How did Wengers of Myerstown get it's start? 

Carl Wenger never set out to be a farm equipment dealer. Carl was a nationally-recognized farmer who had no intentions of being anything but a successful farmer.

But life happens and, before long, corn pickers and choppers would supplant cows and chickens, fields and meadows would become a sales lot, and used farm equipment would become Carl’s cash crop. It began innocently enough when Carl thought he needed a second manure spreader.

“We had a New Idea 12A manure spreader,” Carl explains, “and when we went to haul manure off the pile . . . it would have been so much easier if we had two. So I went out and bought the second one, a good one.”

Before long his good spreader caught the eye of another farmer, who offered to buy it. Carl agreed to sell it for about what he had paid for it, and got the buyer to throw in his old spreader. “So I got this old junker and parked it behind the barn.”

Carl thought he was on to something so he repeated the process several times, buying good spreaders, reselling them, and getting an old spreader as part of the deal. Before long, a half dozen worn manure spreaders were stationed behind the barn. “I had junk spreaders,” says Carl, “but I had my money back and I had a usable spreader all the time.” Carl was in the equipment business.