I know I thought I was gonna struggle there, but so If you're not going to Husker Harvest Days because you're listening to this podcast somewhere in a different state. How do they access all of this information? So if you're not able to come to the show and you're not able to view the equipment, the nice thing is, if you go to the BigIronwebsite, bigiron.com there is a highlighted auction space where you can click right on the Husker Harvest Days auction for the sake of getting to this inventory. It is. It is just a matter of going to the BigIron website, clicking on that highlighted link, and they'll take you right to it.
Mark Stock 18:58
Well, Husker Harvest Days is in Grand Island Nebraska on September 10th, 11th and 12th. And we also will be having our weekly regular sale during Husker Harvest Days, and inside our booth, we'll have the auctions up on the big screen. So if anybody has questions on how to bid or to buy, we will help them with that. I think the buckets are a big thing that people love, and if you have never been to Husker Harvest Days, but you hear about these bright yellow, BigIron buckets, please get to the tent as early as you can in the morning, because by noon they're usually gone for the day. We only have so much room to stack all these buckets.
Ron Stock 18:58
Sweet.
Ryan Harbur 19:56
I have to think at a certain level that those buckets must be a collectible. Because, I mean, I everything I can remember from childhood with a five gallon bucket I didn't associate a fond memory with, and so I can't imagine that it would be any more than a shelf piece for someone. Because I just, I almost feel guilty about the couple of BigIronbuckets I have, like getting them dirty. And so
Ron Stock 20:18
I tell you what I read in a magazine, and I do it on the back of my pickup. I got a log chain inside a bucket, and then jumper cables inside there. So I got a kit. You know, you need a jumper cable, you need a chain. I just pull out my yellow bucket, and it's a nice way to store that stuff.
Ryan Harbur 20:32
Perfect.
Ron Stock 20:33
Yeah, before we go on, I got to make sure we remind everybody that we also sell real estate. So we're going to have real estate agents at Husker Harvest Days. BigIronRealty will be there. So we've got that all going on land equipment, cattle collector cars, but we have real estate agents working very hard that whole show. So I didn't want to miss that.
Ryan Harbur 20:51
You know, I I'm glad you said collector cars, because there's a couple things I wanted to add real quick. So obviously, our next collector car auction is in November, but we will have a few pieces at Husker Harvest Days also promoting that sale. We got a really awesome Jeep that's going to be in the tent at Husker Harvest Days. And then as far as another element of collectibles that we don't talk near enough about is the collector tractor piece. We do have a handful of collectible tractors that are really nice restorations that are going to be on the Husker Harvest Days auction as well. So.
Mark Stock 21:23
That's great. Now, in addition, our president, Jackie Glassman, is actually going to be speaking at Grand Island at Husker Harvest Days on September the 11th, and her topic to FFA students is cultivating your career, the future of agriculture. So for all the FFA kids and students that are listening to this, you definitely want to be listening to Jackie's presentation. She is a very, very smart lady, and it's going to give everybody some great insights on how to use her information to help your career in whatever your career is going to be. It doesn't necessarily have to be about agriculture, but it's about, you know, working hard and staying focused all those good things. But you know, we are here with Ryan Harbur, who is a region manager for BigIron, and he's excited about Husker Harvest Days next week. And then let's take us a little bit beyond Husker Harvest Days, because you get to November and December, and that's the biggest time of the year. And for the people that want to sell some equipment, you know, give them some advice, How soon should they be contacting you and your team?
Ryan Harbur 22:32
So I would always say, the sooner the better. You know, one of the biggest things that lends to our success is giving our customers the appropriate amount of runway to really market that sale. And so if retirement is on your mind, or if you know you're just looking to manage a little bit of your fleet, you know, we know that some of the some of the environment around the later model equipment right now is maybe a little bit more challenging, but what we're seeing is we're seeing an uptick in bidder activity on those pieces. And so if there's a situation where you need to move a piece of equipment, and we can assist with that in terms of helping manage your assets or managing your fleet, again, there's no better time to do that than at the end of the year. That's obviously whenever the most buying decisions are made, as well as the most selling decisions. And so the sooner, the better. You know, one thing that we do focus on a lot at the end of the year is single seller auction events, and those days fill up fast. I mean, once we start rolling, it starts to get pretty hard to get a spot on the calendar, because those days start to fill up. And so, you know, we're already talking to multiple customers right now about who are booking, and we've already booked several December auctions for customers that are intending to retire. And so some of those have already even carried over into January, February of next year. And so again, it's really important that if it's on your mind, just go ahead and reach out and make the initial phone call to us. Let's have an initial conversation. Let's start talking about the planning process and what it's going to take to position. You know, those folks for a successful auction.
