Welcome to Moving Iron with Casey Seymour, Moore, and Greg Peterson — the podcast for anyone and everyone involved in and interested in the business of ag equipment. If you want to understand what trends and market forces are impacting the price of your iron, you've come to the right place. Buckle up, it's time to move some iron. Hello and welcome to Moving Iron Podcast. I've got Greg 'Machinery Pete' Peterson back on here to talk about what's happening in the world of equipment, and I also want to thank John Deere for sponsoring this edition of the Moving Iron Podcast. Greg, how you doing today, bud?
I'm doing well, Casey. How are things in your world?
Not too bad, not too bad. We got a little nice weather coming our way and planters are running, so it's that time of the year.
Yeah, it's a busy time. I think we're looking finally at a good warm dry stretch here in southeast central Minnesota. They're talking next 10 days or so, so lots of work will get done.
That's good. It's good. Everybody's chomping at the bit, can't wait to get after it.
You know, everyone can't wait to do it and they're mad as hell the whole time they're doing it. Now, farming is — hey, God bless them. Feed the world, man. It's quite a deal.
Quite the deal, that's for sure. Well, Greg, we watched a couple auctions go this week. You brought up a pretty good one that I think is a good indicator of where we're at in the marketplace. Had a consignment sale up in New York. We saw a 2001 MX240 sale. Had about 4,000 hours on it and it brought 92,000. But the unique thing about it was it lived its whole life under the big blue shed. It looks like it was pretty faded. It might be a good opportunity for some Dakota Shine to get put on that tractor.
Yeah, it did need a little Dakota Shine, right? It was a mechanically very solid tractor, Casey, like you said, an '01 MX240. The sale was Saturday in Rochester, New York. It was a consignment sale. It was by Alex Lyon & Son Auction, and they're, by the way, getting a lot more ag equipment. They're kind of known specializing on the construction side. They're the world's largest privately owned auction company, or family-owned auction company. Great folks. But yes, 92,000 bucks — that's tied for the second highest auction price ever on an MX240. Interestingly, the only higher one was — we talked about it a lot back in '22 at the top of the used market. So that was a sale right after Thanksgiving, November 29th of '22 in Corning, Iowa, where a '99 model MX240 with 3,180 hours brought 94,000, and that was Osborne Auctions sold that one. So yeah, 92K to me last Saturday, even though it didn't look the prettiest, it just shows you that for that right condition, you know, farmers aren't buying new, you still got to farm the acres you farm. And if you need maybe that backup horsepower, you want the best used that you can get. And you know, even at 92,000 — what's a new one cost at that horsepower range? So even though sales of new are kind of soft right now, very soft, good condition used is still doing well like this one.
Yep, yep. They had — when you watch something and they know the story behind it. Typically a tractor like that, that looked the way that one looked, as faded as it looked, and even like the headlights were faded, so it hadn't been out there, it'd been out in the sun quite a bit. But that kind of goes back to that story. So I'd love to go back and see what the story of that tractor was and how they talked about that tractor, and then how they talked about — with it being a consignment sale, the guy selling it, was he a respected person in the community, those kind of things. Because typically the way that tractor looked would drive down the value just because even if it was in great mechanical shape. So there must be a great story behind that tractor.
