First of all, let me wish all of you a happy holiday season from everyone here at 21st Century Equipment. And here’s a toast to a prosperous 2021 and good riddance to almost all facets of 2020. What a year this has been–the year that will most certainly go down in history as “the year of the *asterisk”.
It isn’t all doom and gloom though. Prices for corn wheat and cattle are all working up as we head into the new year. I was starting to wonder if we would ever see a “4” in front of corn prices again! And, most of you are telling me your yields were good, not great, but pretty good. For those of you that raise sugar beets, what a fantastic crop…and the factories are performing well too.
If end of the year tax planning is on your mind, and you have been putting off an equipment purchase, wait no longer. There are substantial tax benefits available to you this year on the purchase of either new or used equipment. With the change in the Administration coming in January, who knows if these tax savings will be available next year. Now is the time to evaluate your operation’s needs and take advantage of the large first-year tax savings (full disclosure—I’m not a tax accountant so see yours!).
Do you know another good thing about 2021? As a Company, we will be celebrating the 25th anniversary of our founding all year, so watch for some special contests and drawings over the course of the year to celebrate this event. We also intend to hold some special events too……depending of course on the COVID situation. It’s hard for me to believe it has been 25 years, but we couldn’t have done it without you and our hundreds of other loyal customers. So, thank you for 25 great years.
This COVID situation is lasting much longer than expected and clearly getting worse right now in our part of the world. As such, it is going to impact our customer appreciation events here in December, as well as our planter and combine clinics for the foreseeable future. It is unfortunate that we will have to postpone these events, but for your safety and the safety of our employees, I believe it is the appropriate decision to make. We will be replacing these events with parts discounts delivered to you on-line or via the mail. And did you know that most of our clinic content is available via the YouTube video training library on our website? I agree YouTube videos are no substitute for face-to-face training, but these are pretty good option.
As a Company, we have had and continue to have a focus on improving our precision ag knowledge across our entire employee group. Our goal is to have every employee conversational when it comes to basic precision ag concepts so that when you come in, and want to talk about an MTG upgrade, everyone knows what you are talking about. Speaking of MTG upgrades, we are approaching the final deadline for you to update your Terms and Conditions in your John Deere Ops Center account. If that update is not completed by March 2021, your account will go dark and you will not be able to access your data. Updating is as simple as logging into your Ops Center account and following the prompt. There is also a mandatory Receiver update that applies to all SF3000 and SF6000 receivers that must be completed by February 1, 2021 for them to continue functioning.
In closing, I personally wish you a great Christmas season and a prosperous New Year. I thank you for your business this past year and look forward to our partnership in 2021.