Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/1544539
Connection at the time, with Dennis Potter. A gentleman from Faribault, Minn., sent in a classified ad listing a D21 for sale with PTO and three-point hitch, so Helle and his son went to get it, completing his collection once again. Since then, Helle has added a pair of CA's, two D17 Series IV's, a D15 with Allis 150 mounted picker, G with plow and mower and finally, a 6080 with ROPS that he had sold new at Helle Farm Equipment in 1984. The farmer who bought it had a stroke and no longer could farm with it, so Helle bought it back. Helle said he feels fortunate to have been part of the A-C family and to continue to live out his A-C dream on a small acreage near Dyersville. Continued from Page 33 Collection has grown The Helles raise a handful of beef cattle on their small acreage. Daehler Farms Buy-Sell-Trade • 100+ implements for sale • Disc parts for 2200, 2300, 2500 and 2600 series • Snap-Coupler and 2000 series plow parts • 1300 and 1400 field cultivator parts • All-Crop parts • 77 Series row units and 385 planter parts Located south of Lexington, Missouri Charles (660) 259-4110 Ethan (660) 232-4293 Turbulence ahead Things were going well for B&G Equipment for the first few years, but then the 1980s hit and they hit hard — drought, low prices, dealers going out, customers going out. Brannon recalls they lost $600k one year, which in the 1980s was an unthinkable loss. "There were some days it took two hands to turn the key in the door because one hand said, 'I'm not going to do it. I'm just going to go home,'" Brannon remembers. "But we had employees to think about and we had our customers to think about. We couldn't just leave them." So, Brannon called in former A-C dealer Edgar Paschall, who was both well respected and dynamic in his approach, and asked if he would sell for them and evaluate the market. Paschall directed Brannon to look at the equipment that's going at sales and dealer closeouts. "Our banker was his former banker, so we had a value-added trust factor to develop a credit line to execute a plan," Brannon says. "We bought a lot of equipment at bargain prices; at one auction we purchased 20 used combines. So when everybody else was trying to get rid of them, we were buying them at a bargain and running them through the shop. We made very good margins on them. That's what helped us through, and it also perpetuated a parts business for us." The 1980s also brought about the need for dealers farther south in Tennessee when other dealers went out of business. Brannon and Gallimore opened a store closer to that area, and then opened a store in Hopkinsville, Ky. (sold to Whayne Supply Company in 2014), and later on moved to Troy, Tenn. Every decision to expand and open stores was driven by Brannon's customer-centric, farmer-first mentality. He saw the huge loss and inconvenience it would have been for customers, and he acted on it. Continued from Page 29 1980s hit dealership hard 51 OLD ALLIS NEWS