One thing that I found in the Northeast in particular, out in New York and Pennsylvania, it's been interesting, you know, all these years tracking auction prices in different parts of the country. Casey, we're a Midwest guy. You're out of the Plains there, Western Nebraska. I'm upper Midwest, Minnesota. But out of the Northeast, even on consignment sales, it always felt to me like it's more of an almost old school, like 20 years ago, 25 years ago here in the Midwest, where you have a consignment sale and it's just, you know, a tighter group. I struggle to explain it. You know, our farms get pretty big out here in the Midwest. In the Northeast, they're chopped up. You know, it's such a population center. So I think when a tractor like that pops up maybe versus here on a consignment sale, a higher percentage of people know that guy. You know, and that would be what my gut would say. But you know, I think percentage-wise, you're right. To attain that premium of a price, there had to be multiple interested buyers that knew the history on it. And again, even though it wasn't the prettiest mechanically, you know, and again, it's a 2001 model, so you can wrench on it if you have to and all that stuff. So good. Yeah, the pre-DEF stuff. I did have a couple funny stories on the topic of pre-DEF, Casey, you'll get a kick out of this. So last week, we saw a couple tractors over a hundred years old sold at auction. One was by our friends at Albrecht Auction — Kurt Albrecht in Nokomis, Illinois — had an Imperial, let's see, I think it was a 40-70 1911. And it looked like new. And Kurt's a worldwide expert in this stuff. And he said, 'Pete, there's only three known to exist.' And it brought 955,500 bucks. And I posted on Machinery Pete Facebook, and someone said, you know, those pre-DEF tractors, man, they really hold their value. And then a couple days later up my way in Minnesota, in Annandale, Minnesota, Lundine Auction Appraisers had a sale, and they had a Minneapolis — I think it was a 3570. Let's see if I get the right number. It was a 3570. Now that one looked like it'd been sitting out in the Minnesota sunshine for 80 years. It brought 125,000 bucks. So that was kind of fun last week.
Yeah, yeah. The pre-DEF, the peak. Yeah, pre-DEF tractor. Got to get that out of my mouth this morning. Pre-DEF tractors. It is impressive to watch those sell, right? And especially not so much even like the Tier 2 engines and those kind of things, back Tier 1 engine, those kind of things. But when you start looking at Tier 3 and interim Tier 4 engines, those are the ones that really stand out when you watch them sell, because everyone knows that like this is the last generation before it went DEF, you know. And it feels like when you watch those machines sell, it makes a significant impact. So like you watch an old, you know, 30 series Deere or an old, you know, Case track, something like that, you saw like a 7230 or something like that. So you watch those tractors sell and those are, you know, that's just like that last bastion before everything went sideways and a lot of people...
Yeah, no question. I mean, if you're sitting on a '08, '09, '10, or '11 low-hour red, green, blue, or orange, I mean, you are sitting on gold. Yeah. And you know, Moving Iron listeners know that, of course. And it's funny when you look at sale bills or auction listings coming up, you kind of go through, you're scanning because everyone's busy, and you look and you go, whatever you're looking for — 'Oh, I need a tractor.' And then you see that, oh, 2010 model, like a '10 model 8345R or something like that with low hours, and you know what's going to happen. It's going to be very, very, very competitive bidding. And even in a down market like last year was, and again this year, a lot of — you know, it's not easy out there. So, but again, you got to farm what you got to farm. And again, coming through that pandemic, we've talked about it a lot, but the price of new has skyrocketed to such a level that it, I think, has made that pre-DEF...
Yep. Yeah, that's the price increases associated with the new machines as they came out of COVID. I mean, you went — I think there was something on the platform and manufacturers and all those kind of things, but all the manufacturers were kind of locked up with each other. No one would out-hire anybody else, but they were — I say it was, I think I did an analysis on this a while back, but it's somewhere between 40 and 70 percent depending on what it was that you were doing. And you start looking at — because I remember having the conversation with a guy back in 2018, '19, you know, that, you know, 'Hey, 2 percent now is a real number.' And I remember that same conversation with somebody last year going like, '2 percent now really is a real number,' because it's, you know, you start looking at that, you know, half a million dollars for this and $250, $260,000 for a loader tractor anymore. I mean, it's just you start looking at some of this stuff coming together and you put two or three or 4 percent price increase on some of that stuff and you're looking at anywhere from 10 to 50, 60,000 bucks depending on what you're starting with, you know. So it's a real number now. And looking at used playing into that, and you and I talked about this a lot, but you know, it kind of echoes what I saw happen back at the dealership after the Great Recession in that 2010 timeframe, where everybody kind of contracted down and it wasn't because of supply chain issues, but it was just fear of the unknown when it came to the economy. And that's kind of where we're at right now. There's this fear of the unknown of what the economy looks like, and the manufacturers are contracting even more — manufacturers talking about contracting even further than what they're doing now, right? It just, I think it just opens that door up as if things pick up and run and we see some stuff happen here towards the end of the year, that we could see an 18-month run in used equipment. So if I know times are tough now, but if you're looking to do something used equipment-wise with a piece of equipment, I don't think you're going to find it cheaper than you're going to find it right now.
