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“[Our] solid, sustainable growth is all caused by being forward thinking in the industry and sticking to our core values and brand promise. If we do that, I know that we’ll be around for another 30 years helping the industry.”

— Jim Steinke, Vice President of Sales and Marketing, Ag Express Electronics

2022 marks the 30th anniversary of Ag Express Electronics. Since 1992, the company has grown from 10 employees doing repairs to more than 170 employees repairing, manufacturing, selling and supporting more than 2,000 electronic devices.

While Ag Express has changed alongside the agriculture industry, the company maintains its commitment to quality and its customers, says Jim Steinke, Ag Express’ vice president of sales and marketing.

In part one of this two-part series, Jim discusses the history of Ag Express Electronics, how the company has evolved in the last 30 years and its relationship with dealers and OEMs.

Listen to Part 2

Related Content:

[Video] Ag Express at the 2020 Precision Farming Dealer Summit

Full Transcript

Michaela Paukner:
Welcome to the latest episode of the Precision Farming Dealer Podcast. I'm Michaela Paukner, associate editor of Precision Farming Dealer. New episodes of this series are available wherever you get your podcasts. Be sure to subscribe, to get an alert, when upcoming episodes are released.

Michaela Paukner:
2022 marks Ag Express Electronics' 30th anniversary. Since 1992, the company has grown from 10 employees doing repairs to more than 170 employees repairing, manufacturing, selling, and supporting more than 2,000 electronic devices. "While Ag Express has changed alongside the agriculture industry, the company maintains its commitment to quality and its customers," says Jim Steinke, Ag Express' vice president of sales and marketing. In part one of this two-part series, Jim discusses the history of Ag Express Electronics, how the company has evolved in the last 30 years, and its relationship with dealers and OEMs.

Jim Steinke:
My name is Jim Steinke. I am vice president of sales and marketing for Ag Express Electronics. I am in charge of the marketing and sales efforts of Ag Express. I was employee number 24 in 1998, and we have over 170 employees now.

Michaela Paukner:
Wow.

Jim Steinke:
That's pretty solid sustainable growth, and it's all caused by being forward-thinking in the industry and sticking to our core values and sticking to our brand promise. And if we do that, I know that we'll be around for another 30 years helping the industry.

Michaela Paukner:
What was your role when you first started there?

Jim Steinke:
I was hired as a technician. Go back 10 years, all Ag Express hired was technicians, a technician to do basically everything. A technician at that time in Express's world was a salesperson, a production worker. We were an accounting clerk. We were shipping department, inventory control, maintenance team, and we found time to fix stuff too.

Jim Steinke:
So then, we had to develop a little bit differently. We had to go about things and be more intentional. Your technicians were pulled in so many different directions. So, we started looking at the different jobs that a technician does and split them up and hired people to do that, and do that better, to hire professionals to do some the stuff that we were doing. And you'd get a little bit more efficient in your hiring practices. Technicians were doing an awful lot, and we weren't able to be as effective as we could have been. And so, hiring salespeople to do that, hiring production workers, hiring engineers to do their jobs has been a blessing, and has really triggered a lot of our growth.

Michaela Paukner:
Do you think it was an advantage for you to have started as a technician, now looking at what you do now?

Jim Steinke:
Absolutely. If I wasn't a technician, I wouldn't value the whole Ag Express story. And I see it from a perspective, I see everything that I do from a perspective of a service technician and how I'm going to affect that person at the bench, how bringing on this product line for us to sell might affect that person, knowing the ins and outs of the tractors and the combines and the sprayers and the balers and the moisture testers from a service standpoint has really been a blessing, and it makes me better at what I do because I understand it, I think, at a higher level.

Jim Steinke:
One of the things that is a challenge in our industry is teaching the agricultural concepts, fully learning why and how planting works, or spraying chemical application, the different kinds and stuff like that. That has always been a challenge. But from a technician, I was able to create that as I built test boxes and as I built custom solutions for testing equipment, and repaired stuff. It brought that out of me personally. I don't think I'd be as good at what I do if I didn't have that background.

