Wow, your advice is just about as helpful as a tick on your scrotum. Sears hasn't made anything good for decades, and their mowers and snowblowers are consistently ranked the lowest by almost all independent reports. It matters VERY MUCH what you buy regardless if it's a 2k or 5k mower. Quality varies greatly by brand.
Well it might not be much use but it is the plain simple & honest truth.
In the under $ 2000 you are looking at the rock bottom cheapst mower any factory can possibly make designed soley for the purpose of making you go "gees that is cheap" and walk into the shop so the salesman can sell you some thing a lot more expensive.
If this helps you put into perspective quality wise.
The first mower I worked on was my fathers first petrol powered push mower.
The purchase price was equivalent to 6 months wages and he paid it off over 3 years. Because the mower company was making a good profit on the mower they made it properly with good quality materials.
That was in 1959 & my sister has the mower, it is still in good working order but because it does not have a catcher she only uses it to mow the grass verge.
I have 9 mowers I lend out to customers when I get a big backlog of repairs, they are all from the 60's & 70's all work perfectly all fitted with 8 to 12 Hp B&S side valve engines.
When new they cost 1/2 to 2/3 the price of a small car so again they were made well with quality materials & I can get almost every part.
I can't get parts for a 5 year old McCulloch
So now you are looking at a $2000 mower.
The local shop will be making something between 35% & 29% profit so we will call it 25 % just to keep things simple.
So the retailer paid $ 1500 for your mower, delivered
Delivery is going to cost somewhere between $ 50 & $ 300 depending how far it has been shipped, We will call it $ 200 to keep it simple
So the mower Ex distributors warehouse is $ 1300. Now the name owner also gets a cut ( assuming the mower is made for the distributor ) so there goes another $ 200.
That leaves the factory that actually made the mower with a door price of $ 1100.
If a factory is not running at a minimum of 20% gross profit they won't be here next season so your $ 2000 mower can cost no more than $ 900 to make.
$ 900 is about the retail price of the engine alone.
And those are rough figures for your local corner shop.
Wally mart, seers etc demand a minimum 100% mark up so the factory will get even less for sales through big box stores.
$ 2000 might seem like a lot to you but down stream it is peanuts and a loss making product.
For the money you are willing to spend the best quality mower you can buy will be a Wee Foul Yu with some USA decals applied over the top of the Chinnese ones.
This mower will be highly subsidised by the Chineese government and if fitted with a Chineese Kohler will give you many years of good service that your unemployed childern & grandchildren will appreciate.
The Magic Pudding I am afraid is a childrens story, you don't get anything for nothingand in your price bracet you will do a lot better looking at a good self propelled or second hand mower.
Sorry if this seem offensive , it is not meant to be but I am the bloke who crawls under these mowers and tries to fix them & I do see a big difference between $2000 mowers & $4000 mowers, from the ill fitting bonnets right down to the thiner weaker blades. They look the same because they are made with the same dies as the dearer models , after the dies are no longer capable of making top quality pressings and made with thinner metal without any of the strengthening brace pieces or means of making adjustments found on the "full price" variants.
And it really breaks my heart to tell some one who put every dollar they can't really afford into a bottom end mower that their 2 year old mower will cost over $ 1000 to fix and be in the shop for well over a month or in the case of some of the McCullochs sold through a local big box shop actually can not be repaired and is worth nothing more than the value of the used motor. and that is most often with me charging less than 1/2 the trade rate for lablour and using pattern parts