Yeah, it is. You know, I've been writing in Farm Journal about this exact topic, Casey. If you're able in 2025, my advice is, you know, call your dealer. You know, go and have a talk with them because that late model stuff on the lot, you know, they're still motivated to move it. You can get yourself some good deals. And again, what I have to be careful of is just thinking that dealers will be stuck with this stuff for three, four, five years. And again, we've talked about it, but last year, you know, the 150 percent increase we saw in zero to three-year-old equipment sold at auction — I mean, that was mostly all dealers pushing it out, right? And then like you said, the manufacturers have crunched in so much on the top end that, you know, it's a good time to be a buyer if you can, and to see these strong used prices. You know, we had another sale, Casey, that caught my eye last week. It was our friends at Steffes Group. It was an online farm retirement auction. I think it was for Nielsen Farms. It was in Granton, Wisconsin, and late model equipment. Wow. They had — we were talking about a grain trailer before we started recording here, but they had a pair of '23 Wilsons. One was a DWH750B tandem axle 42-foot, used two seasons, brought 77,000 bucks. So that's actually the sixth highest Wilson I've ever seen sold at auction, but pushing 80K. I mean, that's, you know, to me is farmers realizing that the price of a new grain cart's, you know, probably going to keep going up, up, up. A couple other items. They had a '22 model J&M LC390C tender brought 40,500. That's the seventh highest auction price ever in a LC390. And they did sell one record on skid steer, a '23 New Holland C345. It only had 147 hours on it, so two years old, but really like new. That brought 67,500. Previous high auction price was 62,000 two years ago out of Georgia. So yeah, that was quite a sale last week in Wisconsin.
Yeah, I watch those grain trailers sell this time of the year. It's really hit or miss because you know what you're going to get, but this one actually hit. So kind of I was trying to figure out how much something like that costs new, and I couldn't find the new one, but that's got to be fairly close to new value on that grain trailer.
Yeah. Well, when you were talking about the price increase, you know, it's funny. All these years, I always, you know, 15, 20, 25 years ago, you'd have that conversation at an auction or farm show. So, man, the price of new — usually we wind up talking about combines and tractors, but holy smokes, I mean, tillage, grain equipment. Yeah. I remember standing at an auction December 3rd down the road from me, half hour in Dexter, Minnesota, and I posted a YouTube video on it because everything — it was a lot of pre-DEF tractors, 7920s, and everything sold high. But it was a grain cart. Okay. He had a Brent 2596, '22 model, I think a '22 or '23 on tracks, and it brought 178. And I remember filming it going, 'My memory is not quite as sharp as it used to be.' But I'm like, dang, 178. Holy smokes. And that was an all-time record high on a grain cart. But you know, again, what does it cost new? So it's — everything's gone up.
Yep. Yeah. Everything's gone up and everything keeps going up. I, of all things, you know, I was at the little farm and ranch store there in Scottsbluff and I bought two bags of dog food and it was whatever it was, 150 bucks to get these two packs of dog food. Two bags of Ol' Roy cost 150 bucks. So I got a new puppy, so I have to feed puppy food, and I got my old dog that still eats regular dog food. And I'm sitting there and the lady's like, 'Man, I can't believe dog food costs this much.' And I go, I seem to say that about everything these days. Everything costs a bunch of money.