Jim Steinke:
I was a technician for a long time with Ag Express. Had a lot of different roles and changed roles several times across the... over my tenure at Ag Express, from just regular technician to service manager, location to operations manager, and then into sales and marketing. When the ownership retired in '17, end of '17, I was given the responsibility of the sales and marketing efforts of Ag Express, that it was a part of my job as operations manager at the Grand Island location. And I couldn't give everything to it.

Jim Steinke:
And about a year and a half later, the decision was made to move me fully into this role. And so, Q4 of 2019, I was fully moved into this role as sales and marketing and given the responsibility of development and growth of the sales efforts of Ag Express. And I truly am a blessed person. I've known that for a long, long time. And I work for a really good company that respects its employees, takes care of its employees, and honors its customer base to the highest level.

Jim Steinke:
Agriculture is probably the greatest industry you can ever work in. And for whatever reason, a lot of people don't understand it. They don't seek it out until they're in it, or they grew up in it. Because it's just the people that we work with, the people that we work for, you use the term salt of the earth. People just have a different level of understanding, trust, belief system. Some industries don't have it, and unfortunately, those industries struggle sometimes. So, again, I feel like I'm blessed to be a part of the agriculture industry, too. And I wouldn't change it for the world.

Michaela Paukner:
Yeah, me too. I feel like this is a great place to be, and I'm glad to be here too. And I know Ag Express is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, and you guys have an interesting startup story. Could you tell us a little bit about that story and how you got started?

Jim Steinke:
Well, we got started back in 1992. Again, 30 years ago. And the four previous owners of Ag Express worked for DICKEY-john. DICKEY-john is a major electronics manufacturer in agriculture. And at the time, they worked at DICKEY-john's service center. DICKEY-john had six outside service centers. And they decided at that time to pull all of their external service centers into one location, Auburn, Illinois, and to close down all the external service centers.

Jim Steinke:
Well, the original ownership decided they didn't want to do that. They didn't move their families to Illinois. They didn't want to walk that route. So, they devised a plan to keep doing what they were doing, fixing ag electronics in the same cities that they were in. Ironically enough, actually the same buildings that they were in at that time. So, they started Ag Express. Went around in that first year, built relationships with other manufacturers in ag and developed some relationships with them. So, Ag Express was formed by being able to repair to the component level ag electronics.

Jim Steinke:
Over the years, we have developed into, changed our business format and things, as we organically grow, how we grew into a company that could provide solutions, cable solutions in particular, and started building wiring harnesses. A natural fit was to build planter harnesses. We were fixing a lot of planter monitors. And then all of a sudden, we started fixing and repairing speed sensors and sprayer controls and baler monitors. All of that needs that harnessing. So, we developed a harness program, a custom harness program that at the time when it first started back when I started in 1998, it was just basically technicians that were building it when we weren't fixing stuff or talking on the phone troubleshooting things. We were building harnesses, producing them. Or you'd have a part-time seasonal help doing some cable production also.

Jim Steinke:
Too, now, we have a team of people, four locations and the four production facilities. And on that team, we probably have, quickly adding these up in my head, 45 people building cables at four different locations. That's pretty good growth over the course of time, that's for sure.

Michaela Paukner:
So, back in the days when the four previous owners were working for DICKEY-john, how did they get the business off the ground? Did they encounter any issues?

Jim Steinke:
There's all kinds of issues at the beginning, right? You have to forge the relationships. So, you have to find the people that you need to talk to at the different manufacturers. You have to market who you are. And back in the early '90s, it was different. There was no social media, no real websites, things like that. The internet wasn't a real deal. So, we went to a bunch of farm shows, and it was basically a grassroots, boots on the ground. One of the owners himself did an awful lot of traveling around to make these relationships. It was a very localized aspect of Ag Express at that time. At that time, we had three different locations, one in Grand Island, Nebraska, one in Des Moines, Iowa, and one in Sulphur Springs, Indiana. And we were very focused on those local areas, the Iowa and Nebraska and Indiana. Even though we grew and you could see some growth across the country, it was mainly in those states or neighboring states that we had most of our business. And it was all repair business at that time, also.

