Briggs & Stratton discontinues all Snapper & Simplicity tractors & zero turns - 9/8/2023

[BudTugley]

Why do big companies keep buying other brands only to destroy them?? LawnBoy comes to mind. Now Snapper- or at least part at the moment. What a shame....

Because they can make lots of money doing it. Look what has happened to Sears since Lambert took them over years ago.

In some cases they buy a brand with the intention of killing it while cashing out the value and trust in the name. Husqvarna has done this over and over.

In other cases the intention is noble to grow the brand. I think B&S had good intentions but they just couldn't get out of their own way. They were arrogant, stubborn, complacent, and very disorganized. And so busy drinking their own kool-aid that they didn't see their own demise approaching.

 

[TobyU]

Several yrs ago I needed a new Briggs engine for one of my Snapper SP's (rear disc drive not MTD specials). I owned 4 then, two 3&1 and two Ninjas. I noticed on Briggs site they had no push mower steel sleeve engines listed so I called them. They stated they just stopped making them the prior year. So I checked Ebay, Amazon none anywhere!

Well I called SmallEngineWarehouse where I bought parts before that actually had one left, a JD style with pressure lube oil system. I bought it at clearance price & ordered 2 cases of oil filters because I figured its mini filters may be hard to locate later or JD priced? It actually has an oil slinger in it too according to its parts breakdown so one can just block it off & change oil more if needed.
I used it on my front yard (20 min weekly) & mowed my back yard with my rider.
3yrs later we moved to the country where we live now (3 acres), partly wooded & I mow 2.5 acres all with my garden tractor(s).
So that ol Snapper is stored in my barn with my other 3 n 1 Snapper. Sold both Ninja models when we moved. I kept a few rear-ends & controls from rusted out curb finds if needed. The disc drive Snapper was the best self propelled mowers ever made, owned Toro, Honda, Deere nothing even comes close to their reliability.
I kept checking back for another new sleeved engine but never located another, those baby's sure dried up fast. Briggs engines was decimated long ago, but omg what a wonderful engine they once built. I thank every engineer that ever helped make them what they were. Seen so many that never had one oil change last over 20yrs back in the day. Crazy!
I'd liked to of handed these down to my boy but he dont appreciate anything old. Todays younger gens could care less about everlasting equipment.
Briggs Pres was asked during an interview almost 10yrs ago "Why did Briggs stop putting oil drains in their smaller engines" he answered "Our studies show todays generation does not want to do any maintenance, they just prefer to buy new again."
So Briggs put on plastic carbs, no oil drains, no sleeves etc.. Other words, Briggs built the p.o.s. they asked for so they buy new mowers every 2yrs vs a quart of oil & a hand wash.
Appears China rubbed off here sadly, all these big corps love people who buy n toss, buy n toss instead of fixing it? Saw one mower shops flyer for 30% interest over summer!...nutz!
Being one who learned math I'm just not that guy who buys stuff to throwaway days later. Sickening thought to me honestly. If Briggs sells a product no better built than China then why pay more for the Briggs? Buy a Harbor Lifan engine & toss it on an old Deck...Briggs shot themselves in the foot.

Fwiw- I still have my old Wheel Horses with engines/trans/frames made from old iron & maintain them so I dont spend thousands every 5yrs on todays throwaways. Oldest is 1976, newest a 1988, none have seen their first engine refresh yet, all Kohler K & Magnums but some Garden Tractors had iron Briggs back then. Hard to find old iron GT's for sale but as owners die they do get sold off!
Beware of Onan powered GTs people are dumping due to parts costs.

I have more than enough of these Briggs engines to last me 2 lifetimes but I won't own one of the newer ones.

 

[MrCutNgrass]

The Wally snappers were farmed out to MTD and Husqvarna around 2010 when Briggs started a special dealer program called mass merchant support to support the Snapper products sold a Walmart. Standard Snapper dealers couldn't warranty them without being part of the Mass merchant program. There was even a few Snapper push mowers sold at Walmart that were manufactured by a Chinese company with no support structure to even supply parts.

