Two years ago, a customer spoke with Larry Korynta, a Territory Manager with MacDon, about the FD2 FlexDraper® header and the sizes available at the time. The customer had always stopped at a 40-foot width, despite larger headers being available, and limited himself to a single knife because he assumed that would make the header simpler to use.

But after an informative conversation with Korynta during one of his clinic walkarounds, at which he explained the benefits of a double-knife, triple-reel setup, the customer realized he had been misinterpreting the knife-drive system and upgraded his header to the FD245.

“After we talked about it and how the overlap works, and how your knife doesn't have to work so hard because it's only running on a 40-foot, about 20 feet of knife on each side. Plus, we have more flex in a double-knife drive,” explains Korynta, whose territory spans North Dakota and northwestern Minnesota. “And he went one year with 45-ft. headers, and then the next year he's at 50-ft. headers. Otherwise, he'd still be at 40-ft. headers. And that was at a service clinic, but yet it turned into a sales clinic for him, with the knowledge of what you can get.”

MacDon territory managers (TMs) have a long list of responsibilities; largely, they act as liaisons between the factory and the dealers, but they are also often involved in customer visits with producers, where they can answer questions on the retail and operational sides. When harvest season gets busy, the TMs try to handle some of the simpler customer concerns, which allows the product-support team to take care of any bigger challenges.

And, prior to harvest season, TMs run informational clinic walkarounds. The purpose of the clinics is two-fold: first and foremost, it’s a refresher for customers on how to correctly use and maintain the MacDon products they already own, or to learn the ins and outs of a new product they may want to own in the future.

That informational refresh is a crucial offering from the TMs; even though producers are around these machines all the time, they really are only using them for a few weeks a year. In that way, they become experts on one product or tool for a short period and then become experts in the next necessary tool, and by the time they do a full year’s worth of farming, becoming experts 20 times over on different machines, the intricacies of that header they used 12 months ago may not be top of mind.

“The one thing about producers, and dealers, for that matter, they just have such a broad knowledge of products, but unfortunately, they only get to use the products for a very short window, and they just relearned how to do their seeding, and then they relearned how to do their spraying, and now they're going to have to relearn how to do their harvest,” says Kyle Campbell, a MacDon veteran with 26 years of experience at the company under his belt, who has worked as a TM for 13 years, covering all of Manitoba and southern Saskatchewan.

“Producers are incredibly intelligent people, but just the same, it's got to be pretty challenging. And often they're buying a new piece of equipment, so that's another reason for the clinic. They'll get the chance to actually see the product for the first time, and then we do our little walkaround, and then hopefully that gets them set up enough that when they get to the field, they feel more comfortable with the product.”

Second, it’s a chance for MacDon TMs to get some face time with their customers, be it dealers or farmers, and do a live, hands-on walkaround of the headers where they can make note of every unique feature, every service point, and offer tips and tricks right there on the spot.

“That's one of the things that kind of sets MacDon apart from some of the other companies, where they'll do a lot of PowerPoint presentations and not a lot of physical, you know, ‘Look at this part of the machine.’ Where we tend to do a lot more of working with the physical machine and showing customers on the machine what they need to know about,” says MacDon TM Ben Albert, who covers South Dakota and northeast Nebraska and has been with the company for around ten years.

“And the goal of the whole thing is so that they have the best harvest season they could possibly have with the least disruptions, and so everything goes smoothly.”

“When I first started covering North Dakota, I've been in North Dakota since 2012, it seemed like we thought the guys knew how to use our heads, but they really didn't,” laughs Korynta. “So these clinics help educate everybody… they all had a general idea how they should set their guards and their sickles, but there were other small items like how much grease should you give a certain part, or how tight should this belt be, or how tight should the draper be tensioned. So that has really helped over the years, and I think that helped increase sales as a result because you didn't have a lot of customer dissatisfaction because they didn’t know how to set the head.”