Now, hey, on this topic, I'd be curious to get your take, Casey. I don't know if you saw this, but the guy, the billionaire dude, not Elon, but Bezos that owns Amazon. So did you see their play coming out in the pickup world? I forget the name of it, but he's part owner of this group, and they're taking a different tack on this. They're coming out with a pickup that is just like base, just bare bones pickup, horsepower, and it's customizable. You as a buyer, you go, 'Okay, well, I want to add this or this.' But it comes with like nothing. But the price tag, they come right out front and they say, 'We're building this for the American, you know, American Joe who just needs reliable transportation.' 25,000 bucks. Now, you know, at 25K, you're not going to get the Denali, you know. Yeah. No. But for 30 years, I've been covering auctions and talking to farmers, and they'll watch a 4020 sell, and, you know, they're watching like we're just yakking about, you know, two, four, five, eight percent huge increase on price of new, and people say, 'Pete, why don't they just build a simpler, an old model? Won't they just do — why don't they just go backwards and give me a nice 4020 or a nice 4440 or a nice Magnum 7120?' And then we post that on social and go nuts. People go, 'I'd buy two of them,' blah, blah, blah. Well, there's all kinds of realities with that, manufacturing today and the engine and all that stuff, obviously. But here you go, finally someone's coming along. Now it's a pickup, but they're going to test it and say, 'We are going to give you a cheap, low-cost but solid and reliable 25K.' Now, it's not the prettiest. So it'll be fascinating to me to see how it sells. And personally, I think it might do pretty well.
Yeah. Just — I just Googled it. It's called Slate is the name. Yeah. It's a very — that's a good name because that's the color of it. It's kind of a brown looking. Yeah. Great color. It almost looks like Soviet Russia late '80s or something. It's funny that you bring that up. Just like you see with the price of vehicles these days and everything, anything machinery-wise, that price is going to open up opportunities for competition.
Absolutely. And you'll start seeing more and more stuff like, you know, take Monarch Tractors for example. That's a good example of that little, small horsepower tractor. I think the biggest one they have is 100 horsepower if I remember right. But it's the electric tractor. It's the fully autonomous tractor. It's not like it's new. It's been out for 10 years probably, right? But it's starting to get more and more traction just because people are shopping and it's a niche thing. You know, you're in the orchard business or something like that, right? Business, something like that. It's a very niched piece of equipment. But you're seeing more and more people start to look at everything. There's a company out there that resurrected the old International Scout, right? And they've got a — they're taking... International Scout. Yeah. It's called Scout Motors and love it. They have the old Scout pickup and the old Scout, you know, SUV-looking thing and kind of working your way through that. And they have the resemblance of them and it's of course it's electric hybrid combo type deal, but neat looking truck. And I want to say they're selling those between, depending on how specific, between 40 and 65,000 or something like that. Okay. But it's not — again, it sounds — that's a big number, but in today's world, that's really not that expensive for a vehicle, you know.
Well, that's the opportunity you're talking about. In fact, on that auction we were just talking about in Granton, Wisconsin, they had a pickup on that sale. It was a '23 GMC Sierra 2500 HD Denali. Again, it was like new. Only had 312 miles on it. Diesel Duramax, but it brought 78K. Yeah. Two years old on the auction market. So new, what's that, over 100, I suppose. Yeah. Oh yeah. But you're right, that does create opportunity for companies. So when I read about that Slate, that pickup, I thought, oh, this — well, this is again, for 30 years, this is what people have been asking for. Now, will you get out your checkbook and write that check for 25K? We'll see. But yeah, that is one thing with the price of rising so high that, you know, and really that's America. That's capitalism. You know, if you can build something at a different price point and make it pleasing and get the job done, hey, you might have the next Apple computer. Who knows?
Yeah. And that's the thing, too. If you look at like a Ford XL or a Chevy LT, let's see, like a Custom, you know, looking at a Dodge. I don't want to pretend like I know what a Dodge trim levels are because I haven't looked at a Dodge pickup forever. But you start looking at those very base spec machines or trucks and stuff like that, you're still knocking on the door of 40,000 bucks.
Oh yeah, for sure. Talking like rubber floor mats and right, you can't find one with crank windows anymore. And but that was funny about my oldest son was probably 12 years old and we were — my dad had an old Ford F-150, you know, from the '80s that he beats around in, and we were out in this pasture doing some stuff and field behind his house. And it was hot and, you know, of course I, you know, roll down the window, open up the wing window, you know, and I'm getting — and my son was sitting across the way and he was like, 'Dad, like, just roll down the window.' And he did not know how to do it because he'd never been in a crank window before, you know. So I'm like, 'You turn that crank. You got to — and then you got to open that little triangle on the side there.' And little triangle — I had the only way I could describe it. I couldn't call it a wing window because he had no idea what the hell I was talking about. But it was funny to watch him go through that because I'm like, 'Oh, wow. You're a whole generation that's never been in anything but electric windows.' Because now that's...
