Second of three stories.

Just as a chugging diesel tractor and its trailing agricultural implement churn through an open field of soil, so have corporate raiders of Eastern North Carolina tractor manufacturer Farmtrac North America plowed its loyal customers and employees under.

The Jan. 18 closing of Tarboro-based Farmtrac's assembly and headquarters buildings at 111 Fairview Drive, and an Edgecombe County Superior Court ruling late February to place the troubled firm into receivership are a few chronological benchmarks of the tractor firm's demise.

Receivership is a measure taken only when a company cannot afford filing bankruptcy. According to court documents, Farmtrac has generated more than $55 million in total liabilities.

Just as more than 285 Farmtrac retailers across America and Canada have been jolted by the recent turn of events, so have customers and employees; each is meeting the corporate plow.

In Edgecombe County, the Farmtrac closing has displaced nearly 180 loyal workers who are facing challenges regarding their work status, age and potential re-careering demands. So what are workers to do? The choice between riding it out or pursuing other employment has been a complex one.

According to Tarboro branch Employment Security Commission manager Althea Hopkins, many of the workers maintain a temporary layoff status that allows Farmtrac workers to collect unemployment without being required to seek new work. It has also allowed them to remain available to quickly rejoin the workforce on the outside chance the company is resuscitated.

A skeleton crew ranging from about 5-30 workers has volunteered about five or six hours daily to perform phone support and small parts warehousing functions in January and February.

They hope that somehow when the assembly facility reopens, everything will return to normal and everything they've earned through years of sweat and dedication – their jobs, their health care, their paid vacation – will be reinstated.

Court documents state Farmtrac workers have $308,802 owed in unpaid accrued vacation.

Farmtrac employees continue to be a quiet, solitary lot who refuse to say much about the closure – and nothing about a life after Farmtrac. More than 20 Farmtrac employees have declined interviews by The Daily Southerner staff.

Even if their utopic outlooks and stoic dispositions are commendable, the possibility of applicant struggles due to age, past earnings and a depressed economy are looming.

Many are middle-aged or older and have worked at the Fairview Drive building for decades: since Bill Long Sr. ran the business through the 1990s, or earlier.

Former Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Vice Chairman Paul Igasaki believes that makes things increasingly difficult to land new work. Igasaki stated on IMDiversity.com that "older applicants are finding the doors [of opportunity] harder to crack open" during the hiring process due to previous earnings and age discrimination. Worse yet, the former is legal and the latter seldom results in legal action. Igasaki called the practice "hard to prove" since employers "know better than to indicate this explicitly."

In addition, Edgecombe County hosts an unemployment rate of 9.0 percent – nearly twice the state average.