A baler stops at eight on a June evening with forty acres on the ground and rain forecast, and the man standing beside it is not browsing. He wants someone who knows that machine, will come out tonight or first thing, and has the part or can get it by morning. He searches “baler repair near me” or “agri mechanic Meath” on a cracked phone in the field. In March it is a tractor that will not start, in December a slurry tanker with a seized pump, and on the edge of Dublin it is a ride-on mower or a quad. Websites for agri machinery repairs in Dublin and the counties around it barely exist, so the farmer ends up ringing the main dealer and waiting a week.
Makes, machines and what you will not touch
The page is a list of what you fix, and farmers read it closely. Tractors by make: John Deere, Massey Ferguson, New Holland, Case IH, Kubota, Zetor, Valtra, Fendt, Deutz, whichever you know well. Balers and wrappers: McHale, Krone, Kuhn, Claas, Welger. Mowers, tedders and rakes. Slurry tankers, pumps and agitators. Loaders, diet feeders, sprayers, trailers and trailer brakes. On the suburban edge, ride-on mowers, compact tractors and quads.
Then what you do: diagnostics on newer electronics, hydraulics, PTO shafts and clutches, engines, welding and fabrication, tyres, pre-season servicing. And what you will not touch, whether that is combine electronics or warranty work that has to go back to the dealer. A straight no earns more trust than a vague yes, and it stops the wrong calls. Say whether you fit genuine or pattern parts and roughly how long parts take to arrive.
Workshop or yard: where the job happens
Some jobs happen in the farmer’s yard and some in your shed, and the customer needs to know which. Say the areas you drive to, your hours, and that you do out-of-hours callouts during silage if you do. Say whether you can collect a machine with a low-loader. Give the workshop’s Eircode and hours and a photograph of the shed with the doors open, so a new customer can see it is a proper set-up with a lift and a parts store and not a lean-to.
The Google Business Profile for a mechanic needs both: the workshop as a place with hours, and a service area for the callouts. We set that up and keep it right, and the steps are in how to set up a Google Business Profile in Ireland.
The quiet months pay for the busy ones
February to April is servicing: mowers, balers and tankers through the shed before silage, and on the Dublin fringe the ride-on mowers come out of the garage the first warm Saturday in April. May to September is breakdowns and long days. Autumn brings ploughs, drills and hedge cutters. Winter is overhauls, engine rebuilds, tanker pumps and the big jobs nobody has time for in June.
A line at the top of the page, changed from your phone, carries the season: “Pre-season baler servicing, book for March”, “Callouts only until the silage is in”, “Winter overhauls booking now”. It fills the shed in February and keeps the hopeless calls down in June. Contractors are your biggest customers in both seasons, and their page and yours can point at each other.
A photo of the part beats a phone call
You are under a machine for most of the day and cannot take a call. A WhatsApp button lets the farmer send a photo of the serial plate, the broken part or the fault code on the dash, and you answer yes, no or Thursday when you surface. The enquiry form sends the same message to your email. The phone still rings, but fewer of the calls are “do you do Zetor”, because the page already said. If you also do cars and vans, that is a separate page for a separate search, and the mechanics page explains what that one needs.
What we need from the workshop
Your list of makes and machines. The services you offer and the ones you refuse. Whether you do callouts, and where. The workshop’s Eircode and hours. A dozen photos: the shed, the van, a few jobs mid-repair. Your WhatsApp number. The parts suppliers you work with, if you want them named. Ten minutes on the phone, in the evening.
Plan and price
Essentials is the plan for a machinery mechanic: €499 to set up and €50 a month, VAT added, no contract, for the site, the listing, the seasonal notice and the monthly report. Complete at €1,499 and €100 a month suits a larger workshop that wants the listing managed, business email for parts orders and a chat box answering at night. Most of this trade is outside Dublin, so the first chat is by phone. The two plans are set out on the pricing page.