“Not retired, just recycled”

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 19/06/2020 (1829 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Any idea that Gary Reimer has become tired of his career after spending six decades doing the only job he ever wanted, can be dismissed with his decision to continue to go to work every day, even now that the final piece of his family’s farm equipment business has been sold.

Gary Reimer has offered to help out at Little Morden Service while the new manager gets acclimatized to doing business on this side of the Red River.

“I enjoy going to work every day.”

Abe Penner, co-owner of Little Morden Service, says Reimer will be a welcome addition to the sales staff at their Steinbach location for as long as he wants to be there. Gary, himself thinks it will probably be another couple of years before he is ready to think about retiring.

And it is not only a matter of “a change is as good as a rest”, for, if-pressed, Reimer will agree that not going to work every day would be quite a change for him. After all, he has been part of the Reimer Farm Supplies team since he was 11. Before he was a teenager, Gary and his brother Reg would spend time at the John Deere dealership on Town Line Road, owned by his father and uncle. They would spend time there putting together equipment and learning to do things to help the business.

“All I ever wanted to do was to work in the dealership.”

Reimer got his wish in 1964 or 1965, when he started full-time in the parts department while also serving in sales. Reimer Farm Supplies was then located in a relatively small 40-foot by 82-foot building, but like Gary’s role in the business, the premises kept expanding over the years.

When fire claimed the original Reimer Farm Supplies building, a larger building was built on the same location. A second devastating fire at the dealership saw another rebuilding project and a further expansion to go along with it.

In late December of 1996, just 14 months after that devastating fire, more than 900 customers and friends sat down for breakfast with the Reimer family at a sparkling new 26,500 sq. ft. facility in Steinbach’s north end.

Many went for seconds as the Steinbach Lions served up 1,200 plates of pancakes before the crowd moved to the other end of the 14,000-sq.ft. service area for the official ribbon cutting.

Sharing the podium with his brother Gary, Reimer Farm president Reg Reimer cited a code, set down by their father, as the cornerstone of success for the family business, as it looked to the future in the state-of-the-art showroom and shop.

A framed company mission statement prominently displayed near the board room was the late Abe Reimer’s reminder that Reimer Farm Supplies is rooted in “old-fashioned values, a deep and abiding faith in God, and going the extra mile in the pursuit of customer satisfaction.”

When plans for the new building on the 10-acre-site were unveiled, the Reimers hoped the entire operation would be under one roof by October, Reg Reimer told the huge crowd at the opening.

“It may be a couple of months late, but it is everything we had hoped for.”

When customers came through the front door, they still made a familiar left turn to the parts department, but that was the only part of the floor plan that remained unchanged in the $1.5 million building.

While Reimer hesitated to boast about the new facility and conceded it may not be the biggest John Deere dealership in Manitoba, he did say there would be none other in Canada that could claim to be more modern or well-equipped.

For two decades before the fire, Reimer Farm Supplies had been in the top 25 dealerships in the country. That was an honour they had to forego in 1996, when they were unable to provide their usual level of service.

“We expect to be back in the Top 10 shortly.”

The 14-month construction period had been challenging for the Reimer family, with the business being fragmented at a number of locations.

But people kept coming back, and with the new facility, the dealership was still growing when the business was sold in 2003.

Gary was not ready to retire, and couldn’t wait to get back to work and spent the following couple of years with Southeastern Farm Equipment.

But the lure of being his own boss again, a continued passion to meet people, and a love of agriculture, had Gary convincing his brother Reg to join him in 2007 in an enterprise selling used equipment.

Reg later decided that business was becoming too busy for his liking, and wanted to devote more of his time to volunteer work, like the coordination of the blood donor clinic at his church and his work with the board of the Janz Team Ministries and the Bethesda Chaplaincy board.

When Ron retired from Enns Brothers (new owners of Reimer Farm Supplies) in 2014, he signed on with Gary as a bookkeeper.

Ron, who like his bothers, worked at the family business since high school, marked 45 years on the job when he retired from Enns Brothers.

At the time, he said he had a great relationship with the new owners after staying on at Reimer Farm Supplies through its transition to Enns Brothers. If his brother Reg had not wanted to retire, he probably would have continued to work in his retirement, he said.

Ron entertained the idea of joining Gary because the idea of continuing to work part time, in control of his own hours, was an attractive one.

And so it was that the familiar Reimer Farm sign, which had been a landmark in Steinbach for well over six decades returned to a familiar spot on the west side of Highway 12.

That new location of Reimer Farm Supplies was a little farther out in the suburbs and more closely resembled the business Abe D. Reimer started with his brother in the 1950’s, than the large John Deere dealership the Reimer family sold over a dozen years earlier.

But it was Reimer Farm Equipment and the boys were doing what they loved, and both Ron and Gary agreed they would really miss it if they chose retirement themselves.

For Gary, it was a matter of shifting gears a bit and trying to slow down, but for him that was pretty difficult.

Even during month-long winter holidays with his wife Karen in Palm Springs, it was said the local Starbucks became a second office for Gary. He could close an awful lot of deals on the telephone and it was one of these calls that led to a lasting friendship with a Saskatchewan farmer.

Gary says he was talking about headers to a long distance customer and after he hung up Ken Packett, who was having coffee at a nearby table, came over to talk to him.

“So you’re the guy in Manitoba that sells headers.”

That led to bit of on-the-spot business and although the Saskatchewan farmer is now retired, he still sends him customers, Gary says. And they still get together, while escaping from the harsh winters of Saskatchewan and Manitoba, in Palm Springs.

The new Reimer Farm Equipment was evolving, but there were no plans to expand substantially or to build a permanent shop at their new location. So when the opportunity to sell to Little Morden Service came along, it was the best of both worlds for Gary.

Gary doesn’t know how to downsize and didn’t want to expand. With his sales job with the new owners, he doesn’t have to retire and, he gets to watch someone else take over the family business and grow it again.

But just like every year for the past decade, when travel restrictions are finally lifted, Gary will probably be found, on the telephone, at his Palm Springs Starbucks office, when the coldest weather of a Manitoba winter sets in.