From the tractor that won't run without a dealer's permission to the truck whose wiring the mice eat by design — the end of ownership is already here. It is happening to the trucks and tractors that make the outdoor life possible. And the industry built around that life has had little to say about it.
There is a rancher in the American West who keeps two trucks. One is nearly 40 years old. The other is brand new. He uses both every day, and he has thought harder than most about what that means — because only one of them will still be running when his kids inherit the land.
The old truck breaks. He fixes it. He can order the parts from a dozen suppliers who have been making them for decades. He can pull the engine, diagnose the problem with a wrench and a manual, and be back on the road by Sunday. That truck, he says, will be running in 2075. He does not know where the new one will be.
The new truck is extraordinary. It tows 36,000 pounds like a Cadillac. Push a button, go anywhere. But when it breaks — and it breaks — he waits. He waits for a dealer. He waits for a technician with proprietary software. He waits because the software is the truck now, and the software belongs to the manufacturer, not to him.
He wrote a check. He drove it home. He does not own it.
This Is Not a Truck Problem
Across the Midwest, farmers are facing the same reality at a scale that should alarm every American who has ever bought something with the expectation that it belonged to them. A farmer in the corn belt sits watching his planting window close while his combine waits at a dealer 100 miles away — not because the part is unavailable, but because only an authorized technician with proprietary software can unlock the system that controls it. Twenty-eight days. The season moves on without him.
This is the world that John Deere built. And Ford is building its own version of it. And they are not alone.
The pattern is the same across manufacturers and industries: as products become software-dependent, the manufacturer inserts itself between the owner and the machine — permanently. You buy the hardware. They retain the keys. And they have structured the law, the warranty terms, and the technology itself to make sure you cannot get those keys back without paying them again.
When you write that check, you are buying access — access to use your equipment on their schedule, on their terms, for as long as they decide to support it. That is not ownership. That is a lease with no end date disclosed at signing.
The Numbers They Don't Put in the Press Release
In 2025, one major American automaker set an all-time record in the history of the American automobile industry: 153 recalls in a single year. In 2024, nearly half of all recalled vehicles — out of 28.9 million total — were recalled because of a software problem. That number had been 14% just the year before. Software-related recall campaigns surged 80% in a single year.
This is not a quality control problem. It is a structural problem. When you build a machine that runs on software — that requires software to function — you have built a machine that can fail in ways no independent mechanic can touch. A single line of bad code can ground a million trucks at once. And the owner has no recourse but to return to the dealer who sold them the problem.
The agricultural picture is equally damning. A landmark antitrust lawsuit filed in early 2025 by federal regulators and state attorneys general accused one of the world's largest equipment manufacturers of using exclusive control over its diagnostic software to monopolize repair services for large tractors and combines — forcing farmers to pay more and wait longer while the company's parts and service business swelled with profit. The lawsuit is headed for trial in 2026. It accuses the company of controlling not just what gets repaired, but who is allowed to do the repairing, and how much they can charge.
A proposed settlement in a related class action offered more than 200,000 qualifying farmers a total payout of $79 million for eight years of restricted repair access. That works out to 79 cents per acre. The lawyers got $20 million. The farmers who missed harvests, who watched crops wither while machines sat idle waiting for authorized technicians, who drove a hundred miles round trip to a dealership for a diagnostic scan they were not allowed to perform themselves — they got 79 cents an acre.
One advocate who has spent years fighting this case wore a sticker to his press appearances. It said: 79 cents. He said the farmers deserved better than a check written to make the story go away.
The Software Is the Product
Here is what John Deere's system actually does. When a farmer tries to use the owner-facing version of the diagnostic software, certain product improvement programs do not appear. Switch to the dealer version — on the same laptop, connected to the same tractor — and those programs surface immediately. You paid $1.2 million for the combine. You cannot see the full diagnostic picture for the machine you own unless you pay again for a subscription that still does not give you what the dealer gets.
Independent mechanics who spent careers working on this equipment find themselves locked out. A technician can physically replace a computer module — but the replacement arrives brain-dead, and only the manufacturer's proprietary software can activate it for that machine's serial number. Without that software, the part is inert. The repair is impossible. And that software is not for sale at any price to anyone outside the authorized dealer network.
