Kleine Equipment John Deere Place

Opening December 2008

Brimfield Employees Breaking Ground - July 1, 2008 

October 1, 2008

Ground work has begun.  In certain places, the grade was raised up to ten feet to make a level pad for building the new store.  By mid August the bulk of the site was almost complete and it was time to start preparing the building site.  A wetter than normal summer has complicated the process but the building timeline is still on schedule.

The building project has started with the pouring of the footings for the building.  Much is yet to come prior to erecting the structure.  All the utilities need to be established to the new site which will take some time to install.  

Dealership History

The John Deere dealership was built in 1970 by Rich Streitmatter.  A strong agriculture economy in the early 1970's provided Streitmatter Implement expansion opportunities to the dealership.  The current location was added onto twice; once in 1974 and one more time in 1978.  Additionally, the dealership employed as many as 15 people.

Kleine Equipment, Inc. which owned one dealership in Galesburg purchased the business from Rich Streitmatter in February of 1997.  Kleine Equipment has continued to maintain and grow a strong market presence in Peoria, Stark, and eastern Knox Counties with the Brimfield Location.  Recently the main thrust of growth has came from the urban growth from the Peoria metropolitan population growing towards the Brimfield community.  This has presented Kleine Equipment with many new customer opportunities in the residential, commercial, and small or part time farming markets.  

Employee Profile

Stan Schick

Stan Schick has worked as a salesman at the Brimfield store since February of 1983.   In his 25 years of being a salesman, Stan has seen quite a bit of change in both equipment and the agriculture community.  He weathered the droughts in the 1980's and has experienced success of the late 1990's and 2000's.  Stan says the biggest highlight of his sales career is being a part of the building project right now.  Technological advances in farm equipment recently has marked the largest changes he has encountered along with the ever changing demographics of the ag customer base.