For clinic preparation, TMs are already expected to know the finer details of every product, so it’s not a lot of extra work to get ready for a walkaround. If there’s a new element to a header, or a brand-new product, they make sure to take the time to really study up (and even do some field training) before meeting with customers in a clinic setting. They also know they have a team of product support folks and other MacDon employees available to answer any questions they don’t know the answer to.

MacDon Clinic walkarounds for headers typically last about an hour, but because the product is tied to the combine, dealers will often also include combine manufacturers to make it a full harvesting clinic.

Each TM has their own presentation style, some bring additional literature that is basically a Cole’s Notes version of the official manuals, some are a bit more casual, but a recently revamped guide has been created for TMs so that every walkaround, no matter who is doing it or where it’s taking place, follows a consistent pattern. They all start at one end of the header and work their way around, tailoring what information they focus on to the audience and region they’re in.

Largely, though, TMs cover the same main talking points in clinics on FD2-series headers.

“Maintenance, grease points, certain chains that need to be checked for tension, sickle guards, hold downs, you know, how they should be adjusted, and make sure they're checked. Also, I go over float and wing balance every time,” explains Korynta.

“I would talk about the float module and how it functions and what you need to do to service it,” agrees Campbell.

“Whether you're checking the oil in the gearboxes for oil levels and chain tensions, that kind of thing, and then I would move over to another area and talk about all the hydraulics, and then the ContourMax™ wheels, and the transport package, and just keep working my way around, talk about the knife drive, and then I talk about the guards and sections, and how we make adjustments to those to make sure they're cutting to the best ability, and then up across auger service points, there's some grease points under the header that we have to get to every day, and then walk around the other side and show the float and wing balance, so there's a lot to it,” he says.

Feedback from dealers and producers who attend these clinics is consistently positive; not only have they verbalized appreciation to MacDon TMs for taking the time to walk through the product in such immense detail, but just having that facetime with a company representative is incredibly valuable to them.

“Most of them are really appreciative of it. Some customers who have been to a clinic every year for the last ten years are not necessarily picking up a whole bunch of new information, but a lot of times there's one or two things, and it's a refresher,” says Albert. “The customers that take the time to show up to the clinics are appreciative that we take the time to put them on.”

“I'm very lucky that I work for a great company because producers, they're great people, they're really thrilled to tell you how much they appreciate you being there, so that's rewarding, and that's a big part of why I like doing what I do,” adds Campbell.

“Most of the people at this point are just looking for tips and tricks that they haven't quite figured out for certain crops.”

And with that in mind, here are a few topics, tips and tricks that Campbell, Albert, and Korynta cover with attendees at their clinics and walkarounds, specifically regarding FD2 Series FlexDraper® headers.

Alert says: “The big one that I always hit on is the draper deck seal, which is the clearance between the draper canvas and the cutterbar. Just the area I'm in, that's a big issue, and a lot of people have no understanding of it and what that relationship does.

“And then, usually, knife maintenance is another big one because people just want to forget about it. But it's critical to the machine working the way it should.”

Korynta says: “Our reel-to-cutterbar relationship when you get into a triple-reel configuration, and how close we can keep that reel-to-cutterbar relationship, plus the visibility you have from the cab of the combine. Also, I like our reel drive. It was substantially changed from the FD1s to the FD2s, and that's a nice feature.”

Campbell says: “Just the number one thing would be the knife, making sure that the knife was adjusted properly, so that it's clean, and it's performing to the best of its ability. That's the first thing to touch the crop, and it will make or break your entire header if it's not functioning properly. Then number two would be just making sure that the deck seal is set properly, and that's where the draper seals up against the cutter bar, and this prevents trash, like dirt, or leaves, or product from getting underneath the drapers. Problem with that is that once you get it underneath there, it actually will stall your drapers, and if they stall, you're not running, and ultimately you can wreck drapers.”

Watch our full FD2 FlexDraper walkaround to Get More with MacDon. 

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FD2 Series FlexDraper® Header

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