Just heard today that Black and Decker / Stanley bought MTD

[MowManMow]

Hopefully they aren't "orGONE" i like their blades, and chainsaw bars/chains.

Well Shame shame shame!
Big corp monopolies on the move to make longer lists of obsolete products to force us to buy all new junk sooner..grrrr! Oh how I hate change.

 

[bertsmobile1]

FWIW
When I was discussing this with the RGS rep when Oregon changed distribution to go through B & S they told me Oregon had been owned by a finance company for better than 20 years
So not all of them are money grubbing leaches .

 

[ILENGINE]

FWIW
When I was discussing this with the RGS rep when Oregon changed distribution to go through B & S they told me Oregon had been owned by a finance company for better than 20 years
So not all of them are money grubbing leaches .

Blount purchases Omark which was the original company in 1985 and then Blount was acquired by Lehman Brothers Merchant Banking in 1999, was taken private in an all cash transaction by American Securities and P2 Capital Partners in 2015 and now sold to Platinum Equity.

 

[bertsmobile1]

Thanks

 

[ILENGINE]

Looks like Stanley/black and Decker is at is again with the purchase agreement of Excel Industries(Big Dog and Hustler) for $375M cash.

 

[Hammermechanicman]

Now it costs almost the same to make a 100 Hp V twin as it does to make a 10 Hp V twin so to make it look like the customer is getting better value for money all that is happening is engines are getting outrageously larger .

You can thank Sears for that one. Back in the 80's they made a concentrated effort to advertise horsepower as a selling point. They started putting twins on when most other cheap mowers were still using the 12hp flathead engine. Every year they wanted to out HP the competition. They also started the BS horsepower ratings on power tools and shop vacs. They used theoretical locked rotor current draw in their HP calculations. That is how they could advertise a 110v 12amp shop vac as "5 HP rated". Total BS but legal.

 

[bertsmobile1]

Manufacturers have been doing that for decades
We bought a superceeded 1.5L Nissan, top of the range with power every thing and air con
For the coming model year the same 1.5L engine in the new body was not available with power steering or air conditioning because it was "underpowered" and to get those you had to buy the 1,8L engine
Next model upgrade, same story the 1.8 was not good enough & you had to buy the 2.0L
Current model is now 2.8L

 

[bertsmobile1]

Looks like Stanley/black and Decker is at is again with the purchase agreement of Excel Industries(Big Dog and Hustler) for $375M cash.

It is the same old story & the government will do nothing about it
The biggest player buys every brand they can to become the monopoly supplier
A USA marketing stragety originally called "Owning the Market " and they still teach MBA's to do it at all costs.
Every one on a board now days has an MBA so they all think & act the same
Back when economists actually knew what they were doing from practice the go was for vertical intergrtion because next to compounding interest the most powerful force in finance was the internal dollar but owning the entire supply chain from the mine to the merchants requires a massive amount of capital to remain in the business and now days having "mobile capital" is considered to be more important and of course executive bonuses are calculated on profit " equity ratios so the more cash you can make from the smallest investment shows you are very smart & deserve to be paid 500 times what the people who actually make the product you are selling do .
And again it is powered by the BS "American Dream" that everything you want will be available at a price you can easily afford just because you want it .

 

[CLStout]

When I was young, my dad bought a new Sears riding mower. It was, compared to today, a bare bones machine. It was 8hp, 3 speed transmission, pull start, etc. That 8hp mower would cut through the highest grass without bogging down. It would climb some serious hills, too. And if I would put it in 3rd gear, hold in the clutch, and throttle it up, once I dumped the clutch I could get the front wheels off the ground. Now my 20hp mower bogs in grass that's not that high. That 12hp difference. I don't understand what's changed. I go from an 8hp single cylinder to a 20hp v-twin with what seems like less power. Have they come up with a different way to calculate hp?

 

[ILENGINE]

When I was young, my dad bought a new Sears riding mower. It was, compared to today, a bare bones machine. It was 8hp, 3 speed transmission, pull start, etc. That 8hp mower would cut through the highest grass without bogging down. It would climb some serious hills, too. And if I would put it in 3rd gear, hold in the clutch, and throttle it up, once I dumped the clutch I could get the front wheels off the ground. Now my 20hp mower bogs in grass that's not that high. That 12hp difference. I don't understand what's changed. I go from an 8hp single cylinder to a 20hp v-twin with what seems like less power. Have they come up with a different way to calculate hp?

I have been saying for years that the new engines don't seem to have the lugging power of the older engines. Ran mowers back in the 70's that would walk through stuff that would blow up todays mowers. They claim the torque is there but I wonder what the power band looks like. Were is max torque derived. An engine that generates its max torque at 2200 rpm will not have as much low end as one that peaks at 1800 rpm for two engines with the same hp and torque.