Corn Belt Equipment Corporation. Colby Regional Service Center. Grand Opening July 1st. Wyatt saw the sign on a Saturday morning when he was driving to a job in Sherman County.
He slowed the truck. He read the sign twice. He drove on. On July 1st, the Corn Belt Colby Regional Service Center opened for business.
Garrett Voss cut the ribbon. The Colby Free Press ran a photograph on page 3. Voss in a blue suit, scissors in hand, smile carefully placed. The article quoted him saying that Corn Belt was bringing modern equipment service to western Kansas farmers.
Factory-trained technicians. Full warranty coverage. Transparent pricing. No more backyard mechanics.
The phrase no more backyard mechanics appeared twice in the article. It was a phrase. It had been polished somewhere. It had come with Voss from Wichita.
Within 60 days of the Corn Belt opening, Wyatt lost three more clients. Not to mistakes this time. To a sales pitch. Corn Belt sent representatives door-to-door in Thomas and Colby counties handing out pamphlets explaining that a young independent mechanic, however talented, could not offer warranty coverage, could not offer factory-certified parts, could not offer the peace of mind that came with a corporate service relationship.
"Your equipment is your livelihood," the pamphlet said in large black letters. "Don't trust it to an amateur. The word amateur did a lot of work in that pamphlet. Wyatt read the pamphlet at Hollis Merritt's kitchen table on a Tuesday evening in September of 1980.
Merritt had brought it over. Merritt had read it three times before he had driven to the Carver place. He sat across from Wyatt with his hands flat on the table and he said, "This is aimed at you. "Yes, sir," said Wyatt.
"You know this man? "I met him in '77," said Wyatt, "after the Oliver. Merritt looked at this pamphlet. He looked at Wyatt.
"What does he want? "He wants me to stop," said Wyatt. Merritt nodded. He folded the pamphlet and put it back in his pocket.
He drove home. He did not say anything else about it that night. But 2 weeks later, he drove to the Corn Belt Colby Regional Service Center at 10:00 in the morning on a Thursday. And he walked inside.
And he spent 45 minutes looking at their service bay and talking to their counter staff. And he came out. And he drove to the Carver shed. And he told Wyatt what he had seen.
Three technicians in identical uniforms. A wall of parts that was mostly for tractors less than 10 years old. A counter manager who did not know what an Oliver 88 was. Prices for the few services they did offer that were roughly double what Wyatt charged.
"They're not mechanics," Merritt said. "They're a parts warehouse with a service bay attached. He wants to be the only game in town. And he wants to charge whatever he wants to charge.
And he's using the word amateur to do it. "Yes, sir," said Wyatt. Merritt looked at him. "You going to let him?
"No, sir," said Wyatt. In October of 1980, Garrett Voss drove out to the Carver place. He came alone. A new sedan different from the one in 1977 but the same kind.
He parked in the gravel in front of the equipment shed. He got out. He looked around. He was carrying a leather folio tucked under his left arm.
He walked to the shed. Wyatt was inside tuning a Case 400 carburetor for a farmer in Goodland. Voss stopped at the open shed door. "Wyatt," Voss said.
"It's Garrett Voss. Corn Belt. We met at Seibert in '77. Wyatt set down his screwdriver.
He stood up. He wiped his hands on a shop rag. He walked to the shed door. He said, "Mr.
Voss. Voss smiled. "Got a minute for me?" he said. Wyatt nodded once.
He led Voss into the shed. He did not offer him a chair. Voss did not ask for one. Voss set his folio on the workbench next to Silas's tool chest.
And he opened it. "I want to make you an offer," Voss said. "A real one this time. Not like in '77.
A serious offer. Wyatt waited. Voss pulled out a typed document, two pages. He set it on the workbench.
"Corn Belt would like to purchase your operation," Voss said. "The equipment. The parts inventory. The tool chest you are standing next to and those binders up there on the shelf.
Everything. Turnkey. We would then hire you full-time as a senior service technician at our Colby regional center. Salary of $22,000 a year plus benefits.
Full health coverage, a company truck, paid vacation, $8,000 cash for the operation, and the contents of this shed. Wyatt did not look at the document. "Kid," Voss said. And his voice was softer now.
Warmer, the voice of a man who had reached the part of his pitch where he began treating his audience like a friend. "$22,000 is more than your father made in the last good year he had. It's more than your mother makes at the feed store and the trucking company combined. It's a career.
It is what your grandfather would have wanted for you if he had lived to see the industry change the way it has changed. And it gets your mother's mortgage paid off in 3 years, not 10. Wyatt's eyes moved just once to the shelf of binders, then back to Voss. "The binders aren't for sale," Wyatt said.
Voss smiled the practiced smile. "I understand the sentiment," he said. "We can negotiate. We will store them.
We will display them in the regional center. We will name the service counter after your grandfather. The Silas Carver service counter. Corn Belt would be honored.
These things have value to us, too. "They're not for sale," said Wyatt. "At any price. For any counter.
Voss's smile did not leave his face. He closed the folio slowly. He looked around the shed. He looked at the tool chest.
He looked at Wyatt. "Think about it," he said. "I will leave the paperwork. Take a week.
Talk to your mother. She is a practical woman. She will see the sense in it. He set the document on the workbench.
He picked up his folio. He walked out of the shed. He got in his sedan. He drove away.
Wyatt stood in the shed for a long time after the sound of the sedan faded down the county road. He looked at the two-page document on his workbench. He picked it up. He read every word of it twice.
Then he folded it in half, and he folded it again, and he put it in the bottom drawer of the workbench underneath a stack of old invoices where he would not see it again. He did not tell his mother about the offer, not that week and not the week after. He worked. He took jobs.
He turned down one job, a generator repair for a Corn Belt customer who was trying to get a second opinion on a $900 quote because he understood, though he could not have explained how, that taking that job would be exactly what Voss wanted him to do. He would do the work well. The customer would go back to Corn Belt and say the backyard boy fixed it for $200, and Voss would have his next ad campaign, and it would have Wyatt's name on it. He declined.
He told the customer respectfully that he was booked. He was not booked. In January of 1981, a farmer named Marlon Trask brought Wyatt a Massey Harris 44 that had been sitting in a fence row for 3 years. Trask wanted it running.