Built From the Field

The best equipment is the equipment that fits the crop, terrain, acreage, operators, and real working conditions of your vineyard or farm. AVA Tractor was built around that idea. We believe choosing equipment starts with understanding the operation, not simply looking at the machine.

Meet Towle Merritt

AVA Tractor was founded by Towle Merritt, a seventh-generation winegrower with more than 25 years of experience in winegrowing, vineyard management, farming, and agricultural technology.

Towle's career has been rooted in the field. He spent more than a decade with Walsh Vineyards Management, ultimately serving as Director of Viticulture, General Manager, and Partner, and has worked extensively with growers and vineyard operations throughout California. His experience also includes vineyard mechanization and harvesting technology. Today, he and his wife, Darcy, operate Napa Farming, where he continues to work directly with growers and agricultural operations.

That experience shaped the way Towle thinks about equipment. He has seen firsthand that an equipment decision affects much more than the machine itself. It can affect labor, timing, productivity, crop quality, and the economics of an entire operation.

Why AVA Tractor

After years of working on the farming side of the equipment equation, Towle repeatedly saw growers invest in equipment that wasn't well matched to their operation or struggle to get the support they needed after the sale.

When equipment is out of the field during a critical farming window, the consequences can extend far beyond the machine itself. Yet too often, the responsibility for solving the problem can become unclear, with customers passed between the salesperson, service department, and manufacturer.

AVA Tractor was created to offer a different approach: an equipment business built from the grower's point of view.

A Different Kind of Equipment Dealer

We listen first.

Before recommending equipment, we want to understand how you farm: your acreage, row spacing, terrain, labor challenges, existing equipment, budget, and long-term plans. From there, we can recommend equipment that makes sense for your operation, even when that means choosing something other than the biggest or most expensive option.

We believe customers deserve straightforward information about what a machine can do, what it can't do, and what to expect once it is in the field. And our job doesn't end when the equipment is delivered. We believe the equipment sale is the beginning of the relationship, not the end.

Built for the Long Term

Towle's goal is to build AVA Tractor into a trusted resource for vineyard and specialty-agriculture equipment, with carefully selected products, knowledgeable people, strong industry relationships, and dependable support.

Growth matters, but not at the expense of what makes the business valuable. AVA Tractor is being built one good relationship at a time, with a simple goal: understand the operation, recommend the right equipment, and be there when it matters.