Neil: Neil from Messick's here to invite you to join me a little bit as we walk around the Cummins and Bricker Expo. Cummins and Bricker is our local equipment distributor. We at Messick's work as a solution provider. We're out here looking for different attachments, different equipment in order to help suit whatever unique needs that you've got. At this event, there's more things here to specifically address those really unique, really weird needs than I think I've ever seen before.
Many small implement companies are going to look to a regional distributor to help provide their sales support warehousing and parts distribution. The companies that aren't quite big enough to manage all of those things on their own. In our area, Cummins and Bricker is the predominant distributor that we go to when we need support for some of those really unique things.
Today we're going to walk around this hall a little bit, point out some of the things that we sell all the time, but also some of the things that are offered by companies that you may have never thought existed or may have never realized that a company whose name that you know and have bought some of their products offers a lot more things than what you might realize.
Neil: First company we're going to look at is Rossi or Enorossi, depending on how you choose to pronounce it. We know Rossi most at Messick's for sickle bar mowers. We stock a lot of their sickle bars out in our own lot and it's our go-to option for people that need a lightweight option to be able to reach off the side of their tractor to do mowing chores. You look back here behind me and you're going to find a lot of hay equipment as well. There's a lot of hay rakes, disc mowers, bale wrappers.
The Italians do a great job of making a good line of quality hay equipment and we rely upon Cummins and Bricker here domestically in order to provide us inventory parts and support for the Rossi product line. It's interesting to walk around here and look at things like wheel rakes, hay rakes, rotary rakes because a lot of these items are going to look awfully familiar when you're considering other brands. Oftentimes, small companies like this are the actual OEM behind a lot of the hay tools that you see for major brands.
Next up is this seeder from PH Outdoors. We tend to go to these guys when we have a customer looking for a food plot seeder. Food plot seeding is a little difficult because you need a rugged seeder that you can often pull through pretty rough environments. It's not something that you usually want to do with a field seeder. You're usually dealing with some high-value seed, so a simple broadcast seeder and just chucking it on the ground is often not the best idea.
This strikes an interesting balance where we have something that can meter accurately with a lot of fine adjustments on it and do it in a way that's going to give you a durable implement that's going to hold up over the years. The thing that I think is the most impressive on this is the metering over here on the side. That adjustment of how fast the unit puts the seed down is done with a little CVT gearbox. It's an interesting and innovative way for them to make the adjustments on this very easy-to-use without having to pop off sprockets and move around chains like you would on some other seeders.
To the left and the right of me here would be some heavy carts from a company called Horst. It might surprise you that when you're buying a combine that today is easily over half a million dollars, the manufacturer of those combines doesn't actually make the wagon that's needed to set the head down on and transport it around. That's something that tends to be a lot more locally produced and this would be a great example of a header cart made close to home.
If you could hear me over the party going on in the background here, this is a bale wrapper from a company called Metal-Fach. They brand this under the name Diamond. We've sold a handful of these things every year and it's a really economical way in order to get your hay wrapped that can make your product last a lot longer, and it's really easy to cost justify having one of these in your equipment fleet when you can see how much more valuable your product can be when you've taken care of it by wrapping it.
The Canadians know snow removal, that's for sure. All the best snow removal equipment that we see through our dealership tends to come from a Canadian company in some fashion or another. This would be a huge snow push from a company called Horst Welding or HLA. If you look around back here, they have all kinds of snowplows, snow pushers, but then also an expansive line too of buckets, grapples, forks. I have HLA pallet forks on the front of my own tractor and I've got a snow pusher on the way forward as well, so really cool company that can support us with some really well-made implements for our equipment.
Speaking of snow pushes, there's a huge variety on the market in terms of features and quality of this kind of thing. At the end of the day, it's a U-shaped piece of metal. There are some weld shops that we can go to to get some really inexpensive snow pushers made, but none of them are going to match the quality and the options and stuff that we get out of something from HLA.
If you look at just this pusher here itself, we're going to have options in terms of that cutting edge down here in the bottom, whether it's rubber or steel, whether you have a pullback plate up here on the top and the materials that go onto that, the kind of skid shoes that you have on the end, and then the mounting frame that's on the back of it to adapt it to all kinds of different equipment. For something as simple as a snow push, there can be four and five different options to really configure this correctly for the right user.
One of the values in showing up for this kind of stuff is the unique things that you get to see that you may not have even known that the market has to offer. One of those examples is this limb saw, literally a hydraulic-powered chainsaw that sits on the end of this long boom that you can use your machine to lift up and cut a branch that might be high in the air.
The idea of being able to take attachments meant for a three-point hitch and use them on the front of another piece of equipment on your front loader or on a skid steer or whatever is an idea that's often thrown around, but I never actually see it done that often. Believe it or not, right here is an attachment that you can use that you could throw on your front loader that's going to give you a three-point hitch with two lower arms in order to grab your implement, a top link right here to secure it from the top and a hydraulically driven PTO shaft in order to spin your implement. All of your three-point hitch equipment could be operated off of a front loader or a skid steer using this attachment.
