That's a great question.
In August 2006 the North American Equipment Dealers Association convened a meeting in St. Louis of all dealer leaders to talk about the future of our industry. We have some challenges, and the one everybody agreed upon was profitability.
The reason we are seeing dealers leave some of the smaller communities and consolidating is that we're not making a lot of money. The margin, or the return on assets, investment, that our dealers are making is very small. I'm sure that the farmers in this room will find that very hard to believe, but it is a reality. This is impacting consolidation.
Manufacturers see that dealers are not meeting profitability targets. They are not making as much money as they think they need to remain viable. On one hand, from a dealer's perspective, we have the manufacturers encouraging consolidation. The dealers also recognize that to be profitable and remain dealers, they may have to look at a merger or a buyout, and it is our customer who gets caught in the middle.
We know our customers don't like it, but we don't foresee that trend changing.