Now Casey, I hear you, brother, but our kids can turn this around on us because right before we started recording, I was — you know, I'm 59 and I'm trying to close out my email and get some — I couldn't find the screen and I'm like, 'What the heck? How — I can't find?' So I think our kids get back at us there.
Oh, man. Yeah. And I was laughing talking about my father-in-law, who I love him to death. He's an awesome guy, 84. And he lost his charger on his laptop and he was like, 'Hey, I need a charger.' So we were trying to get him to describe the charger on his laptop and he's kind of round and it's like I think kids would — they look at us like, 'Man, you guys are dinosaurs.' But yeah, rolling down the window in a pickup, man, those are good memories.
Yeah, that is good memories for sure.
That's probably a good place to stop, Greg. Folks want to reach out to you and get you to come talk at their next event. Easiest way is just to go to machinerypete.com and click the link.
Yep. Link right on the bottom. Shoot me an email or hit me on Facebook, Twitter, X, Instagram. Was out to a sale in Wisconsin last week. Had to visit with a lot of great folks. Always fun to get out on the road.
You going anywhere this coming week that people might catch?
No. Mrs. Pete, she's got me at home for a couple weeks, so that's a good thing. But yeah, like you're saying, it's getting busy in the field and there are a ton of auctions. I got to say it's very, very busy here right through April, end of May. So I'll be busy watching those. Our friends at Sullivan Auctioneers, as we're recording this, they have a sale today with some very late model equipment from Van Wall Equipment out of Iowa selling sprayers. They got a couple '24 models, a 410R and a Fendt 937V fleet model tractor. So I'll be tracking that, but keep them busy.
Right on. Greg, appreciate you being on. We'll catch you again next week.
Sounds great, Casey. Have a good week.
Stay tuned for more Moving Iron Podcast after these messages.
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Welcome back to the podcast. I got Chip Nellinger here from Blue Market to talk about what's happening in the world of commodities. Chip, how you doing this morning?
Good. How you doing, Casey?
Doing pretty good, man. Just figuring my way through all this stuff. We have on-again, off-again trade talks, and we weren't going to talk to China, and well, China got kind of blown off here the first part of the week, and now we're meeting this weekend. That was only a 24-hour turnaround on that one. But then you've got — you look at some of the stuff happening in the wheat market right now. There's some lesser-than-expected yields coming out of the wheat belt, and it could start swinging the price of wheat. So I guess as you're looking at the wheat market right now, what are you looking at, Chip?
Yeah, you know, crop conditions improved 2 percent. We've had some recent rains that, at least from the beauty contest of the crop condition report, was beneficial. But you also, you know, maybe have some concern that some of those rains were a little bit excessive and hitting the wheat crop maybe at a time that, you know, heavy rain like that is actually detrimental instead of beneficial. So, you know, I think it remains to be seen how that's going to affect final yields. We've got, you know, a ways to go before we figure that out. But at least visually, crop condition-wise, things have improved the last couple weeks after these rains. Whether that's actually translating to better yield or not, I think is still a question at this point and, you know, will be for quite a while until the combines really get through this thing here over the next, you know, several weeks.
Yep. When you're looking at the corn market right now, you see a lot of news coming out. You know, obviously there's been lots of rain in areas that are pretty dry. There's been planting progress has been going the way it's been going. Been really tackled by, for the most part, by tariff talks that we see there. Just like you've talked about several times on here, you're on again one week, you're off again the next, and somewhere in the middle you're going to find that rally point, feels like. After I've read 15 articles this morning about, you know, Mexico's going to start doing some undescript trade deal with the United States, Japan's doing something, Korea's doing something, China's coming back to the table. So all these trade deals are starting to at least warm back up again. Now it takes a tweet to blow them out of the water. But I guess as you're looking at this corn market, all the pressures around tariffs right now, all the pressures around what's going on with trade. So I guess as you're looking at it, how are you advising your customers? What to be doing right now?
