Tige Gardener’s Ag Services has been buying out of the East End garage since O’Connors took over, and has had nothing but good things to say about the service O’Connors provides.
One of the biggest ag contractors in north-east Victoria and southern NSW at one time, Mr Gardener has worked with a lot of dealerships since 1983, finding O’Connors “hands down the best to deal with”.
“We get other machines out of other dealerships, but I’ve found that O’Connors is the best dealership I’ve bought out of,” he said.
“I’ll always ring them first to see what they’ve got, just because they’re part of our system, and things just work when they’re involved.”
Mr Gardener works with hay, silage and grain — from sowing crops right through to harvest.
When dealing with weather sensitive crops, time is money — and Mr Gardner needs to adapt to the challenges of the season quickly.
“As a farmer we need good back-up service on our machinery,” he said.
“There’s a lot of money at stake and you don’t want to be arguing over nothing.
“There could be rain coming, and that could downgrade a $100,000 crop to $50,000.”
That’s why O’Connors is his go-to when something goes wrong with his machinery, because he knows he can rely on the O’Connors team to get him back out into the paddock.
“From start to finish, from the CEO to the spare parts, the O’Connors crowd are just fantastic,” he said.
“Brendan runs the place like clockwork, he just says ‘no worries mate — let’s get it back in the paddock and deal with the rest later’.
“They keep things flowing.”
O’Connors is integral to an agricultural contractor’s operations, and Mr Gardener considers them to be part of his team.
“Most of our machinery was bought out of O’Connors. They’re fantastic to work with.
“For all our machines, whether it’s hay gear or harvest gear, I’ve got something with O’Connors every month of the year.”
And when they finish the season, O’Connors makes sure the machinery is harvest-ready and there’s hardly ever a problem with their work.
But if something does go wrong, Mr Gardener says the techs from O’Connors are out on-site immediately to get it working again.
“They stand right behind what they do,” he said.
“If you do right by them, they do right by us — and we get fantastic service.”