I thought most mowers were made overseas anyway, I saw a zero turn in Wal Mart a few years back and it had a 10 year warranty on it, don't remember the brand I thought it was snapper, but not sure. I am sure it was limited, I have a husqvayna mower and it is way better than my old sears mower, i bought it last year, not praising overseas manufactures but almost everything is made overseas, I had a sears technician work on my old sears mower, it had a bad cable system on the trans, he tried to fix it but couldn't so I got my Husqvayna at a reduced rate, which I bought from sears under my maintenance contract, the thing about it is the tech told me that the transmissions are all made different, different designs same brand, so I guess the chinese have something to do with that so I can understand why the older mowers are appealing, they were all made basically the same and parts were easy to replace, most home owners could fix them without a mower repair bill, like my old chevy before electronics were introduced into them to control emissions. Now i am a diy person if i can fix it I will, if this husqvarna is like my old sears mower forget about fixing it myself, I'll
probably use it till it starts having problems then buy a new one, most likely made in China.

 

[upupandaway]

Because they can make lots of money doing it. Look what has happened to Sears since Lambert took them over years ago.

While true, don't they ever look back and go "Wow, we destroyed the billion $ company we bought... That was a waste of money!" ?
Probably not, because other companies don't learn from it.

 

[BudTugley]

Unless you were a stock holder I don't think most of us grasp the magnitude of the fall of Briggs & Stratton. Their market value peaked in 2004 at over $2B. Sixteen years later that value bottomed at $3.1M to then be bought for $550M by KPS and is today worth about $50M.

That means from 2004 to today, they've lost in value roughly $39,999 out of every $40,000 of value.

If I've got it wrong, please correct me. I'm not a market analyst, I'm just doing the math to put into perspective the numbers I'm seeing.

 

[mx842]

Unfortunately we live in a throw away society these days from a consumer standpoint. People no long have the attention span and the desire to purchase tools to keep for a lifetime or at least a long period of time. Many consumers have not yet realized when they go electric that battery is going to need to be replaced in 3-5 years and in most cases the cost will be up to 1/2 the price of the electric tool.

When you walk through Home Depot or other home improvement locations it’s pretty hard to even find a selection of gas powered equipment as they have been replaced by electric.

Yeah, they have been pushing this crap on up for a long time. Every time I hear some boob talk about man-made global warming I want to puke. I have a neighbor that cuts his grass with an electric mower, and he can't get halfway through his yard before he has to stop and get recharged. He's had that stewpid thing almost 2 years and he's had to replaced that battery once already.
I had a Wheel Horse 520 H for 25 years and it would still be with me if it hadn't got burned up when my shop burned down last Dec. It pains me when I see one great company after another have to go the box store route just to be able to survive a couple more years. Sadly, it's mostly our own dang fault. Most people go shopping and if they can't get what they want a penny or two cheaper than the place down the road they jump on it. You can hardly buy anything anymore that isn't stamped made in china. Even buying stuff that is made in the USA, over half the parts it's made out of are made somewhere else.

 

[TobyU]

I thought most mowers were made overseas anyway, I saw a zero turn in Wal Mart a few years back and it had a 10 year warranty on it, don't remember the brand I thought it was snapper, but not sure. I am sure it was limited, I have a husqvayna mower and it is way better than my old sears mower, i bought it last year, not praising overseas manufactures but almost everything is made overseas, I had a sears technician work on my old sears mower, it had a bad cable system on the trans, he tried to fix it but couldn't so I got my Husqvayna at a reduced rate, which I bought from sears under my maintenance contract, the thing about it is the tech told me that the transmissions are all made different, different designs same brand, so I guess the chinese have something to do with that so I can understand why the older mowers are appealing, they were all made basically the same and parts were easy to replace, most home owners could fix them without a mower repair bill, like my old chevy before electronics were introduced into them to control emissions. Now i am a diy person if i can fix it I will, if this husqvarna is like my old sears mower forget about fixing it myself, I'll
probably use it till it starts having problems then buy a new one, most likely made in China.