Some farmers have turned to pirated software sourced from Eastern Europe. Not because they are criminals. Because their livelihood depends on a machine they legally own and they have no other way to fix it during the 48-hour window that determines whether their entire season is profitable. The Library of Congress granted farmers an exemption to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act allowing them to hack their own tractors for repair purposes. The manufacturers responded by updating their terms of service to prohibit it anyway.
This is the state of ownership in 2026.
A Pattern Across Industries
The rancher's truck and the farmer's tractor are not isolated stories. They are the same story told in different industries by different manufacturers who have arrived at the same conclusion: software dependency converts a one-time sale into a permanent revenue relationship. The machine becomes the entry point. The software — and the ongoing fees, dealer relationships, authorized repairs, and proprietary diagnostics that come with it — becomes the business.
There is even a design dimension that defies easy explanation. Modern trucks from multiple manufacturers switched from petroleum-based wiring insulation to a soy-based alternative — cheaper to produce, better for the environment by standard metrics. Rodents love it. Mice destroy modern wiring in environments where the same vehicles parked for years never had a problem before. Class action lawsuits have been filed. The manufacturers deny it. The rancher who has watched this happen firsthand on his own property has a different theory: a truck that lasts 100 years is excellent for the independent parts industry — for the aftermarket suppliers, the rebuilders, the junkyard networks, the third-party manufacturers who have been profiting off that platform for decades. What it is not good for is the manufacturer's parts business. Ford does not profit when you buy a carburetor from a Nevada supplier who has been making them since 1987. That is the distinction that matters. It is not parts revenue in general they are protecting. It is their exclusive claim to it.
There is also an environmental argument hiding in plain sight — one the outdoor industry, with its deep investment in sustainability credibility, cannot afford to ignore. The most sustainable vehicle is the one already built. Keeping a 40-year-old truck running avoids the staggering environmental cost of manufacturing its replacement: the raw material extraction, the smelting, the stamping, the global shipping, the energy consumed before a single mile is driven. A machine designed to be repaired indefinitely is, by definition, a machine with an indefinite useful life. Digital lock-out is not just an ownership problem. It is an environmental one — and the movement to dismantle it and the movement to protect the planet are natural allies, whether the outdoor industry has recognized that yet or not.
Planned obsolescence is not a new concept. Its roots trace back more than a century — to early 20th century campaigns by manufacturers and their advisors who concluded that durable goods were bad for recurring revenue, and that consumer culture needed to be engineered around replacement rather than repair. General Motors institutionalized it in the 1920s with deliberate annual model changes designed to make last year's car feel inadequate. The goal was never to build a worse product. It was to build a product whose obsolescence was scheduled in advance. Digital lock-out is simply that strategy's latest and most effective incarnation. You cannot fix what you are not permitted to diagnose. And if the manufacturer controls the diagnosis, they control the clock.
The Resistance Is Growing
The right to repair is no longer a fringe movement. Canada passed legislation in late 2024 giving farmers the legal right to bypass digital locks for repair purposes. Australia's National Farmers Federation has turned to government, demanding binding legislation after years of voluntary talks went nowhere. In the United States, more than a dozen states have introduced right-to-repair bills for agricultural equipment. Federal regulators are pursuing antitrust action. A federal judge has refused to dismiss the case.
Organizations like the Digital Right to Repair Coalition, iFixit, and US PIRG have been doing the legislative and advocacy work for years — pushing for laws that require manufacturers to make the parts, tools, and diagnostic information available to owners and independent repair shops on fair terms. The World Intellectual Property Organization has taken notice, treating right to repair as a serious international IP policy question, not a consumer affairs footnote.
The momentum is real. The fight is not over. But right now, today, the machines in your barn and your driveway are subject to terms that would have been unthinkable a generation ago.
A 40-year-old key starts a truck every morning without permission from anyone. That key costs five dollars and works in the rain, the snow, and 40 below. What we have built to replace it requires a server farm, a software subscription, and a dealer appointment. We called that progress.
Tymmber Outdoor has something to say about where we stand on this — and how we intend to build differently. That is what Memo 004 is for.
That is what this circle is for.
— Mike Isaacs
Founder, Tymmber Outdoor
Sierra County, New Mexico