Written by John Swire
LQG Agri has been appointed as a McCormick tractor dealer for Warwickshire and north Oxfordshire, in the latest appointment of key new dealerships in a recruitment drive that began at LAMMA 2019.
Based in Upper Quinton near Stratford-upon-Avon, the dealership jointly owned by the Lockwood family, co-founders of Lower Quinton Garages, and former JCB sales manager Malcolm Davies, chose McCormick to expand its product portfolio for the area.
“We’ve been looking for a tractor range that would complement what we already sell and McCormick fits the bill perfectly,” says Mr Davies.
“Tractors of 100hp to 150hp will be the key market segment for us – we now have 130hp X6.440 and 140hp X7.440 demonstrators available to try out – but the McCormick range offers a broad choice of products up to 310hp to suit many different users, from dairy and other livestock farms, through mixed enterprise and arable units to smallholders, councils and amenity contractors.”
With seven service vans on the road plus good workshop facilities and a well-stocked parts store, it is clear that LQG Agri puts a high priority on product support.
“We’re very much a service focused business,” confirms Malcolm Davies. “Our service and repair technicians will soon be getting up to speed on the McCormick products and our stores staff are now adding Argo Parts service consumables and parts to their stock to cater for existing and new McCormick users.”
As an added-value intiative, all new McCormick tractors will be fitted with telematics, a data gathering system to help schedule convenient routine servicing while providing geo and curfew fencing as a security measure to complement the Datatag theft deterence owner identification and registration scheme already installed on all McCormick tractors.
“We’ll also put every McCormick tractor we service through a multi-point health check to identify any issues such as uneven tyre or brake wear, broken lights and the like so we can put right anything that may affect the safe and efficient operation – and ultimately the resale value – of the machine.”
Ben Agar, McCormick sales director for Argo Tractors in the UK and Ireland, says: “This sort of attention to detail is typical of LQG Agri’s approach to customer support; it gives customers every confidence that when they buy a McCormick tractor, it will be very well supported.
“So we’re delighted to welcome the team at LQG Agri to the McCormick sales, parts and service network and look forward to helping them increase the number of McCormick users in the area.
Malcolm Davies adds that short lines of communication with managers in the UK and headquarters in Italy was another reason for signing with McCormick manufacturer Argo Tractors.
“Many of our customers are family businesses and Argo is a family-owned business, much like ourselves and the other manufacturers we represent, with a character that contrasts the ‘corporate culture’ evident at other big tractor companies,” he explains.
“For example, it was very special to have a senior member of the family that owns Argo Tractors, business director Simeone Morra, visit us to finalise our agreement.
“It’s important to us to retain our independence and manage what we sell in the best interests of our business and our customers,” he adds. “As a tractor specialist, Argo gives us complete freedom to sell Kuhn arable and grassland products, JCB Fastrac tractors and materials handling solutions, and all the other brands we represent without conflict.”
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