If you're talking about a few years ago like six or eight, there have been little to no Chinese built machines or even engines in walmart..
All that has occurred in the past two seasons or so and mostly there are things like pulsar and power more.

I don't believe there's ever been a lawn mower sold in any store that had a 10-year warranty written on it.
There were some riding lawn mowers that had a 10-year warranty or maybe even a better warranty on the deck alone but that was it and it didn't cover the entire deck like the spindles and pulleys and bearings etc but just the structure of the deck not rusting out.

Most of the equipment you've seen over the past decade or so especially in Walmart has been made by MTD with a small portion of it being made by Briggs & Stratton or one of the companies owned by them black simplicity, Murray, snapper.
Another confusing thing is that Briggs & Stratton has actually had mowers made for them with one of their license names put on them but the motors were made by mtd. Very odd situation...

I believe Walmart also carried some Poulan brand mowers from time to time that what many people refer to as a y p but that company was owned by HOP Husqvarna outdoor power which was then owned by HOA which was then on by the parent company husqvarna, that's a confusing mess too and goes all the way back to around 1978.
HOP/AYP had the contract for Craftsman for many years and made most all of their mowers but then somewhere around 2010, MTD got the contract and that's why you'll see the riding lawn mowers that are basically the same thing as a Troy-Bilt just with different stickers. Prior to that they were the same as a Husqvarna they just weren't painted orange.
But 10-year warranty, I really don't think that occurred. There were some hours that had 10 gauge or 10ga stamped on their decks marketing the thickness of the more durable deck instead of like a 12 gauge but Walmart has never carried that many riders anyways..
Some of the more rural stores do have some zero turns in stock from time to time.

 

[ILENGINE]

prior to 2005 the Walmart territories were split with MTD having east of the Mississippi and north of I-70 Murray having east of the Mississippi and south of I-70 and AYP having everthing west of the Mississippi. With the bankruptcy of Murray and the purchase by Briggs in 2005, MTD stopped using Briggs engines which was the start of the Powermore line of engines. So there were Tecumseh, Honda, Kohler and Powermore engines depending on mower at Walmart. In 2010 with the return of the Murray name the low end push mowers were built by Husqvarna and the high end and riders were bullt by MTD, all had to use Briggs engines. Also the Snapper mowers sold at Walmart were MTD at least in my area.

Prior to the 2005 company split Husqvarna (which became Husqvarna Outdoor Products), AYP(Poulan, Poulan Pro, Weedeater)(which became Husqvarna Consumer Products) both fell under FHP(Frigidaire Home products) and EHP(Electrolux Home Products). Husqvarna/HOP and AYP/HCP were treated as two separate companies and for the most part still are.

Around 2015 or so some of the Murray mowers were built by a Chinese company that didn't even have a working website, just an email to contact for parts and service. And seems like I seen a few of the Snapper mowers under the same company. During the 2005-2010 period Murray mowers were actually under the Brute name but the last few years they were produced and serviced by Pulsar and Amerisun. The Briggs and Stratton/Brute logsplitter were made by the same company that makes the Black Diamond brand for Rural King. And the tillers and edgers were built by Earthquake/Ardisam.

 

[dad7432]

While true, don't they ever look back and go "Wow, we destroyed the billion $ company we bought... That was a waste of money!" ?
Probably not, because other companies don't learn from it.

Nope, Lambert's intention all along was to make money by selling off the assets a piece at a time, making money because the parts are worth more than the whole. Take a look back at the movie Wall Street, where Gordon Gecko bought an airline that was under performing. He bought it because he knew that the parts were worth more than the whole. The parts being the mail and cargo carrying contracts, the planes, equipment and the landing and take off rights at the airports the airline used were worth a LOT more than the stock price he paid for the whole airline. The quick money is in selling off the parts over time.

