What Would be Your Top Three Ride-on Mower Brands?

Carl in CT

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  • / What Would be Your Top Three Ride-on Mower Brands?
For tractors - #1 Simplicity if you get one of the models with the Briggs and Stratton Vangaurd motors, close #2 John Deere (not the box store ones, the real Deeres with Kawasaki motors) for tractors. Stay away from Kohler motors, every one I've had has been junk. Kubotas are supposed to be great, especially if you want diesel instead of gas but very very expensive for a lawn mower. Cub Cadets look tempting, lots of bang for the buck there but MTD scares me. I had a very expensive MTD built Cub Cadet in the 80's, awful piece of junk, maybe better now, I just don't know.

For zero turns - I'm not sure. I know the John Deere and Skag ZTRs are excellent, my brother-in-law is a landscaper and uses and abuses both with no problems but there may be other good ones too, like maybe the pro level Toro ZTRs (not the box store ones).

Good luck!
 

bertsmobile1

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This is again a silly question.
just about every maker has outstanding mowers and total crap.

I love the Husqvarna Pro Rider series but would not walk across the road to pick up a free Husqvarna tractor.
My landlord runs 3 Cub Cadet 2000 series ( Horizontal motors ) and he really punishes them. I could not fault that series, but the 1000 series is junk.
John Deere makes some excellent mowers but again the 100 series is cheap garbage that is lucky to stay together for warantee period.
Never seen a Simplicity that I did not admire, but not the finest cut in the world , really robust but over complicated & difficult to work on ( expensive )
Cox ( local made ) can not be killed I service a lot of them that are 20+ years old.
Greenfields same story both are fully fabricated and can not be stopped, simple to use , easy to work on , cheap to run and again the oldest one I regularly work on is 1968.
Deutcher are another premium brand with a belt run even more complicated than the early Bowlens but again have to throw them off a cliff to kill them, almost no maintenance.
Toro have taken the local professional market off Deere with an excellent range but the smaller tractors arer not much chop.

Even worse now days is that most mowers are made for a brand not buy the brand.
The small JD's ZTR are bough in & made at the same factory as the Craftsman 2000 series , Neither are particularly goos mowers but the JD is twice as good as the almost identical Craftsman
 

possum

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How did you guys get into a discussion from 2011 in 2015/
 
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