AGPARTS' Roots
AgParts' story begins with its founder, Max Ririe, and his vision for building a company that is in business to help the grower. His common refrain to "give the farmer a break" comes through in our pricing and the high quality of our products. It's rare for a company to have such a single-minded focus on its customers. This passion for designing equipment that best helps the worlds' growers stems from Mr. Ririe's childhood.
Born in Ririe, Idaho, he cut his teeth on a pair of pliers and spent his boyhood on the farm tearing things apart and putting them back together again. He is one of those rare people who has known all along what he wanted to do with his life... design farm machinery. He has been doing just that since his graduation from the University of Idaho in 1949. Max has worked on a number of projects over the years, everything from automated chicken feeders to grain combines and the whole spectrum of potato equipment.
By the early 80's, Max was ready for a change. For more than thirty years, he had worked for other companies, gathering a lot of experience along the way. Now he wanted to do something on his own. Early in 1982, he took the big plunge, bought tooling for the four and five inch carrier rollers, and started his own company. It was a shaky beginning. Those first rollers were made on a press Max built himself. With the help of his daughter Susan and his wife MarDean, he would make a couple of hundred rollers in the evening after work. The next evening he would drive down the road until he found a farmer getting his potato harvester ready for harvest, and Max would sell him a few rollers. By the end of the season about 4,000 rollers had been assembled and sold. AgParts, then called Mardean Company, was on its way.
AGPARTS Today
In April of 2005 Mr. Ririe sold AgParts and a new chapter begins both for him and the company. On the cusp of reaching its 25th year of being in business, AgParts continues to grow because of its deep roots in carrying on Max's refrain to "give the farmer a break". We strive to live in the spirit of this sentiment by ensuring every AgParts product represents the very best value in the market place and then deliver that product with the prowess of a great manufacturer.