According to Craig Davidson, his greatest achievement since launching the Elliot Tractor Works (ETW) with his father, Francis, is having attracted enough satisfied customers to remain in business for 20 years.
“It’s a real achievement when your customers become friends and you are able to keep the doors open for two decades,’’ he says.
What is more, these achievements were attained against the odds. For example, ETW was launched with very little access to capital and in near-derelict buildings.
Furthermore, poor municipal services including no running water, increases in steel and spare part prices, load-shedding, COVID-19, a stuttering South African economy and even civil unrest has made for a very challenging business environment.
Part of the community
But not only has ETW grown, it has diversified into a remarkable business due to word of mouth. Today it’s part and parcel of the fabric of the broader Elliot community.
“Every agricultural business in a small town evolves with the support of its customers. You need the right suppliers and to be trustworthy.’’
The buildings include a tractor repair and maintenance centre; a manufacturing centre and a spare parts division, and has an array of agricultural equipment for sale. This is the world of long-term employees Vian Strydom and Patrick Jusaya, who are highly skilled and crucial to the success of ETW, but even they are undoubtedly still subject to Craig’s ruthless attention to detail.
‘’One needs to walk the workshop just like a farmer needs to walk his farm,’’ Craig insists. “I spend a lot of time watching and giving input to what is being done in the workshops.’’
The Road less travelled
The success of ETW has also been dependent on Craig’s mechanical skills. He therefore tells of the appreciation he has for the many hours spent fixing tractors with his father on their former farms in the Ugie and Elliot regions of the Eastern Cape.
‘’We grew-up poor and my dad and I had to continuously fix old tractors,‘’ Craig recalls with a smile. “By the time I finished school I was a highly qualified mechanic and welder.’’
Unlike many of his peers, who left school at the end of 1992 to study at tertiary institutions, Craig already had skills to enter the job market.
His first job was at a Portuguese-owned marine engineering company in Walvis Bay in today’s Namibia. This was followed by a short-term position as a farm manager in the Eastern Cape and then a few years at a Speedfit centre in the former Transkei town of Engcobo.
Although Craig then deviated to an 11-year stint managing stores for Ellerines across the Eastern Cape, his passion for all things mechanical was indulged after hours.
‘’Even when I worked for Ellerines in East London I hired a garage in a housing complex,’’ he says. “Here I revamped Ford F100, F250 and V8 motors.’’
But conflict with staff at Ellerines resulted in Craig resigning and returning to Elliot in 2004. Francis also found himself unemployed as the local Groenspan John Deere dealership, where he had held a spare parts manager position, had closed.
With their backs to the wall, the Davidsons approached Denzel Schultz to rent his borderline derelict buildings on the outskirts of Elliot, and promptly started fixing tractors for clients. “Initially we got some of my dad’s old clients from John Deere,’’ says Craig.
“We would also drive around the former Transkei and look for ‘broken’ tractors and then ask their owners if we could fix them.’’
Incredibly, within a year the father-and-son-team had built a sustainable tractor repair and maintenance centre, and in 2005, when Francis accepted a job as an agricultural consultant, ETW became an even more profitable business for Craig.
Trading in agricultural equipment
Although ETW kicked off with the repairing and servicing of tractors it soon diversified to include the marketing of quality second-hand agricultural equipment.
“A few years after starting ETW I use to travel to Bloemfontein and load used ploughs and implements on my bakkie and trailer, bring them back, and then sell them into the former Transkei [near Elliot],’’ he says.
“This is how things started developing with the second-hand [equipment] sales at ETW.’’
In time Craig was also able to source second-hand tractors and other equipment from farmers in the north-eastern Cape by offering them better prices than what dealerships could, a scenario that fuelled business opportunities with top commercial farmers as well as small-scale communal farmers.
‘’The top guys that farm at significant scale replace equipment regularly. I found that I could then market this equipment to the slightly smaller guy, and so you would go down the different tiers to the two-row maize planter marketed to the Transkei communal farmer,’’ he says.
Craig’s uncanny ability to sell tractors and other agricultural equipment allowed him to engage in business directly with dealerships that were keen to offload second-hand tractors.
“These tractors didn’t need to be transported back to faraway dealership premises to be sold,’’ he explains. “They were left with me to sell and l would then get a cut.’’
Concurrently Craig also began marketing new agricultural equipment (like Falcon, JBH Equipment and Stara) on commission from Weirs Agri and now Tractor World.
In 2015 he also became the sole dealer for the Turkish Ilgi Agricultural Products in the north Eastern Cape and today ETW is home to agricultural equipment for sale in its yard to the value of R4 million.
Manufacturing and repurposing
A few years after starting ETW, Craig noticed a niche for the repurposing of implements.
“Every farmer is an engineer. He buys a new piece of equipment, like a ripper, but it does not do exactly what he wants it to do,’’ he says.
“He then decides it needs to be made bigger, or that it needs to be folded up, or that a roller needs to be added.’’
This initial tinkering in the implement manufacturing space eventually led to the creation of his own equipment and components including chisel ploughs, rippers, harrows, rollers, coulters and trailers.
In fact, trailers have become a speciality for Craig, who manufactured his first one in 2010 (which is still in use on a Barkly East farm) and in March 2024, ETW completed their 227th trailer.
Amongst these were individual trailers of up to three tons including end- and side-tipper types. Trailer components are sourced from Burquip and Craig tries to stay abreast of new trends by visiting agricultural equipment expos like Nampo.
A bitter-sweet legacy
To date approximately 700 tractors are estimated to have passed through EWT while hundreds of pieces of agricultural equipment including tractors, other second-hand and manufactured equipment have been successfully sold through the company.
It is from profits of years of work at EWT that Craig was able to purchase a small 22ha farm in 2018 about 8km out of Elliot. Here he built himself a home and runs 67 sheep, seven cattle and three horses.
Craig admits that life has turned out reasonably well thanks to ETW, but is quick to admit how devastating the murder of his father near Maclear in April 2023 has been. “How are you supposed to go on?’’ he asks.
“I sometimes just want to ask him about something that is wrong with a tractor, but he is gone.’’
Despite Francis having passed away so tragically, one however suspects that he would be extremely proud of what has become of ETW, a business he helped launch from scratch way back in 2004.