If you asked me if Messick's had an option for prepping a baseball field, I probably would've laughed at you, but turns out we do. [chuckles] Starting at the front here, you're going to have this attachment called an infielder that's going to rake along here in the front in this first stage, a set of rollers here in the middle that are going to come along and break up any kind of claws, a smooth roller here that's going to smooth everything flat, and then a brush here at the end that's going to give a nice surface finish to everything when this attachment's done.
This attachment is a Reist TrailPro, an attachment made specifically for making trails. As you pull this along, the outside discs are going to collect any soils that might have gotten pushed out to the edges. You have some rippers here on the inside. They're going to plow that soil. It's going to collect here in a box much like a box blade would, but in the back of it here, then you have a power drum that's going to spin, break up those claws, and throw them out over the top. The end result is you have an attachment here that can give you a basically one-pass building or reclamation of trails.
Next up is an awesome Canadian company called Wallenstein. You've seen these guys on our channel before, mostly when it's come to us running some log winches. They are our go-to industry standard for somebody needing a log winch to pull out logs using their tractor, but they have a whole line of other wood-handling stuff. This is a small firewood processor here that's in front of me. You're also going to find there are trippers, shredders and log splitters, and stuff around as well, all made in Canada.
We're not in a geographic area that has a ton of commercial-oriented firewood work, but my eyes were open to the utility of one of these things when I had the chance to run it on my own tractor. By being able to hook this on the back of your machine, pull out a cable winch down here at the bottom, attach it around the log, and then use that winch to pull your logs and stuff up out of the woods, you can do a lot less damage to your property than going back and having to cut things up and get into it with your tractor. I found it a really nice productive quick piece of equipment to use. Cool company, domestically supported.
In front of me here is a five-inch Wallenstein chipper. They have these here and all kinds of different sizes and feed mechanisms. It's a very complete product line. So much of what you see in this kind of stuff on the market today has some kind of say foreign origins. It's neat to see stuff like this being made in Canada but also made to a very high standard. You can tell that there's some heavy-duty commercial thinking in the construction of all these when you look at the thickness of the steel and the size of the bearings that are used in the drive assemblies.
Next up is another company called MK Martin. Now you've seen these guys in our channel and from our product lines before for three-point hitch snowblowers and more specifically the pull-type three-point hitch snowblowers, a little bit more innovative, newer version of that snow removal equipment. These companies have a much broader product line and just those couple of things that we pick and choose from regularly. Two of those things would be this kind of utility box.
This is just a three-point hitch box that you could put on the back of your tractor. It gives you almost a pickup truck bed behind your tractor as you drive around. They also have weight boxes. We tend to go to the same companies over and over again [unintelligible 00:09:51] when we need a weight box, but there are other options out there, and this one has some things going for it. I think it's construction being really shallow and high is interesting because it doesn't add as much length to your tractor and they've also integrated a hitch into the bottom of it as well. Innovative things available from some of these smaller companies.
Beside me here is a Jacto air blast sprayer. Now these are usually used for our customers that are having orchards or vineyards and you're going to mix up chemicals inside of this. They're going to be propelled through the air by a jet of air. The air is going to blow out this fan and then these nozzles right here are going to spray that chemical out and the air is going to help carry it along where it's going to settle down onto those orchard and vineyard crops.
This is cool. [chuckles] This is not a line that we sell, but it's cool that they have it set up here to show how this stuff is often utilized. This is a narrow tractor that's meant for vineyards specifically. Articulates here in the middle to make it really maneuverable to get around at the ends of those turns and is really a purpose-built machine for those, probably small Italian vineyards. This is a little Italian-built tractor that we've never seen here in the US. I think it's super cool.
Every year we sell a truckload of Del Morino Italian-built flail mowers. For us, these are the best place that you can find a high-quality but consumer-oriented flail mower. There's a lot of more industrial options that are more costly and cheaper options that aren't quite the quality that these are, but they strike a really good balance and have been really popular with our customers being that they're Italian-made, good stuff. Had one of my own tractor for a while and I like some of the innovative ways they have their three-point hitch set up. The interesting thing though about being here and seeing the breadth of this company is that they do a lot more than just flail mowers. You'll see there's also some finished mowers and believe it or not, I never knew that Del Morino made a backhoe.
This is a Del Morino-powered potato digger. [laughs] Again, it just, it's cool to see the things that are out here that aren't the everyday things that we deal with. We know this company so well from flails, but I could not have told you this was part of their product line. You're going to be able to hook this one to your tractor, drive down your line of potatoes through your field. This is a power digger in that this cage right here is going to bounce up and down so that as those potatoes are dug up, the soil's going to flow up into that cage and then the dirt is going to fall out the bottom while the potatoes are going to windrow out here along the side.
In front of me here is a cool mower from a company called BERTI. Now this mower is made for mowing around posts. We see them a lot in solar farm fields and that kind of thing where you have a lot of those posts on the panels and everything to mow around. This is an attachment you're going to be able to put on the back of your tractor and then this is going to do a bulk of the mowing right behind your machine, but then this disc over here on the side is going to swing off the side of the mower over here. When it strikes that post, it'll pivot around it in order to make sure you mow around the post as you go.