Yeah, you know, that's a great question. A lot of moving gears in this machine right now. We've had a recent sell-off in corn, you know, kind of along with the wheat market down into new lows. The corn market has dipped a little bit here. I think there's two things at work in corn. Number one, this time of year, as a crop gets planted, it's always hard to, you know, kind of kill the crop, so to speak, during this time. You know, I think one thing — the perception by the market of the weather is that it's good. We're going to get this crop planted. Now, if you take a line from about St. Louis to about Fort Wayne, Indiana, and you're a producer and you're south and east of that line, you're scratching your head right now saying, you know, the market's selling off hard on all this great weather and the crop getting planted, and there's literally areas, you know, south and east of that line that haven't turned a wheel yet and muddy. I don't know if you saw the Kentucky Derby this past Saturday. Absolute slop. That is not a small area that are receiving rains like that. Now, they're going to dry out, but the point is it is less than perfect there. You get north and west of there, and yes, it's been perfect planting conditions, but that's because they're coming in very, very dry. They've received some rains. Planting conditions are really good, but they have no subsoil moisture if you look at the drought map. So that's going to be what the key factor is as you go forward into summer is whether that western corn belt can keep getting rain. Now, no one's talking about the fact they're going to have to mud a bunch of acres in in the southeast, and it better not turn off hot and dry there or they've got a real problem. So those questions are still ahead of us. And I think from the trade standpoint, that's the other thing. You know, it seems like for three weeks now we get, you know, the Secretary of — the President, the Commerce Secretary, the, you know, the Treasury Secretary on Fox News and all these news outlets and quoting, you know, 'We got these trade deals. We got a hundred countries coming to us wanting trade deals.' And it gets the market excited and they're ready for an announcement and there's no announcement. And I think that has disappointed — now, understandably so, because, you know, these complex negotiations, it doesn't happen in 48 hours where you just, you know, meet and have a trade deal. So it takes some time. But the perception of some of the comments from these government officials, I think, has been a disservice to the market because it gets the market excited about all this trade news that's going to come out and then nothing comes out. You know, it's like, you know, that cartoon where, you know, you're going to shoot this gun and, you know, the little flag comes out and a puff of smoke and it's, you know, a non-event. And so I think that on top of the perception of the weather being quote-unquote perfect for planting right now has caused a sell-off. But we've got a lot of questions out there. You know, you mentioned here just overnight or, you know, late yesterday we saw some news that we're going to now have a meeting with China, and, you know, overnight beans rallied double digits off of that news. Stock market's up. So there again, will something come of that? Will it even happen? It leaves the market vulnerable to some disappointment. But the good news is it looks like we are pushing the needle in the right direction here and that eventually we're going to start getting some trade deals. Now, whether that includes any boost for ag products to these countries is another story that the market's going to have to deal with. At the end of the day, I think it still falls back to weather, and that's out ahead of us in the June-July time frame for corn, in the August time frame for beans. And we got a lot of weather and production uncertainty ahead of us and a lot of this trade and tariff talk to kind of throw a monkey wrench in things in the short run here.
Yep. So I always bring something else up. You know, this time of the year you get planting progress. I don't know if the market — the market just needs something to bet on when they're out there. But I watched this planting progress report, you know, and oh my god, the world's coming in, we're not getting the crop planted and we're off 25 percent of where we should be this time of year, and by the weekend they're plus 25 percent of where they should be for the year, right? So I mean, with planter technology and planter speeds and the size of planters and so on and so forth, you can get a lot done real quick, get the right thing. So I guess I look at the planting progress report to me as a very, I guess, antiquated tool anymore. Maybe 20 years ago when you could only go four miles an hour and everybody had an eight-row planter and that was kind of what you were — eight and 12-row planters were kind of the jam, was kind of what was going to drive the marketplace. But, you know, today when you have 60-foot planters out there going, you know, between 8 and 10 miles an hour, you can plant a lot of stuff real quick. So I guess as you look at the planting progress report, when you're talking to your guys, how much credence do you put in that report and where do you draw the line on that?
