# Joint ownership of equipment



## MikeRF (Dec 21, 2009)

Has anyone got any experiences good or bad with sharing ownership of certain pieces of equipment with neigbours? How do you go about setting it up if acreages are unevenly split and how do you deal with replacing parts or breakage?
(Sorry I guess this should have been in machinery)


----------



## Nitram (Apr 2, 2011)

Never have and doubt I would...Seems like your answering your own question, if you need to worry about keeping everything even steven you never will be able to. perhaps buying with in your means and getting something not as new as you'd like for now and upgrade latter when you can. If I have misread your relationship with your neighbor I apologize. It just seems that partnerships can harm a good neighbor who would otherwise give you the shirt off their back. Good luck and happy farming


----------



## Vol (Jul 5, 2009)

What is the first ship to sink? ............. A partnership. This old saying is more the rule than the exception. It takes two very mature, diligent, and responsible people to make a partnership work. Regards, Mike


----------



## kyfred (Dec 23, 2009)

Don't think you want to do that. Every time you need to use the equipment your partner will have it and then when you go get it because someone will usually not bring the equipment home it will need to be repaired. I saw dad go through that with a couple of pieces of equipment. Never works with equipment that you need and try to take care of. If you do let everyone know how soon it didn't work.


----------



## NDVA HAYMAN (Nov 24, 2009)

Mike, I share a Great P;ains no- till drill with a farmer friend of mine. All I can say is that it has worked great. We share expenses and maintenance on the drill 50/50 no matter what happens. This has been going on for several years. We both are very meticulous about how we take care and operate our equipment. Mike


----------



## TessiersFarm (Aug 30, 2009)

I trade equipment back and forth with another farmer neighbor, however we each own our own pieces and we each repair our own equipment. I trust him to use the equipment as I would and I do the same, there is always a little aprehensiveness on my part his equipment will break when I have it but it never has, and I am sure he would not hold it against me. My equipment has broken while he was using it and I had to fight with him not to pay the repairs, I felt the breakdown was a result of wear not abuse. I agree it takes two very mature, diligent, and responsible people to make a partnership work. The good thing with our arangement is is the partnership does disolve ownership is very clear.


----------



## mlappin (Jun 25, 2009)

I'm to the point I won't even let people borrow any of my equipment, period. I'll go do whatever needs done for em, but unless I'm running that piece of equipment, it does not leave the farm.

The only way I can see this working is if the person you're going to go on shares with maintains and runs the equipment the exact same way you would.

Maybe I'm already biased, but I was raised that if you borrow something you _always_ _*always*_ return it in better shape than you got it and with a full tank of fuel if applicable. I've yet to have anyone return the favor when I did let people borrow my 'stuff'.


----------



## rjmoses (Apr 4, 2010)

mlappin;23334 Maybe I said:


> always[/I] _*always*_ return it in better shape than you got it and with a full tank of fuel if applicable. I've yet to have anyone return the favor when I did let people borrow my 'stuff'.


Borrowed a 3pt post hole digger last summer. Spent more on repairs than buying a new one would have cost!


----------



## NDVA HAYMAN (Nov 24, 2009)

The Great plains drill is the only piece that I share. I will not lend out or share any of my tractors or hay equipment under any circumstances. Mike


----------



## MikeRF (Dec 21, 2009)

NDVA HAYMAN said:


> The Great plains drill is the only piece that I share. I will not lend out or share any of my tractors or hay equipment under any circumstances. Mike


I meant strictly *shared ownership/ partnership * rather than lend or borrow. I see it as a great method of spreading costs of a piece of equipment over a larger acreage. I agree that with certain pieces (such as hay equipment) this would be difficult because of weather windows but with tillage and planting kit this is not as big of a problem. 
I am considering joint ownership of a 6 row planter with a neighbour. I do between 50-75 acres of corn/year and he does 100-125. We have both had custom guys do our planting in the past but a spring like this is showing the disadvantages of that. IMO neither of us can justify owning a planter alone with this number of acres. 
Mike in your situation with the drill, do you both cover a similar acreage annually?


----------



## Toyes Hill Angus (Dec 21, 2010)

There is a very definate cost advantage with shared ownership of equipment but my problem is that the window of opprotunity to use this shared peice is limited by weather ground conditions etc. And who gets to use it first? I've thought about it lots but never felt comfortable with being the second guy waiting for the first guy to get done with it, he has a break down, and then it rains for weeks... it's not for me.


----------



## Grateful11 (Apr 5, 2009)

It's a bad idea from the get go. I don't even like loaning out a shovel because every time we do one of us has to go get it.


----------



## mlappin (Jun 25, 2009)

Grateful11 said:


> It's a bad idea from the get go. I don't even like loaning out a shovel because every time we do one of us has to go get it.


Yeah, I love that crap. Have an Uncle that isn't even allowed on the farm anymore, he'd take stuff without asking then never bring it back. If you called to see if he took it, the reply was "yeah, I'm done with it, you can come and get it."


----------



## NDVA HAYMAN (Nov 24, 2009)

I do a lot more than he does because I was no tilling a small acreage of beans. This year is quite different since I have upped my row crop acreage greatly. He told me that he had no problem with that but I will do things such as replace coulters etc. on my own because of the extra use. Mike


----------



## Lazy J (Jul 18, 2008)

The only ship that doesn't float is a Partnership.