The problem is that the value of the services and goods that the (here fictional) company provided to the people it served and the employees is never counted in classic economic valuations.

This fictional situation, applies in real life to Sears, where the private equity investor realized he could make more money by selling off Sear's brands (Kenmore, Craftsman, DieHard) and the real estate that the company owned. Once Lambert bought Sears he realized it was hard to run a national retail chain, and that competing with the likes of Amazon was impossible unless he invested a huge amount of more money. So he started selling the parts and realized how much more he could make by doing so. Pretty much the same with Briggs and Stratton's brands, only they waited too long to sell the brands off, and so its gone.

 

[TobyU]

prior to 2005 the Walmart territories were split with MTD having east of the Mississippi and north of I-70 Murray having east of the Mississippi and south of I-70 and AYP having everthing west of the Mississippi. With the bankruptcy of Murray and the purchase by Briggs in 2005, MTD stopped using Briggs engines which was the start of the Powermore line of engines. So there were Tecumseh, Honda, Kohler and Powermore engines depending on mower at Walmart. In 2010 with the return of the Murray name the low end push mowers were built by Husqvarna and the high end and riders were bullt by MTD, all had to use Briggs engines. Also the Snapper mowers sold at Walmart were MTD at least in my area.

Prior to the 2005 company split Husqvarna (which became Husqvarna Outdoor Products), AYP(Poulan, Poulan Pro, Weedeater)(which became Husqvarna Consumer Products) both fell under FHP(Frigidaire Home products) and EHP(Electrolux Home Products). Husqvarna/HOP and AYP/HCP were treated as two separate companies and for the most part still are.

Around 2015 or so some of the Murray mowers were built by a Chinese company that didn't even have a working website, just an email to contact for parts and service. And seems like I seen a few of the Snapper mowers under the same company. During the 2005-2010 period Murray mowers were actually under the Brute name but the last few years they were produced and serviced by Pulsar and Amerisun. The Briggs and Stratton/Brute logsplitter were made by the same company that makes the Black Diamond brand for Rural King. And the tillers and edgers were built by Earthquake/Ardisam.

That seems to coincide with about the things I witnessed over the past few years doing that time frame you mentioned. Of course I only saw Walmart mowers in one region so I didn't see the other side of it. Also, you mentioned 2005 and tecumseh, that's true but they were only around for about another year or so because my 2006 or so they were gone.
I have one of the last Toro models with the Tecumseh engine in my large collection of mowers that has the old what I call shorter rounder deck and even though there are pros and cons to each design, I prefer the newer taller square deck that came out and the Briggs & Stratton engine on it after that but only up until the new briggs took over because I hate that engine.

All the differentiations between Husqvarna and ayp etc are fine if you're trying to be technical about the company structure and I mentioned part of that in my earlier post because you have hop, HOA etc but for the most part, up to now it's all been the same.
They may want to treat Poulan and poulan Pro as a separate entity but for years, and pretty much everything I have seen they share such similarities with the orange Husqvarna that I consider them the same.
I can, however, see how if you're really getting detailed on the analysis you could see how a current or more current poulan black push mower or maybe one of their entry self-propelled mowers is the same mower as the previous red painted Craftsman mowers when they were still basically made by ayp or that technically might have been after ayp was no longer really being called AYP but it was still the same idea under Husqvarna.

They did that weird thing and made their push mowers shorter and that's what these are like with the black ones and the red ones that were older craftsmen's whereas the self-propelled mowers whether they were black Craftsman's or even the older dark green ones, were just like the orange painted husqvarna's just a different color..

It all gets confusing when you're trying to iron out every little detail but the fact remains that as we can tell there's only three or four main players in the game and it's basically been that way for 15 plus years now and it's only going to get worse with Stanley Black and Decker owning all of MTD.