“It’s one thing to buy a machine. But you have to look at service. Your best dealerships are going to offer
excellent service. In my case, it was a great combination because their service is great and they all sell Valley. That made the
difference to me, and that was part of how I determined the return on my investment.
The reason to use corners is to gain more land.
Most of my acres are close together, and every section I have has a silver Valley machine on it. This is very cost effective in
today’s market. If you’re lucky enough to have a piece of ground, you want to irrigate as much as possible. Corner
machines are the best way to go.
As the saying goes, ‘you get what you pay for.’ With Valley, that is very true. Farming is getting to be
more and more of a business, more complicated, every day. You shouldn’t have to worry if you’re equipment is going to
run or not. This is not something you worry about when you have Valley equipment, and that includes your corners. The GPS-equipped corners are even better. They really are modern technology as its best."
Bill Otto
“When you’re running a pivot and you have a problem, you need it
fixed today. We have a very responsive local dealership and their service is second to none.
When I made the choice to go to Valley 16 years ago, it boiled down to three things: one was the actual equipment
itself. What is the quality? Who makes the best? Then I wanted to know where is that company going? When it’s hot and
watering is critical, it’s very important that you have a solid machine and sound replacement parts. We depend on
Valley’s reliability and the support we get from [our dealer]. When we require more pivots in the future, we plan to buy
Valley. What new technologies are they bringing online? From there, I wanted to know if my local dealership would have the best
service. Valley as a manufacturer and my local dealer met all my criteria. So it made for an easy decision. And that has held
true for the last 16 years.
The Valley machine itself is built strong enough to withstand rugged terrain year after year. You want consistency and
dependability in a pivot, that’s the bottom line. You want that pivot to run and run and run. That’s always been
true with my Valley pivots. Whether in a control panel or structural engineering on the machine, the upgrades Valley puts out
have been in the right direction, too.
The ability to manage these pivots from the phone is big for us. If I had to spend 30 minutes per pivot to get to and
from them, check them out and make adjustments, that would be 25 hours a day for 50 pivots! Even at 10 minutes a day,
you’re still talking about an entire hour in an eight hour work day. And that doesn’t take into consideration fuel. We can
manage these pivots by phone. We can make corrections, start and stop, and change the water application depth we’re running.
That allows for a person to handle more in a day and allows you to get more done. It doesn’t matter whether I’m in
Alabama, Oklahoma, or New York. I can still get it done.”
Dennis Bragg
“I really felt a sense of their commitment to a larger purpose than selling a machine."
Brent Anderson
“Service is a huge one for me. The response time from my Valley dealer is amazing. There are there within an hour. It
is fixed correctly the first time. The winter program is also awesome. They went through each pivot of mine last year and I went
without any service calls during the irrigation season. They are just dependable – the machines and the company.
I’ve been around pivots for a long time, and I’ve chosen Valley center pivots for almost all of my ground.
My father and I both trust Valley because we just don’t have breakdowns. We just don’t. These are long-lasting
pivots and they’re made well.
I love that the Valley gearboxes are made right here in Nebraska. I
was the first one in my family to buy a Valley pivot almost 20 years ago. And now all our family members run Valley pivots. The
gearboxes are a big part of why that’s the case. When we had another company’s gearbox, it seemed like we had gearboxes
going out all the time. With the Valley gearboxes, we rarely have them fail. During the growing season, we’re not down
when we need to be irrigating. In the long run, we don’t have costly repair bills to deal with, either.”
Brad Johnson
“Out here in the west, if you don’t have a pivot you
don’t have anything. We can’t rely on Mother Nature to provide rain for the times we
need it. We’re relying on our pivots from the beginning day of irrigation season to water for fall tillage.
The Valley conversion made those older pivots, which were very troublesome, a lot easier to deal with. We had experience with Valley components and an understanding of how they work and how to troubleshoot. After we put
Valley components on other brands’ machines, we were able to keep them running a lot easier.
When it’s hot and watering is critical, it’s very important that you have a solid machine and sound
replacement parts. We depend on Valley’s reliability and the support we get from [our dealer]. When we require more pivots
in the future, we plan to buy Valley.”
Lane Newman
“Valley has always been a forward-thinking company. We’re fortunate to be able to present that to our growers.
And because Valley helps us provide information and training to our customers, we’re the whole package.”
Grant Hanson
“Up here, Valley structures are the only thing to have. In fact, when I was looking to buy a farm, my banker told me
that a farm here in the Columbia basin area is valued much higher if it has Valley equipment on it. Even the banks realized this
equipment lasts longer and holds its worth. That was powerful.
