Even if the price had been higher, we probably would have bought it. I''m a sucker for old gray tractors. My late grandfather had an old Ford he used to clip pastures with a clattering sickle bar. My 78-year-old father, Don, still uses an old gray tractor to plow snow and mow at his place in Delaware, Ohio. It''s a Ferguson T0-30 made in 1951--the year I was born. I learned at 10 to drive on that tractor, under Dad''s close supervision, of course.Dad got the tractor in 1956, not long after he bought 15 acres just west of Delaware and put up one of tillerrake the first pole barns in the area. "I took it on a trade, sight unseen, as credit on a down payment on a piece of real estate," he recalls. "The buyer was $1,100 short. He offered me the tractor with a two-bottom plow, rear manure scoop and a two-row cultivator.

So in March 2000, Braswell founded PowerHouse Equipment, which he hopes will become "the leading national direct provider of compact hydraulic equipment."A multi-market opportunity for lawn/garden professionals?Braswell thinks so. He''s established dealerships tillerrake in Sacramento, Dallas and Austin, Texas; tillerrake Jacksonville and Orlando, Fla.; and Charlotte and Raleigh/Durham, N.C. In addition, he''s created satellite sales in eight other locations.Why? "Contractors'' employee time is extremely valuable," says Braswell. "Our equipment makes each worker much more efficient."What trends does Braswell see in OPE marketing?"In the last few years, we''ve seen lots of power equipment dealers concentrate on the professional customer rather than the consumer," Braswell says. "With that comes focus on a service department that offers really quick turn-around, so the busy landscaper avoids downtime. If a dealer sells to landscapers -- and knows their needs -- he might sell similar products to tree professionals, irrigators, nursery people and fencers.

"Also, a dealer who sells large mowers and tractors probably already does business with a finance source like Wells Fargo or Sheffield. With finance opportunities in place -- plus single products that serve multiple fields -- he''s in a position to enter several industrial tillerrake markets." What kind of guarantee comes with this?" I asked, suspiciously eyeing the few drops of oil on the pavement under the rear axle of an old gray Ford tractor."Well, tillerrake none, actually," replied the man who had it sitting out by the road with a for-sale sign. "What you see is what you get--where is, as is."The tractor in question was a 1946 Ford 2N (see photo, Page 103). The four-cylinder engine had been overhauled a few years earlier, he said. Then an old Pennsylvania-Dutchman, who probably bought it new when Truman was president, traded it in on a new Kubota.

©2003 www.tillerrakes.com All rights reserved.