BBI Dealer Network Update: Belkorp Ag Joins Network via Rainbow Ag Acquisition

BBI is pleased to announce its newest dealer partner, Belkorp Ag of northern California.  Belkorp joins the BBI family by virtue of its March 2013 acquisition of Rainbow Ag’s equipment dealerships in Ukiah and Lakewood, while Rainbow Ag will remain in business selling lawn and garden equipment, irrigation, clothing, and feed supplies in its retail stores.

The alliance of Rainbow’s equipment dealerships in Ukiah and Calistoga with Belkorp’s existing locations creates a northern California giant with multiple locations also serving Modesto, Patterson, Merced, Santa Rosa and surrounding areas. 

BBI’s relationship with Rainbow Ag has been instrumental to our company’s growth through the years, as the expertise on display in these dealerships is second-to-none.  As we outlined in a previous story on BBI Spreader News, our relationships with people like Rainbow’s Bob Mitrovich and Jim Mayfield have led customer-centered innovation in BBI’s fleet of products.  The team at Rainbow has been of particular importance as BBI has advanced its line of specialty spreaders for the vineyard market, the Cricket Vineyard series.  The Rainbow team’s insights into the specific mechanical and economic needs of vineyard operators in the North Coast grape market proved pivotal in the development of these products through the last several years.

“We are excited about the future of the northern California agriculture market with our forward-looking partnership now with Belkorp Ag,” stated Lee Kilpatrick, Director of Sales and Marketing at BBI Spreaders.  “The combination of these two great dealers, both northern California institutions known for an incredible attention to service and specialized products for their customers,  is set for powerful success in the coming years, and we’re proud to be a part of that.  We intend to keep building spreaders worthy of their continued focus, and we look forward to their continued assistance in getting northern California grape-growers and farmers everything they require to be effective with our equipment.”

For more information, please visit the dealer websites at www.rainbowag.com and www.belkorpag.com.

SPREADER SPOTLIGHT: BBI'S TROOPER

Meet Trooper—the rental industry’s spreader of choice for precision fertilizer applications.  Trooper, a 10-foot, ground-wheel-drive spreader, is another great example of how BBI designs its products to solve problems in the marketplace.

Some small farming and other commercial operations can’t justify the purchase of a spreader, in terms of return on investment, but they still have significant application needs, particularly for fertilizer.  These smaller entities have typically turned to fertilizer companies or their local farming co-ops for the supply of material. 

The design and engineering team at BBI has delivered Trooper, a spreader competitively-priced for the rental market, that’s hallmarked by BBI’s attention to detail and quality evident throughout the company’s lines of spreaders for large farms and municipalities. Whether you buy a spreader or rent one, if it has the BBI name emblazoned on it, you can rest assured that the same quality standards have been met during the spreader’s design and manufacture.  With Trooper, applicator firms and co-ops have a spreader to meet the needs of small farms, while giving them the quality and performance to keep them coming back for more material along the way.

Built with BBI’s proprietary spreader system featured on the company’s larger models, Trooper is the rental market’s only ground-wheel-drive applicator that delivers a consistent, flat, 60-foot swath of fertilizer, row for row. The next closest competitors typically achieve swaths at ranges of 30 to 40 feet, sacrificing nearly half the efficiency on the way. Inconsistent spread patterns, no matter the swath length, contribute to decreased driving interval, a key cog in driving economic efficiency in the field.

BBI designed Trooper to meet the towing needs of small operators, whether they had tractors or trucks doing the work. Users can hitch Trooper to a pickup truck or a tractor, as the spreader comes standard-equipped with a manual, hydraulic pump for raising and lowering the ground drive wheels manually. The spreader’s ground-wheel-drive also operates independently or as plug-to-tractor.

Trooper is bigger, more powerful, and has a better fit and finish than any of its competitors in the rental space, featuring UHMW construction in critical areas, stainless steel, electrostatic paint, chemical-resistant coating, and flotation tires for minimizing soil compaction.

With Trooper, the team at BBI has proven once again that no matter the price point, our company will not sacrifice quality and performance for our customers.  Trooper meets BBI standards for excellence at a price that makes sense for the rental market, at no compromise of our mission to improve customer economics, pound for pound, row for row.

For more information on Trooper, visit its product page at www.bbispreaders.com. 

DEALER SPOTLIGHT—WEST: ITF SUPPLY

ITF Supply, a strong member of the BBI Spreaders dealer network, is located in Willows, California. 

In the heart of Glenn County, nearly 1,200 farms of all shapes and sizes surround the Willows community, delivering a variety of commodities, including almonds, milk products, rice, prunes, and livestock.  Central to the area’s continued success in agriculture is the team at ITF Supply, owned by a third-generation farming family intent on serving the needs of Central Valley farmers and ranchers north of Sacramento in Glenn County and the adjacent counties of Colusa and Butte.

Led by manager Richard Whyler, ITF has a sterling reputation with the northern California farming community, resulting from its wide array of products and customer site program.  ITF maintains an inventory of over 14,000 products in areas such as harvest, tillage, spreaders and sprayers, welding, paints and chemicals, and fasteners. The customer site program keeps large accounts happy, as ITF’s delivery team stocks farm and ranch shops with the items they use most.

Further evidence of ITF’s impeccable customer service is its extended service hours commitment during harvest months, typically from mid-September to early November in the Central Valley.

ITF serves the needs of many diverse farming operations in northern California, as many of their customers have farms with acreage dedicated to row crops, nut orchards, and raising cattle, all within a single master operation.  Because of these diverse specialty needs, ITF keeps an ample supply of spreaders for demonstration needs, but they have responded well to the discerning farmer’s demands by providing keen customization with the help of our sales department at BBI.

