Mark Devloo never watched much television as a kid growing up on his fourth-generation family farm. He was too busy outside fixing things, learning to weld, and building go-carts with his father, Gerry, who came up with the design ideas.
It wasn’t much different 40 or so years later when, after getting frustrated by not being able to find a mud scraper capable of keeping the packer tires clean on their equipment, Gerry came up with a concept for a better mud scraper, and they built a set for their own seeder.
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“One day Dad dreamt up the idea of a rotating, cup-shaped mud scraper,” says Mark, who farms 2,700 acres of grain land together with his father and brother Jamie near the small village of Somerset in south-central Manitoba.
The Devloo Roto Mudscraper system is a set of rotating, laser-cut, carbon-steel scrapers attached to the seeder with custom-made brackets which hold them an eighth of an inch away from the packer tire and are offset so they won’t spin until the mud builds up enough to touch the scraper.
The brackets can be custom designed to fit just about any equipment that has a packer wheel and Devloo has in-stock brackets for many equipment makes including Morris, Seed Hawk, Seed Master, Bourgault, New Holland, Versatile, Amity, Salford, Ezee-On, John Deere, Pillar, Flexicoil and K-Hart, plus a few seeding tools from Europe.
To get seeding done Devloo often can’t wait for the fields to dry out completely. “We tend to start seeding a little bit earlier than average because we’ve found that the first crop seeded is usually the best yielding crop,” says Devloo. “Most farmers don’t go until the fields are completely dry, but with our rotating mud scrapers they can start earlier, even if there are a few wet spots in the field.”
The problem of seeding into what Devloo calls “sticky” soils is that if mud builds up on the wheels of the seeding equipment, it can alter the seeding depth, causing uneven germination. “As you’re going through the wet spots your tires get bigger from the caked mud, so instead of putting your seed at, say, a half-inch deep, your seed ends up shallower because the wheel gets big and lifts the opener up out of the soil,” Devloo says. “We were finding that we had poor germination in strips on each side of the wet spots as well as in the wet spots themselves.”
“The problem compounds as the season progresses,” Devloo continues, because uneven germination leads to uneven crop growth, thus affecting weed competitiveness, fungicide windows and harvesting.
“Just about every farmer has more than one soil type on their farm and most farmers need scrapers from time to time. It doesn’t take long to pay off a set of mud scrapers, especially when seeding canola,” says Devloo.
It took Devloo only a couple of minutes after seeing the prototype scraper working on their own equipment to realize he had something that would help other farmers, and that he could add as another enterprise to help diversify the farm. Now, he has sold over 20,000 of the Roto Mudscrapers that his father designed four years ago, and believes he’ll probably have 30,000 sold by this spring.
Devloo believes he has sold those 20,000 because it’s a good product, working better than stationary, flat scrapers and outlasting them too. “The scrapers spin so they don’t heat up,” says Devloo. “There is very little friction and therefore very little wear. We’ve got four seasons out of ours and they haven’t changed diameter yet.”
The Roto Mudscraper has won innovation awards at virtually every Canadian agricultural show that Devloo has attended, including Manitoba Ag Days, the Regina Farm Progress Show and the Agri-Trade Exposition in Red Deer, Alta. He also went to the Agritechnica show in Germany last November and generated plenty of interest, as well as a personal audience with Michael Horsch, who seemed to recognizeda fellow inventor. Horsch got his start tinkering with farm equipment on the family farm in Sitzenhof, Germany, in the early 1980s and eventually grew Horsch Maschinen into a major European seeding and tillage equipment manufacturer.
As a result of their conversation, Devloo is working on adapting the Roto Mudscraper for Horsch machinery and is hoping to do a field trial with the Horsch Sprinter in the heavy clay gumbo of the Red River Valley this spring. Horsch, who went to university in the U.S., has told Devloo that if he can prove his Roto Mudscraper works under those field conditions, he’s definitely interested in the product to offer as an add-on for his machinery.
Devloo is confident that it will work. “I definitely want to make it for their equipment and I’m confident that we’ll get our product working there in that Red River gumbo,” he says. “I’m excited about it because I know I can help out the guys that farm there.”
Providing a practical solution that helps farmers be more efficient and successful has been another important motivation for Devloo. “I take pride in what we do and we’ve completely redesigned and improved our product since last year,” he says. “The feedback we get from farmers and at the shows is awesome. Some guys have told me it has totally changed their drill and I’ve had comments that if it wasn’t for our scrapers they would have lost two or three days of good seeding weather.”
