The Farmers Mart Aug/Sep 2016 - Issue 47 | Page 86

Bob Wild

Finding success the
traditional way
» FATHER AND SON TEAM,
Bob and Richard Wild of Bob
Wild Machinery (BWM) have
been situated for the past
15 years in Mytholmroyd in
the Calder Valley. With big
changes in recent times, Ian
Wilkinson went along to hear
their story.
The business was started
by Bob in 1998 in an old
garage in Pellon Lane Halifax,
and initially just concentrated
on the sales and repair of new
and second hand machinery.
But in common with many
other people living in this rural
area, he had strong links and
a fondness for the farming
community. He used to have
his own milk round and keep
chickens but in those days

there wasn’t a great deal
of money to be made from
those. Bob’s other passion
was for machinery, partly
stemming from his five year
service as a Marine Engineer
in the Royal Navy.
Before taking the plunge
on his own, Bob was involved
in a Agricultural Supplies
Business, providing animal
health products, fencing & a
whole range of agricultural
sundries, this business
progressed into supplying
chainsaws, mowers and later
on professional groundcare
equipment, machinery is
where Bob’s interests were.
In time this led on to become
sales director of Richard Long
Engineering in Derbyshire

86 Aug/Sep 2016 www.farmers-mart.co.uk

a firm specialising largely
in golf course machinery.
After a successful career at
Long’s, he started making
steps towards his long term
goal, which was to have a
machinery business of his
own which he achieved with
the business in Halifax.
To start with it was about
mainly horticultural and golf
course machinery, but living in
the middle of an agricultural
heartland, Bob also found
farmers coming to him looking
for some good, old-fashioned
personal service even for
small jobs – something that
very often the larger dealers
were not offering. Very quickly
his list of customers began to
flourish.

A QUANTUM LEAP
1998 was the first quantum
leap when he took on the
John Deere franchise.
BWM had a very successful
association with John Deere
and in the later years was
one of their top performing
single unit dealers and therein
laid probably Bob’s biggest
challenge. In 2015 Deere had
started their rationalisation
programme focussing on
and developing multiple site
dealers. One Friday evening
Bob received the call for
a dealer meeting on the
Monday and that was it, in