Jim Steinke:
Obstacles besides being able to get the word out of what we were doing and how we were doing it and why we existed in the world, we weren't a DICKEY-john dealer anymore. We didn't have access to DICKEY-john parts. And DICKEY-john was somebody that was a major player in the game. So, we had to figure out a lot of stuff on our own. From repair side of things, they get schematics to tell you where to go to fix things, theory of operation testing. So, we had to build all our own test equipment. If you were to see the test equipment that our technicians use today, some of it is still the same original test equipment that we had back then. And we had to draw out and acquire some of the schematics by technicians just sitting at a table drawing out what the circuit looked like. Those were difficult times, but you learn how to pair stuff fairly easily and quicker that way when you have those challenges in front of you.

Michaela Paukner:
Now is the time to nominate a dealer for Precision Farming Dealers' 2023 Most Valuable Dealership. Now in its 11th year, our annual program recognizes the organization demonstrating the best in sales, service, and support of precision farming technology. Dealers, manufacturers, and others are invited to participate by nominating top precision farming dealers from across North America. Go to precisionfarmingdealer.com/mbd to nominate a dealer for our 2023 MBD award and help us recognize North America's premier precision farming operation. Now let's get back to the conversation.

Michaela Paukner:
How did the company go from doing more of that repair type stuff to then moving into the custom harnesses?

Jim Steinke:
Well, driven by our customers. With anything in our business and within Ag Express anyway, our customers mean a lot to us, and their needs mean a lot to us. It's part of our core values, and it's part of our brand promise, customized to fit your needs. So, we just had customers that would ask us, "Hey, have you guys ever built this? Have you ever built this?" This became a natural progression to be that solution provider.

Jim Steinke:
There's not a lot of people out there that will connect so many different types of equipment to make it all work. And that's where we come in. All the different colors, whether it's green or red or yellow or blue, it doesn't matter, we'll try to connect it together. And it started off slow with just some basic stuff, and now it's growing exponentially with the precision ag industry.

Michaela Paukner:
I was looking at a video interview that we had done with you at the 2020 Precision Farming Dealer Summit. And you identified that trend of farmers buying used equipment of all different colors and then connecting it together. How do you think that trend has progressed, particularly in the last two years?

Jim Steinke:
Well, it's not necessarily just used equipment, either. It's new stuff. They find a solution that a manufacturer has that they like, but they want to fit it in with their current operation. And that's where we come in then. So, they'll find something that offers the return on the investment, offers the improvement on their efficiencies, stuff to that effect, and Ag Express then was able to fill that hole in making sure that all of their pieces of equipment will work together and communicate together.

Jim Steinke:
That being said, it's hard to change software with a cable. It's impossible. You can't. But a lot of times, we can make some of that actually work. Our uptake in the two years, maybe last four years, has been pretty good. There's a lot of companies making really great products, and they're out there finding those really, really great products that fit their needs, but yet, it doesn't fit either their budget or doesn't fit their current operation. And we try to make that happen. We've grown a lot in the last three years. So, if you look at it from purely a standpoint of Ag Express in our quantity of cables, we've grown exponential. We're probably twice as big on the production than we were two years ago.

Michaela Paukner:
Wow.

Jim Steinke:
Yeah.

Michaela Paukner:
And that's a result of people wanting to connect equipment of different colors more often than they were?