Yeah, I think that's a good point, that it's a little bit of a moot point. And to your point earlier, I do think that some of it is just news that feeds the market, right? Whether it's planting progress or then we have crop conditions once the crop gets planted, it sometimes it's just noise. And the last few years, you know, other than what was it, 2018 or 2019 when we had like epic, biblical, historic flooding and that's a one-in-a-hundred time, you're right, we can just plant the crop. And I think it says why I talked earlier about that line from St. Louis to Fort Wayne and how wet it is south and east of there. And the market knows it's going to get planted. But I think as you sit back, what it doesn't ever account for is how much needs replanted. There's going to be some of that out there. So as we talk to producers, it helps give us a feel for, all right, if you're sitting outside of Des Moines, Iowa, and you've had like, you know, the first or second fastest planting pace ever, conditions are absolutely perfect, it's likely because it's dry. So let's keep an eye on that. How much rainfall are they going to get going forward? There's no — we know going into it, there's very little subsoil moisture in that northwestern corn belt. In the southeast, you know, as you talk to producers there, it's like, all right, let's talk about — all right, maybe you had a third of your crop planted. How much of that needs replanted? When did you finish up planting? Right? Because once it gets planted, the market's like, 'Oh, we got it planted here and record crop coming.' But we know that planting dates and conditions matter. So did they mud that in? You know, and then a month later, did it turn off hot and dry? Did they have stand issues, you know, as that came up? So that helps us kind of maybe get a better feel for if we do see some hotter, drier weather this summer, how's that going to affect the crop? And that's what the market has a hard time figuring out is once it gets planted and from planting to grain fill and harvest, the market has a hard time figuring out what happens and what the effects of moisture, dryness, you know, the conditions that we get from Mother Nature, how that's going to affect yields. And sometimes that's where, you know, farmers and advisers, agronomists that are working with them can kind of get a leg up and get some inside information on what's really going out in the field because the market doesn't see that and they have a hard time discounting what is going on. So to your point, planting progress probably doesn't matter a lot. It's, you know, it's just report how it got planted report. You know what I mean?
Yeah, exactly. It's just kind of noise that the market, you know, holds its breath and says there's anything here to trade on. And right now it's to the negative side. But I think it's been something that has, you know, been negative to the market, but it's looking past like, okay, the acreage that got planted in southern Illinois, southern Indiana, Kentucky, it might have got planted the first time, but it doesn't need replanted. And, you know, there's some of that that gets missed in those reports. They don't come out with that on the state reports that, 'Oh yeah, we said Illinois's, you know, 52 percent planted, but 21 percent of it in southern Illinois needs replanted,' or, you know, that type of situation. So that always slips through the cracks and it matters longer term, but it's hard for the market to get its arms around that information.
Yep. Let's talk a little bit about — oops. Let's talk a little bit about — help me at the right spot here before I start talking. All right. All right. Oil. I want to talk a little bit about oil now. Okay. All right. Let's talk a little bit about the energy sector right now. As you're looking at what's going on with oil, oil has — you know, if you look at the WTI oil, you're at right about 60 bucks for the last two years. It's like this fluctuated around in bands, $10 bands between 55 and 65, 65 to 75. Kind of just bounced around in there. As you look at what's going on now, obviously world supply, there's plenty of supply, but that would be an indicator that, you know, the economy has some weak points in it. But as you're looking at, you know, right now we're — I mean, obviously there's a lot of input stuff being shuffled around right now. A lot of folks are looking at contracts and those kind of things. I guess as you're looking at oil, how are you thinking about your customers? And when you're looking at like diesel and fertilizer, those kind of things. Obviously those kind of things have already been purchased. But I mean, as you start looking down the road here, it just feels like those two — oil just can't — it feels like the world's happy with oil at 75 bucks between 65 — or sorry, 65 and 60 a barrel.