“In order to keep the retail cost of the product low and affordable for the farmer, I have been selling direct to them. It takes extra margin to have a dealer network in place,” says Devloo.
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But selling direct to farmers has meant a considerable investment in marketing. “A lot of people don’t realize how much work and costs are involved to market a product,” says Devloo, who admits it surprised him too. He has already invested tens of thousands of dollars in marketing and product development, including a redesign of the bracket that has made it more durable and efficient.
“The research and development is a lot more work than I expected it to be,” he says. “We had 15,000 units out by last spring, so we’ve learned more about the soil types and what’s needed and we’ve evolved from that. We had a lot of good feedback on our first year but what we’ve got now is night and day from our first design. We’ve built the brackets stronger and with more clearance for the mud and fibre. It’s a big challenge to make sure that everybody’s happy, but I love working with farmers.”
There are other challenges for a farm-based manufacturer that are a bit off the beaten path too, one of which is freight. Devloo ships the Roto Mudscrapers unassembled to save on freight costs but it’s not as easy as getting a truck in to pick up and deliver. He uses Canada Post for shipping and deliveries because it’s cost-effective, but with the rounds of cuts recently to small postal outlets in rural areas, he’s holding his breath hoping they don’t close the small post office at the nearby village of Somerset.
One of the lessons Devloo also learned is that he couldn’t do everything himself. “A challenge for me is the fact that I try to do too much on my own,” he says. Devloo has a hands-on nature. He built most of his house himself from the ground up, learning how to do everything from drywall to plumbing. “I had someone do the kitchen, otherwise from the finishing, the painting and laying the linoleum, doing the concrete, everything was myself and a couple of friends,” he says. “I have always been into that kind of stuff.”
He has finally learned to delegate to other family members and has sub-contracted the manufacturing of the brackets to a local Hutterite Colony and says things are running a lot smoother now. “Last year I did a big part of this all on my own,” he says. “I had my son Tyler working in the shop and my sister Teresa working in the office and we did all of our own research and development and built all our parts, packaged and shipped the product ourselves.”
All of Devloo’s four children are now involved in the new business in some way and he has some nephews and nieces helping out from time to time too. Daughter Natia (27) divides her time between Winnipeg, where she works part-time as a veterinarian assistant, and the farm, where she and sister, Jovita (24), help part-time with the administration, paperwork and working at the trade shows.
Sixteen-year-old Desiree, the third daughter, helps out at trade shows and does the Photoshop work for the website when she can. Son Tyler (23) manages the manufacturing, inventory control and shipping of the scrapers. “We are all excited about the business and work very well as a team,” says Devloo.
The family is enthusiastic about the business and Devloo admits that he hasn’t spent a lot of time thinking about where he wants it to go, but it will depend on whether the kids want to continue with it in the future. “It all comes down to the kids,” he says. “There is a lot of potential here to continue to help farmers around the world with a good quality product, and it has helped make it possible for my kids to work at the family farm.”
A feature of the Devloo Roto Mudscraper is that it only begins to spin when the mud builds up on the packer tires and touches the scraper. The rest of the time, says Devloo, “It just sits there looking pretty.”
That’s especially true of a special edition of the Roto Mudscraper which can be ordered in pink, in support of a cause that has personally affected Devloo and his family. “My mom had breast cancer some years ago and I just decided that for every pink scraper we sell, we will donate $5 towards breast cancer research. So far we’ve sold two full sets and some part sets in pink, and have donated $685. Everyone seems to know someone who has been affected somehow with cancer.”
Devloo realized, because of his own experience and the needs he had on his own farm for a product that worked, there would be a lot of interest in the Roto Mudscraper. “I knew there was going to be interest because there are a lot of people out there that need the product,” he says. “I knew there’d be interest but I didn’t know which parts of the globe really had sticky soils. What we’re finding out is that there are sticky soils all over.” Devloo has sold product across the Canadian Prairies and into Australia and New Zealand and is working on a design for a few equipment manufacturers in Germany.
He admits the success of the Roto Mudscraper has caught him a bit off guard, but as an entrepreneur at heart he’s managing to shorten his bucket list thanks to his new business enterprise.
“My goal in life was always to travel, and when I was younger I was hoping to be semi-retired by this age,” says Devloo, who is 48. “What I have done is expanded and increased my work load, but I really enjoy talking to people and I get to travel, so at the end of the day it’s a lot of work but I love what I am doing.”