Ron Stock 24:09
I want to take a minute and brag about this guy, you know, Mark Stock. Three years ago, we always get together, all of us, the whole team, talk about how we can make our online auctions closer to a traditional auction like we used to do, you know, open outcry auction is what worked there. And Mark, about three years ago, he, he, he said we should be offering single seller retirements. So talk about that a little bit. You said that awful fast single seller retirements. I want to retire. I can have a sale on my own day, right? We used to put them all on Wednesday, but now that really makes my day special when I can have my own Thursday for a sale and Mark, thought of that. Mark, whatever made you think of that?
Mark Stock 24:47
Well, we were having sales when we were doing open outcry sales every day of the week. So why can we do that with BigIron? And it actually helps reduce some of the heavy load of a Wednesday sale when we were getting 3000 to4000 items selling on a Wednesday. That was a heavy day, and it was just a lot of machinery for people to take, you know, to take in. And a lot of folks were telling us that, you know, I want to be on a Wednesday, because that's when your biggest crowds are going to be because the historical numbers and the number of years we've been doing that. So we did our first single seller sale on a Monday, and it went off fantastic. We got to remember, there's, there's over 20 million people watching BigIron on a calendar year, and there's well over 740,000 some registered bidders. And the amount of traffic on any given day is way more, I think, than what any other auction company might have in an entire year, and we're still grateful for that. Hats off to the marketing team, and of course, hats off to when Ron Stock was spinning the prize wheel back 40 years ago, because that's where that all started, right? You. We accumulated all of that data, all of those addresses, all of those phone numbers, and we just kept building on that and building on that because we knew that we could have, we could sell anybody's machinery, as long as we had a valued bidder, a valued buyer. What does that mean? We want somebody. We want several somebody's that want to buy that because they want to use it, not somebody that wants to buy it because they think it's cheap and they want to flip it. So, yeah, we need those we need those resalers there, coming to the sale, but we want the end users to be the last two and three bidders, and that's what we really focus on. So, but the single seller sales, how have they been working out?
Ryan Harbur 26:38
For us, they've been working out great. You know, one of the things that I think is really important to Ron's point is our customers, especially when we're dealing with their, you know, the operation that they've built over many, many years of hard work and sweat and and we're finally putting an end piece on that for them. It does very much make them feel special. And one thing I love about BigIron'sbidder base, and this is something I firmly believe, is it's primarily composed of end users or producers. And so I genuinely believe that on a single seller auction day, or really any retirement sale that we host on BigIron I think in the ag community, in particular, customers want to see other customers retire well, because they know they're going to have to retire sometime too, and they want to retire well as well. And and I think we see that premium price paid, if you will, that comes from a place that's deeper than just I want that piece of equipment. I think they want people to retire well, and so you can sense it. I mean, we make a lot of phone calls at BigIron. We talk to a lot of people across this country, and you can hear it in people's voice. You can see it in their attitude, and it reflects on their bidding activity, as well, as you watch the price continue to roll up. And you know that, hey, I talked to that guy on a ring man call, and he indicated to me that he wants to see this guy's sale do well, and he also wants the piece of equipment. He might ultimately not even win the piece of equipment, but he also knows that someday he's going to have to have an auction too, and he wants to be treated like he like he's attempting to treat that guy in that moment. And it's a pretty special thing, really. And like I said, it's, it's nice to hear that in people's voices when we make those calls.
Ron Stock 26:59
Very well spoken. That was very well spoken. I was just visiting with somebody over the holiday weekend about tools, you know, and how, when we used to do the traditional sales, how tools used to say, sell for twice of what you could buy them at the store for. And we were just guessing why that happened, you know, I think it's because farmers, you know, they would just go and just want to buy something, and so they would just overpay the tools, put them in their pickup. But we saw tools constantly bring twice what they're worth,
Ryan Harbur 28:50
Absolutely.
Mark Stock 28:52
Well we're geared up for Husker Harvest Days coming up the week of September 10, 11th and 12th, and we hope everybody that's listening can stop by at either of our locations, preferably both. We'll be in the grounds at Husker Harvest Days with a lot of information. The big Jeep is going to be inside the tent, the T shirts, the sunglasses and the buckets. And then we'll also encourage people to stop by and look at the equipment that is being sold the following Tuesday, and we want to thank Ryan Harbur for being our guest here today on gear up. And as always, you can always find out more information about the items being sold on BigIronby going to bigiron.com and if you know somebody that wants to sell some machinery, please tell them to get a hold of Ryan and his team or contact us with the contact information on the bottom of our website. So thank you very much. We'll see you in Grand Island, Nebraska.