GERING – Murphy Tractor and Equipment Company in Gering is now a certified John Deere Relife center. The company was presented with a plaque to honor their achievement.

The company began the process in 2018 and received the official certification on April 6. As a part of the process, the team relifed three different machines.

Joe Blanke, Branch Manager at Murphy Tractor and Equipment, said, “So, we had to complete a relife, which is taking a half million to $1 million machine, we had to completely tear it apart and rebuild it using reman (remanufactured) parts and then we take the old tractor and make it new.”

“We’ve done three of those: one on a loader and two on big scraper tractors. And so, they go through a grading process on how we went through those rebuilds because it’s about a four to six-week process of a rebuild. Everything from paperwork and documentation to quoting dealing with the customer, the follow up and how the machine is working now,” said Tony Brown, Service Manager. “And then another part of that process for the certification is just whether or not we have the facilities to do it, and whether our facilities are equipped to perform that repair, whether or not we have certified technicians to perform the repair.”

John Deere assigned Murphy a representative to observe
the process. 

Mujahid “MJ” Hassaballa, Territory Customer Support Manager for John Deere, said, “It starts with looking at some of the tooling’s in the shop, having the right crane sizes to deal with large equipment, as well as parts and components. Also, a lot of the paperwork behind the scenes when it comes to making sure you know, we’re documenting serial numbers of components and parts and things like that. And then internally, from the John Deere standpoint, we kind of keep track and go through the process of documenting how to complete a successful rebuild.”

One of the technicians spoke about completing one of the rebuilds. Jeff McMurtry, Lead Technician at Murphy Tractor, said, “My role, I rebuilt the first nine of our trackers that Murphy ever did, basically stripped it down to a frame and put all new components in it. You got to bring them in, stripping it down is easy and tear everything apart. You get new axles, new hydraulic pumps, new transmission, new engine, I believe on these particular tractors, I think we did eight out of the 14 electrical controllers, and all new wiring harnesses. Another thing we did, any hose that was rubbed or worn, we also replaced while we were in there. I believe the last one I did took me three weeks and that was a lot overtime to get it up and running.

Paul Reed Construction took part in the certification by having Murphy Tractor relife one of their machines. Mark Knaub, Equipment Manager at Paul Reed Construction, said, “We relifed that probably 2000 hours ago. And that program was a complete rebuild of the tractor and cost about half a new tractor and it runs about the same amount of time as the original tractor did. Its program that I’m going to keep doing. I think with the price going up of everything, the relife is probably getting more and more and more popular.” Since then, Murphy has also done a second tractor for Paul Reed.

The Murphy Tractor team is thankful for the certification as it means more steady work for their team and the ability to better care for their customers.

“Murphy and Deere, we have great partnership and our goal and focus is to support our customer. And if they want a new machine, we can provide them that or if they have an older unit that they’re in love with and they want to keep it going for many years to come, that’s where the rebuild center come into place to provide the customer an option to relife, or to renew their equipment for the long haul,” said Hassaballa.

“There’s about 12 completely certified in the United States right now out of all the John Deere dealerships. So, for Gering, Nebraska to be one of 12 is a huge honor,” said Blanke.