Expanded product lines bring year-round sales: longwinters and a shift from dairy farming to...

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In an area where the growing season is short, the winters are long, and expensive new houses are replacing farms, the L. W. Greenwood & Sons Inc. dealership in central Vermont has thrived for nearly 80 years by broadening its line of equipment for an increasingly

The number of Vermont dairy farms has declined from more than 11,000 in the 1940s to 1,170 licensed dairy herds in 2006. With this change, the Greenwood dealership has shifted from a solely agricultural emphasis to include recreational machines and small construction equipment in its product line. The addition of Polaris all-terrain vehicles (ATV) and snowmobiles in the 1980s has helped boost winter sales.

"Farmers pretty much hibernate in the wintertime, and we needed something to work on in the winter," says dealership president Ron Greenwood. "The first year we sold six units. Now, in a good year with lots of snow, we can sell 250 snowmobiles and ATVs. That business has grown tremendously."

With more than 4700 miles of groomed snowmobile trails stretching across all parts of Vermont, selling snowmobiles and ATVs was a logical way to tap into to the state's recreational and vacation industry. But the dealer's farmer customers have appreciated the new lines, too.

"Just about every farm has a four wheel drive utility vehicle for running errands on the farm," Greenwood says.

In 1992, the Greenwood dealership added the Bobcat line of small industrial equipment to serve the new housing trend that was emerging in the countryside. He explains the situation: "Vermont is a magnet for people from New York, Boston and Connecticut. They buy the farms and then they want to put a house on top of a hill with no road to it, so they need equipment."

In fact, a lot of the people building those roads are some of Greenwood's longtime customers--former dairy farmers who sold their cows and are now doing some of the construction for these expensive homes.

"Farms are of such value now that when it comes time to sell a farm due to death or retirement, it isn't feasible for someone to buy it to farm," Greenwood says. "Some land gets sold to a neighbor, but in most cases it is split up and sold or made into a horse farm."

The area's new-home industry has also spurred growth in rentals of Greenwood's Bobcat excavating equipment. "People started asking us about renting equipment and that has grown considerably," Ron says of the dealership's rental service, which was first offered about six years ago.

Today, there are usually five or six excavators and four or five skid steers available for rent. Most of the rentals support the industry of building new homes in the mountains, but area ski resorts also rent equipment to maintain their parking lots. The equipment is rented by the day, week or longer, with the average rental fee of $200 a day for a skid steer and $275 a day for an excavator. Attachments such as posthole diggers go for about $150 a day.

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A tradition of client trust

Leon Greenwood started the company in 1929 as a slaughterhouse meat market, but it soon grew into an implement dealership by selling New Idea equipment, and later Massey-Ferguson tractors, to the vast number of dairy farmers in the East Randolph, Vermont area. Manure spreaders and hay equipment were some of the top selling items in those early days.

Ron started working at his father's dealership at age 13. After a 10-year stint with the Army, he returned in 1971 to join his younger brother, Leon "Butch" Greenwood, Jr., in running the business. The Greenwood & Sons dealership has been in business so long that Ron and Butch have known some of their customers for 50 years, which means a lot of trust has built up through the years.

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"We may sell a $50,000 tractor and never see the customer eye to eye until they sign the paperwork," he says. "They know us, they trust us and we trust them. It's a relationship. They can call and say they need a baler this afternoon but they don't have time to do the paperwork, and we'll get the baler over to them."

Some of Greenwood's new customers who moved from the city aren't used to that kind of treatment. "It takes them a while to trust us," Ron says. "They check a lot of things closely. We tell them we'll deliver the equipment and they can pay us at that time, and they are very surprised."

Ron makes sure that the customers who are new to buying tractors and big equipment get what they really need. He and his staff will tell customers if they don't need a piece of equipment or if they're after something that's too big for what they're doing.

"Sometimes they think we're trying to sell them something because we want to get rid of it," he says. "That's not our philosophy. We try to make sure they get what they need the first time. It makes things go easier."

Dealership sales reflect changing trends

In 2005, the Greenwood dealership sold 95 tractors, and only one was to a dairy farmer. The rest were to acreage owners, horse farms, and commercial operations. None of the tractors sold was larger than 80 hp.

"With expensive homes in the mountains and private lanes up to a mile long to the top of a mountain, they find they need a compact tractor with a blade to maintain their roads," Ron explains.

Greenwood's largest line is New Holland compact tractors, followed closely by Bobcat and Polaris, depending on the snowfall. Other brands at the dealership include Kuhn farm machinery (Greenwood is a top 50 dealer), Woods attachments (top 100 dealer), Pequea, Fransgaard, J. S. Woodhouse & Company, Cummings & Bricker and a number of small New England companies and distributors.

Greenwood sells a variety of tractor attachments, including snow blowers, backhoes and round bale feeders. Up until last fall, their inventory included Massey Ferguson, but Ron says the line was dropped because it didn't pay to have two major tractor lines.

"We're selling fewer and fewer farm tractors. Compacts make up the biggest part of our tractor sales," Ron says.

L. W. Greenwood & Sons has 23 employees on staff, and Butch Greenwood is the company's vice president. The dealership was honored in 2007 by the Vermont Farm Bureau with the Safemark Award for service to the farm community.

Located in a bucolic valley, the dealership serves a territory that is 20 miles east and west, and 40 miles north and south. Other dealers in the area sell John Deere products--one competitor is located 10 miles to the south, another 20 miles north.

Even though the East Valley is down to only six farms, Ron says sales of hay equipment remain strong due to the number of horses in the area. Some farmers specialize in producing hay for horses and sell it as far away as Connecticut and the Boston area.

Brush cutters are also in demand, with sales increasing to about 60 in their best year. "It's a constant battle to keep brush from growing up where the cows are no longer grazing," Ron says. "People like their open views."

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People living and farming in the green mountains of central Vermont count on L. W. Greenwood & Sons to provide the equipment and service they need. And if that means delivering a piece of equipment through a foot of snow on a dirt road up a mountain, Ron says that's where they'll be.