We're out today to show you around our dealership a little bit and show you how equipment arrives here from different manufacturers and some of the work that we do in order to get the machine prepped and ready to send out to you.
There's obviously differences in the way these processes look depending on our manufacture that we're dealing with, but for the most part, most equipment that shows up here comes on either returnable crates or some kind of wooden box. Most companies now are moving toward these returnable create systems where there is a crate customized for the piece of equipment that's coming here that can be densely packed into a tractor trailer truck to minimize freight cost.
If you look at these Kubota loaders here, you'll see the individual loaders are dropped onto these black metal frames which had pieces in the middle here to stack on top of each other. These can go into a tractor, trailer truck about four high.
Once they come into our dealership, then we're going to lift these off the crates, install them on tractors and these crates are going to flat pack. You can see these sides here can fold down. Then they can stack on top of each other and actually are shipped back to the manufacture. That reduces waste. We don't have nearly as many wood crates and stuff to throw away. They're, generally, faster pieces for us to install because we don't have to break down wooden boxes and that kind of thing. They're eco, because we're reducing waste, we're reusing things and that kind of stuff, it's got a better environmental impact.
There's a lot of reasons we're seeing more and more vendors anymore move towards these returnable crates which is nice.
When they run out of these, Kubota does fall back to using wooden crates as well. A lot of our smaller zero-turn mower companies and implement companies and those kinds of guys tend to use a lot of wooden Crating. For the most part, this is typically a cheap wood usually stapled or screwed together in order to make a shipping box. Then large sub assemblies and that kind of stuff would be bolted down to the inside. Typically, one of two ways. Either wooden crates or metal crates are used to get stuff shipped in here.
Standing out here in the lot beside this tractor in zero turn mowers, you can see another difference in the way things are shipped in here.
The Kubota ZD series, this is a product that's manufactured at KMA in Georgia. Being a domestically manufactured product here, they're using the returnable crates. Again, to get the product here, crate will flat pack and then go back to them to be used again over and over again.
It's a little bit different here for this L6060. This machine is manufactured in Japan, and, obviously, returning a crate back to Japan is not exactly an efficient process. These big heavy metal disposable crates are used. These are crates that we actually send back to recycling plant to get a little bit of money for every year, but they're a much bigger heavier crate made for an overseas shipment.
You can see here a how things are often broken down when they're shipped to us in order to get more stuff into a shipping container in some fashion. The front axle here, you'll notice for this tractor is actually removed from the machine. When it shows up here, our staff actually has to go and you'll see these things, basically, flying in the air. They'll take the three point arms, put them on the back of the tractor, put a jack system one to the front and then actually fly the tractor up in the air in order to install its front axle and stuff underneath of it.
There can often be a lot of work that goes into prepping a tractor for delivery. If we were to take this machine right here and sell it ad that says with no additional attachments and stuff on it, generally, we're looking around four to six hours or so, for somebody to go through install the axle, install the tires, top off the fluids. There's a lot of work involved in actually properly prepping and selling the tractor. We're very lucky to have service professionals that that is essentially all they do. Their job is to prep equipment for sale.
This particular packaging here I thought was really interesting because you can see it was done by some sort of logistics professional. If you take a look at the crate here, you'll see the zigzag pattern is done with the way the tractor is oriented on the crate so that another one can be flipped the other direction and puzzle pieced in right beside this other one here in order to pack is many into a small space is possible.
If you ever see a kubota tractor trailer truck going down the highway with a nice Kubota lettering on it and pictures of tractors on the side, odds are that that tractor trailer is probably carrying our RTVs. RTVs are built in Gainesville Georgia, at Kubota's KMA plant, Kubota Manufacturing of America.
Kubota actually has a fleet of dedicated tractor trailer trucks that haul and deliver RTVs. The reason why they had that dedicated fleet is because those tractor trailers are actually set up with two levels inside of them. RTVs come to us with the roll bars collapsed and packed and shrink wrapped back inside the bed here. They have two layers inside of that truck in order to be able to pack as many machines in as possible. If you ever see one of those fancy machines going down the highway, you know what's inside.
That shows you a little bit about a lot of the work that we do to prep a machine for sale. If you come in and you place an order with us and you have a complicated build, a lot of accessory kits and implements to go on your machine, just be ready for a little bit of a wait. We have a culture of instant gratification and I absolutely understand the guys want their new toys quickly, but know there's a lot of work that goes into setting up a machine for you properly. To have the technicians mount the implements, top off the fluids and really check off all the things that need to be done properly to pre-deliver machine, it's not unusual to have a day or two's worth of work to get something ready for you.
If you're shopping for a machine that we can help you, give us a call at Messick's, we're available at 8002223373 or online at messicks.com.
Here with the very first of our Kubota SSV skid steers. We're really excited to show these to you here today. This is probably for us one of the biggest Kubota product launches we have ever had. The demand and excitement among our customers and our staff here is probably a new record among products that we've had through here before.