Yeah, I think there's some interesting things happening in the energy markets. You know, one of the Trump administration's main goals was to get energy prices out and have the US become self-sufficient on energy. Like the last time Trump was president, we started exporting oil for the first time ever and was totally self-sufficient. That seems to be happening. However, it's because OPEC and OPEC Plus continues to, you know, pump this...
thing and not, you know, crank back production and that's pushed us under $60 for a period of time. And unfortunately, that probably happened too quickly for our fracking, our domestic fracking to make any money and it might keep them offline longer. So, I'm not sure in the short run what's happening here. You know, maybe there was some back channel agreements between the Trump administration and OPEC that, hey, let's get some energy prices down to help alleviate some of this immediate inflation pressure that we're having. And maybe down the road OPEC dials back a little bit, allows US producers to increase a little bit. That's one possibility that happened. The other possibility is they're going to keep, you know, the pressure on. OPEC's going to keep the pressure on and kind of punish us a little bit. And that might be, you know, the real answer to this thing. Whatever it is, also you got a third possibility that the world economy and maybe the US economy is starting to slow a little bit, especially with some of the tariff stuff going on. And so maybe it's a combination of some or all of that, but for whatever the reason, we've dipped under $60. It has certainly helped ease inflation, but I don't know if that's a long-term friendly thing for the US oil industry.
Now, just yesterday, you know, you still have this situation going on between Israel and the Houthis and Iran. Is Iran going to get dragged into this with direct, you know, hostilities at Iran? Is the US going to be part of this or help, you know, kind of calm that down? And that got crude oil rallying a little bit. So you're always subject to waking up some morning and looking at the commodity markets and seeing, you know, what happened to crude oil, you know, something flaring up in the Middle East to do that. And certainly a situation with Iran, escalation with Iran would do that. But at the end of the day, we're still trading right at 60 bucks. I think it's yet to be seen is that maybe, you know, the albatross flying that the world economy is starting to slow down. It has pressured ethanol margins a little bit. Slowed that down just a tick, I would say. You know, but from a producer standpoint, I think it does make sense to maybe look at locking some fuel in. It's kind of a gift at this point. I'd maybe go out if you haven't done so, you know, maybe get stuff locked in through at least the end of spring, maybe the first part of fall, and take advantage of these lower prices while we see them.
Right on. All right. Good stuff. As usual, Chip, folks want to reach out to you, get more information about what you're doing over at Blue Roof Ag. What's the best way to do that?
Yeah, just give us a call, our main office in Morton, Illinois. It's 309-550-7213. We'd love to chat with you.
Right on, Chip. Appreciate you being on the podcast. We'll catch you again next time.
All right. Thanks, Casey.
Stay tuned for more Moving Iron Podcast after these.
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Hello and welcome back to Moving Iron Podcast. Got Aaron Finn back on here to talk about what's happening in the equipment business. Aaron, how you doing, bud?
Fire and frog hair. Can't complain at all. Can't complain at all. It's been springtime now. We got planters out running around doing all the fun stuff planters do this time of the year. And we see, at least in our neck of the woods, we don't really have any hiccups. There's no weather hiccups other than it might be too windy, which too dry and dry. The way the wind's been blowing, I wouldn't surprise me if it blew the corn out of the ground. You know, it definitely helps the residue managers on a pass by pass basis.
You know, you live in a windy place when all the corn stalks are drifted along the fence line just like snow.
You know, I actually in my lot and just so you know how windy and how sandy it is here in all these years, I've never had drifts till now.
Yeah. And that I have not scooped away with a shovel, but with a skid loader.
Yep. Wow. And yeah, there's one field I go hunt when I go fee hunting that's when it does drift up, the snow drifts up, you could walk over the fence on the right. And I drove by there the other day and it was between the sand and the corn stalks. I feel like you could have made it over the same.
I was just going to say you probably walk over it still.
Yeah. So it was, it's, we're really dry out here. The eastern corn belt's getting a lot of rain. So that's what you're seeing affect the corn price right now.