Jim Steinke:
Maybe not more often. Maybe they come to us first and foremost. We've dived into helping OEMs solve their solutions and make them a little bit more flexible, so to speak. Dealerships of all colors and makes and models are calling us to see the value in this. I'm using a little speculation here, but some of the dealerships are probably very color centered, and if you came in there with that mindset, "I need to use this on this," they just probably walked away from it. Now they're not. They're seeing that there is a need out there that need to flexible what do. And so, then, who's there to fill in those gaps? That's where we lie. We lie in those little spaces.

Michaela Paukner:
What is your relationship like with dealerships and how do you go about working with them to provide solutions to their customers?

Jim Steinke:
The implement dealers are our targets. They are most of our customers. I use an analogy of a hand, and you've got all the farmers that are like the fingers of the hands. Well, the dealership's the palm, and we touch the palm pretty well because we want to provide a solution for all of their customers. Their customers are our customers. And we try to cater our offerings to support them. Dealerships can call us and have a special need just for them. We'll build it just for them. Or if we find that that special need for that one dealership should be something that every dealership sees, we'll take it to the whole world. The implement dealer world is very important to Ag Express, always has been and always will be.

Michaela Paukner:
Do you have an example of a product that started out as something that one particular dealer wanted that you then made available to everybody?

Jim Steinke:
That is a good question, because there's quite a few. There's a number of specific cab harnesses where we made it because the one out of the OEM was too long. That's what a lot of it is, customized by length, and then it becomes part of our lineup. I know there's some cab harnesses for John Deere and Case IH that started that way. We have some in-cab power supply things. We call it a power bar. Started off with just an idea from one of our technicians, as we were talking to a dealership on the phone saying, "Man, I wish there was more connections for power inside these cabs." And so, we just put together a little box that had all the power connections on it. Hooked it up to the battery, quick and easy, simple. They can plug into it. There's lots of those examples.

Michaela Paukner:
Sure. What is Ag Express' relationship like with the OEMs?

Jim Steinke:
Well, it's developing, I guess is how I'd put it. Our OEM relationship in the past has been seeking out repair opportunities with OEMs, and we still do that. It's very, very important because that's what we do best. We can support them through service programs. But now it's grown into our harness capabilities, our production side of things. We're building custom solutions to problems that they have out there, whether it's a switch box or it's a simplistic control or something to that effect. Ag Express is there to help with those. We've grown into trying to target more OEMs and be more proactive in our searches, more focused in how we approach OEMs.

Jim Steinke:
30 years ago, we weren't that name in the game. Now, 30 years later, we like to say that we're there to help everybody, and that we want to be not necessarily anybody's sole provider, but we want to be on the list. If we get on the list, we believe we'll provide the service and the products, the highest quality that any kind of customer, whether it's an OEM customer, a dealer, or an end user producer, they will come back time and time again to us.

Michaela Paukner:
What are some of the things that you're doing to ensure that you're offering the highest quality products?

Jim Steinke:
We've made our own test equipment or we've purchased test equipment. For building cables on our production side, our engineering side of things with manufacturing, we design our own way of testing things. Each location has a team of people that are quality checking cables or quality checking our production lines. We are expanding our facilities and our capabilities on a weekly basis, but we're really moving forward to expanding our locational capabilities here in the next few years to include different ways of manufacturing things with different pods and that they can control their quality a little bit easier, and it's a little bit easier to maintain and manage. We've spent a lot of time doing some crosschecking from a management standpoint of service work, and that's meant a lot to Ag Express over the years. We put it on a sticker right on top of anything that we produce, that quality is important to us.

Michaela Paukner:
That's it for part one of my conversation with Jim Steinke. In part two, Jim will discuss the barriers and gaps Ag Express is working to fill, including addressing the ongoing industry-wide supply chain shortages. That episode will air the second week of June, so be sure to subscribe to the Precision Farming Dealer Podcast to listen in when it debuts. You'll also find dozens of other episodes about precision farming in our library, available at precisionfarmingdealer.com/podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. From all of us here at Precision Farming Dealer, I'm Michaela Paukner. Thanks for listening.