Christy Carpenter
Co-Owner and COO at Broken Tractor. The operations engine behind every order, every system, and every part that ships from the Baton Rouge warehouse — and the reason everything customers don’t see actually works.
Chance built the catalog. Christy built the operation. After eight years inside Broken Tractor running everything that isn’t parts — the people, the systems, the warehouse, the ERP, the daily grind that turns 20,000 SKUs into orders that ship on time — she’s the reason the customer-facing side of this business looks as simple as it does.
Her three-word self-description: astute, decisive, detail-oriented. The business runs because of all three.
What every customer should know
“We actually know these machines. When you call us with a serial number or a vague description of what broke, you’re talking to people who can help you figure it out. That knowledge is what we’re really selling. The parts are just how it shows up at your door.”
That’s the whole company in five sentences, in her words. Twenty years in, the catalog and the warehouses and the systems are necessary — but they’re not the product. The knowledge is. Christy’s job is making sure that knowledge can actually get out the door, every single day, to every customer who calls.
The moment she knew
Ask Christy about the moment she realized Broken Tractor was going to make it, and the answer isn’t a sales record or a milestone. It was the company’s warehousing and ERP system launch — the brutal middle stretch of any major systems migration where nothing works the way it’s supposed to and everyone is solving problems in real time.
Watching the team push through that, learn the system on the fly, and come out the other side — that was the moment. Not because the software finally worked, but because of what it revealed about the people running it.
“By the time we came out the other side, I realized we’d built something bigger than the software. We’d built a team that could handle whatever came next.”
What customers never see
Most of it, honestly. Customers see a part show up at their door — what they don’t see is everything behind that single transaction:
- The hunt for an obsolete part nobody else can source, sometimes pulling from suppliers across the world.
- The daily grind of managing inventory across multiple warehouses.
- Navigating tariff changes that shift the math on imported parts overnight.
- Fighting shipping claims when carriers come up short.
- Keeping an ERP system humming.
- A team of real people pulling parts, answering questions, and chasing down vendors to make sure the right thing ends up in the right box.
It’s a lot of moving pieces working together so the customer’s experience feels simple. Simple is the goal. Behind the curtain, it’s anything but.
Off the clock
Four kids and two dogs. A full house, a school schedule, a sports calendar, and somebody always needing something right now. Christy runs the household the same way she runs the company — lots of moving parts, plenty of unexpected breakdowns, somebody always in the middle of something.
“Honestly, I think running a busy household is what makes me good at running a busy company. Or maybe it’s the other way around.”
What she’s proudest of
Twenty years in, the answer comes easy:
That she and Chance built something real from the ground up. Real warehouses, real systems, real people — a family business that answers the phone, knows the parts, and stands behind what we sell. They’ve earned every customer they have, and they don’t take a single one for granted.
Behind every part on the truck
The reason a part shows up at your door clean, on time, and right the first time isn’t accident. It’s the operation Christy runs every day. Twenty years of getting it right, one order at a time.
Call (800) 909-7060 Shop brokentractor.com— Christy Carpenter, Co-Owner & COO
