Farmers can rent out or request equipment
By Diego Flammini
Assistant Editor, North American Content
Farms.com
If you’re in need of transportation, calling a cab or using Uber are a few of the available options; and a new website allows farmers to access equipment in a similar fashion.
MachineryLink Sharing acts like Uber – a farmer who’s in need of equipment logs onto the website, selects the piece of equipment they need, a zip code and if an operator is necessary. The listings include tractors, planters, sprayers, tillage and harvesting machinery.
A list of machinery appears and can be sorted by relevance, price or whether an operator is available.
Once the farmer finds what they’re looking for, they click on the listing and can look at the machinery’s specs, shipping instructions and contact the renter. The renter can accept or deny the request.
MachineryLink takes about 15 per cent of the transaction, secures payments, verifies the renters are insured and provides insurance to the equipment owners.
MachineryLink snapshot
According to The Washington Post, Jordan Hickel, a farmer from Kansas, has his CASE IH 8120 combine listed for about $1,800 per day; it’s already been booked for 20 days by farmers in Colorado and July.
Jeff Dema, MachineryLink’s president said farmers have always rented out their equipment to neighbors, but this allows them to look outside of that.
“If you look two or three states away, all the sudden you have people who are on different crops and growing cycles,” he told The Post.