So 12 days and 3680 miles of road trip are over......wow that was a drive. The Claas factory tour was well worth doing, very interesting and helpful people. Unfortunately no pictures were allowed inside the factory so no eye candy.
The people there from the top down were very interested in the specialty crops that we use our combines for and made a point of asking about anything that we see in their designs that need changing. I was a bit taken back by this as this farm has been using Deere combines for these same crops since 1952 and Deere could care less if we can make them work in our specialty crops. Their attitude has always been "alfalfa what?" We don't care if it works that's your problem. So having someone actually interested in having their product work for what you bought it for was refreshing to say the least.
The factory itself was very clean, well organized and very quiet. I was surprised by how quiet it was. There were probably between 15 and 20 machines on the line in various stages of the build. Very interesting to see how it starts out with the various stages of quality control check stations that each machine had to go through on the way to being completed.
As a side note it was very interesting to drive through all the different states and see the crops and different practices on the way. It was also surprising to see all the Case/IH machines in the fields. Probably saw 2 to 1 Case machines to Deere's. We drove across Idaho, through Wyoming and South Dakota, down through Nebraska back across Kansas, across Colorado and Utah, through Idaho again to home.
I think there are some great things coming from Claas in the last and next few years. Looking forward to running my 760 next year.
The people there from the top down were very interested in the specialty crops that we use our combines for and made a point of asking about anything that we see in their designs that need changing. I was a bit taken back by this as this farm has been using Deere combines for these same crops since 1952 and Deere could care less if we can make them work in our specialty crops. Their attitude has always been "alfalfa what?" We don't care if it works that's your problem. So having someone actually interested in having their product work for what you bought it for was refreshing to say the least.
The factory itself was very clean, well organized and very quiet. I was surprised by how quiet it was. There were probably between 15 and 20 machines on the line in various stages of the build. Very interesting to see how it starts out with the various stages of quality control check stations that each machine had to go through on the way to being completed.
As a side note it was very interesting to drive through all the different states and see the crops and different practices on the way. It was also surprising to see all the Case/IH machines in the fields. Probably saw 2 to 1 Case machines to Deere's. We drove across Idaho, through Wyoming and South Dakota, down through Nebraska back across Kansas, across Colorado and Utah, through Idaho again to home.
I think there are some great things coming from Claas in the last and next few years. Looking forward to running my 760 next year.
