New AED President Ready to Help Chart Industry’s Future: CEG

John Shearer, CEO of 4Rivers Equipment and current president of AED, took a less-than-traditional path to his leadership role in the equipment industry.

After serving in the Army as a technician in the late 1970s, Shearer returned from overseas to find a tough job market.

“I couldn’t find work as a technician, so I took a job pruning trees for a few years,” he said. “Finally, in 1984, I was able to secure a position with the John Deere dealership in my hometown of Lebanon, Pennsylvania.

“I started at the bottom, but I took all the training I could and learned as much as I could,” he added. “Eventually they sent me out to the field in a service truck.”

Shearer worked his way up to service manager at Plasterer Equipment in Pennsylvania, then moved to Virginia and accepted the same position at James River Equipment, where he would eventually be named vice president of product support. He held this position for 13 years, when he joined 4Rivers Equipment in Colorado.

At 4Rivers, Shearer started as general manager of construction and forestry equipment. He was appointed COO in 2019 then CEO in 2021.

He was appointed chairman of the AED board of directors in early 2024.

CEG recently spoke with Shearer about his 40-year career in the equipment industry and how the lessons learned along his journey helped prepare him for the leadership positions he currently holds .

CEG: What did you like about being a technician at an equipment distributor?

Shearer: Plasterer was a very small dealership at the time with only two locations, and they operated a little differently than most dealerships. As a technician, we worked in the parts department on Saturdays. We actually opened our own repair orders and then pulled the parts from the parts department. Once on the ground and in direct contact with customers, it really helped me a lot. In store, there is no direct communication with the customer. In the field, you communicate directly and learn about their pain points and how important it is to get a machine running again. That’s when I started to understand what customers needed and what their concerns were. I really enjoyed this part of the job.

CEG: How did this help prepare you for your role as CEO and ultimately president of AED?

Shearer: Eventually, at Plasterer, the time came when we had to computerize, and the department manager at the time threw up his hands and said, “I can’t do this, I’m not going to transition to a computer “. So, they asked me if I wanted to become a department manager. That’s really when things started to click. Deere would organize these mark of excellence competitions. All kinds of criteria had to be met. In those days, service managers just had to fix things, without thinking much about making money. The sales department was where all the money was made. Our job was to keep the customer happy. The Excellence Program taught me about margins, absorption rates, how to control expenses, and how to make money in service. I started to learn the economics of a dealership. It really started to prepare me for the role I eventually took on.

CEG: Have you ever considered running a dealership?

Shearer: Running a dealership never occurred to me. The owner of a plasterer asked me what I wanted to do and I always said I wanted to become a salesman. Once I got involved in running the service department and saw how a dealership worked, it took my mind off being a salesman.

CEG: What message would you send to young people considering a career in the industry?

Shearer: If you look back, being a technician was not a glamorous job, nor was it a job where a person saw a lot of upward mobility, but that has changed with all the technology we have today, like automation built into machines and the fact that dealers are expanding beyond just maintaining a machine…we now help plan a job and help the customer make money. The idea of ​​a technician elbow-deep in grease and working with a sledgehammer is a thing of the past. It actually works with laptops.

But I would definitely tell them to learn how a dealership works, how it stays profitable. If you learn these things, you have the opportunity to do anything you want in the industry. I think the door is now open to advancement on the support side of the business. The business becomes “how do we take care of the customer after the sale?” »

CEG: What characteristics are dealers looking for in young people in the service industry?

Shearer: Well, definitely someone who isn’t afraid of hard work. Of course, we are looking for someone who performs well on aptitude tests. Back then, he was the guy who couldn’t do anything else, and that’s certainly changed. I like to see curiosity, preparation and now we are also looking for an outgoing personality. They must be able to ask questions, understand and follow a procedure to get to the finish line.

CEG: Beyond recruitment, what are the major challenges facing equipment dealers over the next five years?

Shearer: One of them would be the speed at which technology is coming to us. Is the dealership agile enough to accept it and then figure out how to use it to benefit the customer? It is surprising today, due to the lack of operators, to see how much customers demand that the machine runs alone. For example, what are the safety features that protect the machine from a not-so-good operator?

The other thing we need to worry about is right to repair legislation.

It’s a big problem. If the government wanted to reduce downtime and get contractors and farmers up and running faster, they would help us with labor.

It started at the state level, here in Colorado and elsewhere, where it was adopted. Now a bill has been introduced at the federal level.

While we have no problem with customers repairing their own machines, we do have a problem with customers modifying their machines and disabling peripherals on the machine. There is probably a middleman, but usually the government is not very good at finding that middleman.

Officially, AED’s position is that we fully support customers to be able to repair the machines, we do not support customers to be able to modify the machines.

And then there is the uncertainty around taxes. First we have 100 percent depreciation, then it goes away, then it comes back. This makes daily management difficult.

Today, dealers operate on low margins; everyone has a lot of improvement and advice to do. So we are looking for help from other organizations, such as AED (Associated Equipment Distributors). Financial planning and leadership training are two things that led me to get involved with AED.

The AED is a valuable resource for equipment dealers. They support the heavy equipment market by offering a variety of services and business development opportunities to their association members. Members can take advantage of tools such as webinars, seminars, certification tests to enhance your employee development. CEG