CUSTOMER| A SALUTE TO AN CUSTOMER |
WYNKOOP EQUIPMENT CO.
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Todd Wynkoop, owner of Wynkoop Equipment Co., has a policy of accepting any job he’s asked to do by customers of his Clarence, Iowa, agricultural contracting service. “I try not to turn down a job just because it’s a small project where we don’t make much money,” explained Wynkoop. His two-operator company concentrates on agricultural conservation projects for farmers in Cedar County and the surrounding area. “The customer may call me the next time and have a larger project for us.” That generates word-of-mouth referrals, according to Wynkoop. “It gets around that we don’t have a minimum charge. I’ve never run an ad since I started. We have built a personal relationship with the farming community and we are proud of that.” Established ag customer base Todd Wynkoop established the personal relationships he has with his farmer customers while working as a mechanic for an agricultural equipment dealer. “The customers there knew me and knew what I was about. I started contracting ag jobs part time in 1987 before quitting my fulltime job with the dealership in 1994.”
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Wynkoop got into the ag contracting business “by mistake,” he laughed. “It all started with a fascination with crawlers. A farmer gave me a little crawler to do a job for him. I eventually bought it, fixed it up and tried to do some work. But I found out I needed a real machine to do anything, so I bought an old dozer, ” continued Wynkoop. “Then I needed a hoe, so I bought that. I finally got so busy that I either needed to quit my job at the dealership or sell the equipment. I was a year behind in my jobs until my brother Timm came and helped.” Timm Wynkoop worked as an equipment operator for eight years before he joined Wynkoop Equipment Co. in 1997. The other member of the Wynkoop team is office manager Sue Sander. “She works part time for me and attends grad school,” noted Todd Wynkoop. “She handles our paperwork and bookkeeping. I’d hate to try to manage this business without either of them.” Conservation work is flagship Todd Wynkoop said 90 percent of his firm’s business is agricultural work. “The bulk of our business is conservation work, building waterways and some ponds,” he observed. “The next largest segment of our work is demolition — houses, farmsteads, a few trees.” Wynkoop noted that farmers can receive costsharing incentives from state and federal agencies if they put waterways in their fields to prevent erosion. “The waterways have to be built to government specs so we work with agencies like the Natural Resources Conservation Service and the Farm Services Administration. They design everything we do for them.” Many of the waterway projects the Wynkoops work on in the spring and fall are cost-shared waterways for the county or the |