Beside me here is a post driver from a company called Ideal. This is going to get pulled around with a tractor or a pickup truck. It has storage space over here on the side for your posts, but once you place them over here, this is where the action kind of happens. This is a driver that allows you to hydraulically tilt and position this post and then drive it down into the ground. They're also going to have a bunch of other post-related stuff. There's some hammers over here that are going to hydraulically hammer posts down with a skid steer and also a lot of other attachments too. This company makes things like rotary cutters and discs and small attachments for your compact tractors as well.
This is a like next-level snowblower here. [chuckles] I'm told that this includes a feature on it that is most requested by airports and if it's good enough for an airport, it's probably good enough for any of us. The function here that I've never seen before is this geared mechanism right here that actually opens up the side of the rotating-- the mechanism here that spins and throws the snow up the spout, usually. You could open this up and just allow it to chuck the snow out the side this direction to just throw it out the side.
The benefit of this is that it spreads out a lot nicer when the snow is sent up through one of these shoots. It tends to collect in a much more defined pile where this is going to open that up and spread it out. I would guess too, it's really handy. When I clog a snowblower, it's often in this mechanism somewhere and so it really should help that clean out as well.
[unintelligible 00:14:19] we could sell these before. This is a pull-type like pull behind your pickup truck or your utility vehicle backhoe, but it is from MK Martin. The thing that I think is impressive about this is just the quality of construction here. When you look at these things, oftentimes there's a high degree of say built at the lowest cost possible. If you look here at say a backhoe with a curved boom with a thumb on it with a little bit heavier duty bucket, the construction of a made-in-Canada pull-type backhoe I think is interesting.
In front of me here is a finish mower that you can pull behind your utility vehicle. You're going to see this has a hitch on it to hook up to your machine and then a finish mower down underneath of it. In this case with its own 19-horse engine on top of it. I laugh a little bit here at the 48-inch one, the sided here that has two independent engines on top of one mower deck. That's pretty funny, but it's a cool application here, right? If you have mowing chores to do, maybe you can get away with doing some of those things with just your utility vehicle and not necessarily have to buy a whole tractor and still get your jobs done.
Next company here is a company called APV. We've looked at these guys in the past before for their air seeders. You're going to put small seeds up here in this box and it's going to use air pressure in order to carry it down these seeds, drop it on the ground to spread it out, and then the rest of the tillage implement here is going to make sure those seeds get good seed to soil contact and sprout appropriately.
Also from APV are these two attachments that are used for organic farming. This is called a rotary hoe. This is going to go between your rows and as it goes along, break up that soil and pull out any weeds that are growing in your rows. Behind me here is also a small mechanical weeder, so going to have a little bit more attachments that are kind of specialty things geared towards those growing organic crops.
This very green piece beside me here is from a company called Shulte, S-H-U-L-T-E. This is a mechanical rock picker. This is an attachment that is pulled behind your tractor and this right here is going to rake the soil as it goes. Then as it rakes it and collects the rocks, these big tines on a chain are going to come around, grab the rocks and pull them up into this collection hopper in the back. That hopper has grates in the bottom that are going to allow further dirt and soil to drop out the bottom while keeping those large rocks in here, giving it an efficient way in order to clean rocks out of acres upon acres of farm fields.
Next up is Danuser. We've used Danuser a handful of times now for stump removal chores. I've gone to them for these stump augers where you have this bit that digs down into the stump and then these pieces around the side here are going to shave that stump off as they rotate around. We're going to run that on some kind of auger drive. They have dedicated drives that are made for these kind of augers that are geared down, but the connection point on here is a regular 2.5-inch hex shaft. These can also be run with any kind of regular post hole auger as well. Give me a more utility out of that attachment.
Danuser is also known for this called the Intimidator. This is a tree puller that you're going to hydraulically actuate these jaws in the front to go in, grab a tree, and literally tear it out of the ground and lay it over as if you want to push them over or wedge them out of the ground. It's a really aggressive, heavy-built attachment for manipulating trees.
This is a pull-type forage harvester from a company called Dion. Now, modern forage harvesters today have become what, 500 horsepower to 1100 horsepower, incredibly expensive monstrous machines. There's a company or two left out there that's kept the idea of a small farm forage harvester alive and Dion is one of those companies.
Everywhere I turn I find more cool stuff. [chuckles] Like the dump cart. It just doesn't quite stop. It is cool to be part of an industry that has so much variety. There's so many small companies out there that make implements and attachments and equipment that are just made to address the most niche of needs. It's cool to be able to offer a lot of those things. We bring all of our staff to these events to help them learn to be better solutions providers so when you call with a unique task, we're able to help.
If we can help you with any of that attachment shopping that you might be doing, or if you have parts of service needs for equipment that's already in your fleet, we're glad to help. You can look us up at messicks.com or give us a call at 800-222-3373.
