Typically, if you are looking for a poultry loan, you have to travel to a bank’s office to meet with someone who is dressed in a suit and shiny shoes. Or, you fill out an impersonal set of web forms for a bank that only exists online, and you never meet a human being. Regardless, it’s about doing things the bank’s way and in their setting. And even when you are working with a specific human being, it’s hard to tell if they’ve ever even set foot on a commercial poultry farm.
First Financial Bank Poultry Lenders do things differently.
“Have truck will travel”
To begin with, we come to you. Sure, we’ll talk on the phone and exchange emails or texts (if you like), but ultimately, our face-to-face conversations will typically happen at your farm. This is true when you are applying for the loan and as we work together in the long haul. If it is the height of summer and you’ve got flocks close to maturity, we know you don’t have the time to trek to one of our offices. That’s why we joke that our motto is “have truck will travel”. And those “shiny shoes” other bankers wear? Well, at the top of this article is a picture of our loan officers wearing their usual work shoes – a pair of well-broken-in boots.
Protecting your property
Many of our loan officers came from the live production side of the business or have been in the industry for many years. We understand the challenges of being a poultry farmer, especially when protecting your flock from disease. We practice biosecurity measures to help prevent the introduction of diseases such as avian flu or infectious laryngotracheitis to your flocks. How? We are always careful, but in times of increased risk of biohazards, we’ll take it to the next step. We’ll try to do things via phone or electronically if possible, but if we do need to meet in person, we’ll be ready:
- When we get to the beginning of your gravel drive, we spray down and disinfect our tires.
- When we pull up at your door, we’ll put on a new pair of plastic boot covers that we’ll wear the entire time we visit you. We leave those behind when we leave your property before we go on to the next.
- As we pull back onto the road, we’ll spray down our tires again.
- Taking those few extra steps is one of the ways we help you protect your investment.