----------



## hay wilson in TX (Jan 28, 2009)

Depends, there are many variations on that word.

I know families who work together in a cooperative fashion and others where Brothers can not agree on anything.

I met a Pennsylvania religious minority with a small 100 cow dairy. He owned a NH Self Propelled Mower Conditioner and a couple of trucks. Others in the area owned large silage harvesting equipment or hay baling equipment. When John's corn is ready to go in the silo, neighbors show up with their appropriate equipment and get the job done in hours rather than over several days. 
The net result is every one has less equipment cost, each needs less time, over all to harvest feed for their respective farms. The only thing that is done individually is milk the cows.

Sixty years ago we harvested hay and our neighbor harvested corn. We helped our neighbor plant alfalfa and our neighor helped us plant wheat. Times wre good.

My family in the late 1800's and early 1900's all had small dairies. Say 15 to 50 cows milking. Every two years the Family Bulls all rotated to a different Family's Dairy. 
When one of the bulls needed to be replaced the family, together, bought the rplacement bull. Worked for a generation anyway. I believe when the individual dairies became larger and the circle of relatives became smaller this spirit of cooperation died out.

My Father lit a chuck for Texas an none of his sisters married farmers. I can think of only one other family that is still farming. Age will soon put an end to my farming.


----------



## swmnhay (Jun 13, 2008)

I'm quite surprised to see some joint ownership of some eq here.It alows them to have newer bigger eq and may work together also.

Would have to get along VERY well with the other partner.Who is gonna use it today with rain coming tommorow?

Wouldn't be for me.


----------



## haybaler101 (Nov 30, 2008)

The only partner I have in my equipment is the bank and as long as I send money, they never seem to want to use the equipment.


----------



## BHotte (Jun 15, 2011)

I trusted a person I thought was a freind in a joint venture. Turns out......this is a terible thing to do. I no longer have this freind. It may seem like it makes sense now, but in the end you will be much better off hiring what you can not afford to puchase and just do what you can on slowly getting an older piece of equipment at a time.


----------



## JoshA (Apr 16, 2008)

TessiersFarm said:


> I trade equipment back and forth with another farmer neighbor, however we each own our own pieces and we each repair our own equipment. I trust him to use the equipment as I would and I do the same, there is always a little aprehensiveness on my part his equipment will break when I have it but it never has, and I am sure he would not hold it against me. My equipment has broken while he was using it and I had to fight with him not to pay the repairs, I felt the breakdown was a result of wear not abuse. I agree it takes two very mature, diligent, and responsible people to make a partnership work. The good thing with our arangement is is the partnership does disolve ownership is very clear.


Agreed, your post is closest to our situation. We are a cattle farm, neighbor is a grain farm 2 miles down the road. All it takes is a phone call and a machine can be borrowed. From tractors to semi-trucks to GPS equipment to tools to labor. Works good being two totally different types of farms. We can borrow a semi in the summer to haul hay with 3, he can borrow a couple semi's in the fall to haul grain with 4. Our tractor can run a hay rake all summer and a grain auger all fall.

He does my seeding and spraying (160 acres of silage), but I use his 4wd tractor tools for prep work. Because of the "friend/neighbor" situation, it works great. As a partnership, I think less than 10% of them are successful very long, at least with both parties happy.


----------



## mick e (Apr 14, 2011)

Think about how often you will both want to use the equipment at the exact same time.


----------



## NDVA HAYMAN (Nov 24, 2009)

I guess that I'm lucky to have a good partner. This Great Plains drill is the only piece that I don't own outright. If it wasn't for the fact that we were both looking for one at the same time and he found the retiring farmer that owned it, we would not be partners. BUT, it has worked out great and I have no regrets. I have told him that I will buy his 50% anytime. Mike


----------



## charlesmontgomery (Jun 4, 2011)

mlappin said:


> I'm to the point I won't even let people borrow any of my equipment, period. I'll go do whatever needs done for em, but unless I'm running that piece of equipment, it does not leave the farm.
> 
> The only way I can see this working is if the person you're going to go on shares with maintains and runs the equipment the exact same way you would.
> 
> Maybe I'm already biased, but I was raised that if you borrow something you _always_ _*always*_ return it in better shape than you got it and with a full tank of fuel if applicable. I've yet to have anyone return the favor when I did let people borrow my 'stuff'.


I am with you. If I loan something out, it comes back tore up and abused. If I borrow something (maybe twice in 30 years) it is returned lubed and/ or full of fuel.

It would drive me crazy to try to co-own machinery with a neighbor unless the neighbor was as picky about maintenance as me, and that's not very likely.


----------



## okbuckaroo (Jul 12, 2009)

Don't do it is all i can say


----------



## Toyes Hill Angus (Dec 21, 2010)

If there is any way that you can financially make it work in the short tems to purchase your own equipment, it will only look more and more attractive over time, you will always want stuff at the ame time, one guy usually ends up doing all of the maintance any way it might as well be your own.


----------



## somedevildawg (Jun 20, 2011)

Learned my lesson, let a fellow down the road borrow a hay rake and it came back by itself, when I wasn't there, bent to the point I finally replaced it after a year of cursing! Stupid me. Just sold my backhoe only because I was tired of people borrowing it and bringing it back with no fuel and this and that broke, just got feed up with it, if they have an interest in it (some skin in the game) it would probably work out much better.....I hope. Stupid me again, good luck


----------