My Valley pivots are the best machines I have. They are just superior when it comes to engineering. They have a better
design. They maintain their arch, for example. Some of the other machines I have on my farm have dips in the arch. All of this
means they don’t break down. I don’t see cracking like I do with irrigation components I have from other companies.
This, to me, is the best test of all.
On other brand machines, you see where they’re stressed. Not on the Valley, though. When differences are that
visible, you know that the Valley machine is superior, even without all the testing data and documentation.
Every piece of irrigation equipment I replace is replaced by a Valley. It’s simple: I buy Valley. Sure, I can buy
other machines cheaper, but they just don’t compare when it comes to how dependable they are or how long they can
run.
My 1974 Valley machine is still working. And more than half of the gearboxes on it are original and working well! We
put quite a few hours on our equipment each year – over 2,000 in a year – and we have no problems, really. In 1998, I
needed to replace two gearboxes. I replaced one with a Valley gearbox and another with a competing gearbox to compare. Well, the
competing gearbox is gone now and it’s been replaced with another Valley. The Valley from 1998 is still running strong. To
me, that’s the ultimate proof that these are by far the best gearboxes out there.”
David Drouhard
“I have some 35-year-old Valley machines that are still running strong. I think they are a top-notch company and they
wouldn’t put anything out there that wouldn’t work well."
Shane Darrington
“The Bender30 allowed me to wrap our existing center pivot up next to the feed lot picking up a rather large triangle of
land that otherwise would not have been irrigated.”
Joel Bergman
“Because of BaseStation, the alarm was communicated to the
control room – where it was easy to see that the machine continued to have water pressure and the pivot continued to water
in the same spot. The control room was able to dispatch service techs to fix the valve and save the crop from being washed
out. We really like having the ability to check pivot status from anywhere using our wireless 3G-enabled iPads.”
Anthony Valdez
“We were able to receive a grant from the USDA to help with our investment. In our area, better monitoring of pivots and
water usage are qualified improvements. The bottom line is that growers should look for programs to help. Trackers really do
help promote conservation and efficiency.
It used to be that we had problems like electricity blinking and things would shut off. I’d go out to check the
pivots much later and realize they hadn’t been working. That’s a lot of irrigating time. Now, we’re really
happy with what we can do with the TrackerSP.
[TrackerSP] gives me peace of mind. I like to joke that it’s better than cloning. It helps me manage the time
better, because I can’t always be there. But I know everything is going OK without having to go out and look at it all the
time. That also saves me a lot on fuel costs given the ever-escalating price at the pump.”
Bobby Byrd
“The BaseStation really saves us a lot of road time. We have a couple of pivots that interfere with one another, so you
need to keep monitoring them all the time. It’s a huge relief to us to know that one is done before the other begins, for
safety reasons. There are other safety factors, as well. Sometimes the rain comes down very hard here. We can’t always
get out to the pivots physically if it’s a big lightning storm, but now we don’t have to worry about that.
It has really become a necessary tool. Having this type of technology improves everything. It’s so worth the
investment. You wonder how you’re going to pay for these investments when you’re just investigating them, but what you
learn is what convinces you. In a year, or two, it’s done. That is how much this product helps you improve your
efficiency. Some of the things you can do with it are not things you can really do by hand anymore. It doesn’t just save
you time, it allows you to do more, to do things that weren’t even feasible before.
This is so helpful and it makes management much easier. I do believe in time, we can even improve our record keeping by
interfacing with BaseStation. I think we’ll discover even more ongoing benefits from this investment.”
Randy Hughes
“Half of my field is beans and half is corn, and I need to be able to speed up irrigation in some areas, slow it down in
others. I do this with my Tracker. Right from my phone I can make the pivot automatically reverse. If a pivot shuts down or if
it starts raining, I can handle it from the computer or phone at one o’clock or two o’clock in the morning.
The Tracker reduces my costs. Because I’m able to manage things remotely, I can go days without going out to
visit a particular pivot as they may be 20 miles from one another. You have to keep an eye on pivots every day and when I can do
it with the Valley Tracker, I can save a lot of time, fuel, costs, and wear and tear on vehicles. Give me the Tracker any
day.
After four seasons like this, I’m a Tracker customer, plain and simple. I wouldn’t order a new pivot
without the Tracker, that’s for sure.”
Brian Rust
“I was talked into a cheaper product once, I’ll be honest. I found they weren’t worth anything, though.
Nothing compares to those Valley gearboxes.”
Phil Gossi