MagnaSpread, BBI’s flagship hydraulic spreader for granular fertilizer and lime, is popular with ITF’s clientele, and farmers with smaller operations in the area enjoy using Liberty, BBI’s ground-wheel-drive option for granular applications.  Of particular importance to this market is the performance of BBI’s Endurance line, especially popular among the region’s many organic farmers.  These farmers find more ways to use Endurance—spreading nut hulls, compost, and manure—than perhaps any other market in the country.

BBI salutes ITF Supply of Willows, California.  The ongoing satisfaction of BBI users in the tri-county area of the northern California’s Central Valley region attests to this dealer’s unwavering commitment to expertise and service in bringing the best spreaders to the field. 

Spreader Spotlight: Liberty—the Freedom to Grow

At BBI, we talk a lot about two of our spreader lines, MagnaSpread and Endurance, which represent our flagship offerings for large, sophisticated farms that need the very best in managing the economics of agribusiness.

Our mission as a company is to improve the economics of our customers in the field, and we first articulated this philosophy in the design and manufacturing of Liberty, our heritage line of mechanical, ground-wheel drive spreaders for medium-capacity delivery of granular material. Liberty’s story details BBI’s commitment to continuous improvement, refining our design year after year.

We aimed Liberty, a 10-foot, tandem-axle spreader, squarely at the middle market of farming and ranching—operations with footprints at or below 500 acres—and we’ve always packed this line with value.  For many years, farms and ranches of several hundred acres had been neglected by the spreader industry, having to settle with inferior products.  With the development of Liberty, BBI delivered the VIP treatment these businesses had long deserved, helping them to take their operations to the next levels of growth and profitability.

Liberty isn’t just the best choice for mid-market farms—it’s really the only choice. BBI’s exclusive spreader system, developed initially for Liberty and then applied to the entire family of BBI spreaders throws material with the same dead-level accuracy and length, whether it’s a mechanical (Liberty) or hydraulic (MagnaSpread) model.  The results relative to BBI’s competitors in the medium-capacity market are like comparing an NFL quarterback to a high school kid. 

While no competitor can currently promise more than a 40-foot swath in the mid-capacity mechanical class of spreaders, BBI delivers double the swath (80 feet with fertilizer, 60 feet with lime) with greater accuracy through a wider, flatter spread pattern.  With these exceptional levels of results, Liberty delivers remarkable savings in fuel costs and material costs through fewer passes in the field and reduced material waste along the way.  Cost in use is everything to a farmer looking to embrace a new way of achieving smarter growth, and Liberty achieves these savings in spades.

The bottom line:  Liberty is at least 40 percent more efficient than any of its competitors.

The Liberty line sets the option-rich tone that’s a hallmark of BBI’s entire line of products for farms, ranches, golf courses, and infrastructure needs.  Liberty is available in multiple materials to meet durability requirements, including both carbon and stainless steel versions.  Option packages include optimization for low-profile, heavy duty, and even higher-capacity needs for farms and ranches.  While Liberty features a ground-wheel-drive conveyor, spinners can feature as either PTO or hydraulic-driven.

Even as we’ve developed bigger models for large-capacity jobs on mega-farms and ranches, we find that many of our customers begin their BBI experience with Liberty, experiencing the company’s promise of greater precision, power, and durability, only to eventually upgrade to our flagship hydraulic models, such as Triad and MagnaSpread. This phenomenon is a validation of our mission as a company, and it spurs us to continue along our path of innovation with a focus on improving the economics of farming.

To learn more about Liberty, check out its product page at our website, BBISpreaders.com.

BBI, AG SYSTEMS HEAD TO WPS FARM SHOW

BBI Spreaders and Ag Systems of DeForest, Wisconsin, are heading to the Wisconsin Public Service (WPS) Farm Show next week. 

Held annually at the EAA Grounds in Oshkosh, the WPS Farm Show will take place from March 26-27. The WPS Farm Show has been a staple in the Wisconsin farming community for over 50 years, showcasing the latest farming equipment, tools, machinery, and services. The Show will also feature several seminars on a variety of topics, including energy reduction practices for farming, as well as milk quality for dairy operators.

BBI is teaming up with DeForest, Wisconsin’s Ag Systems, a key BBI dealer in the upper Midwest, for the WPS Farm Show.  Ag Systems retails a variety of farm application equipment, including spreaders and sprayers.

Denny McCauley, BBI’s territory sales manager for the Midwest, will represent the company at the show. 

On display at the BBI/Ag Systems booth will be a 14-foot, pull-type MagnaSpread, part of BBI’s flagship line of hydraulic spreaders for granular fertilizer and lime applications. MagnaSpread is optimized for precision farming, featuring BBI’s exclusive Binary Manifold, a variable-rate ready hydraulic manifold that makes connections to precision agriculture control systems a snap.  The option-rich MagnaSpread line is available in single-axle, tandem-axle, pull-type, truck-mount versions.

 “It’s always a pleasure to work with Ag Systems and come to Wisconsin, one of the iconic farming states in the country,” stated McCauley.  “From the huge dairy market to row crops for corn and soybeans, Wisconsin is a true producer’s haven.  We really enjoy working with the farmers and dealers in this area—there’s a keen understanding of precision agriculture and what it takes to move your operation to the next level of achievement.  BBI is proud to be a part of that process, the constant improvement of economics on the farm and the dairy.”