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I don't know if it's 100% truth but....I heard today that Black and Decker / Stanley just bought MTD.

In 2019 B-D purchased 20% of MTD and part of that agreement was they had the option of purchasing the other 80% on July 1 of this year. So I would say it is a true statement.

Hmmm... be interesting to what they do.

Scrubcadet10 said:

Hmmm... be interesting to what they do.

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Wondering if they will keep the Craftsman name and eliminate some of the other brand names produced by MTD or do away with the Craftsman name all together.

I have a feeling they'll keep the crapsman name, just because of how long it's been around and the possible "sentimental" value people associate with the name...

Scrubcadet10 said:

I have a feeling they'll keep the crapsman name,

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You got the name right.

ILENGINE said:

Wondering if they will keep the Craftsman name and eliminate some of the other brand names produced by MTD or do away with the Craftsman name all together.

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Well that will depend if MTD actually own the name or they make the mower for another entity or use the name under license .
Remember what they taught you in high schools about the wonders of the free market economy with lots of suppliers all inovating & competing for ou business driving developement up & prices down .
Are things starting to look like a bad episode of Get Smart where the "evil empire" owns everything ?

bertsmobile1 said:

Well that will depend if MTD actually own the name or they make the mower for another entity or use the name under license .
Remember what they taught you in high schools about the wonders of the free market economy with lots of suppliers all inovating & competing for ou business driving developement up & prices down .
Are things starting to look like a bad episode of Get Smart where the "evil empire" owns everything ?

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B-D/Stanley owns Craftsman tools, and MTD because the exclusive manufacturer of Craftsman lawn equipment in 2019 according to what I have read

ILENGINE said:

Wondering if they will keep the Craftsman name and eliminate some of the other brand names produced by MTD or do away with the Craftsman name all together.

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Well when they bought Delta wood working, they sold that section to China, they took Porter Cable and took it from top of the line pro tools to harry homeowner line.

@Dave in MD I would say that could run Craftsman down hill, but they are already at the bottom.

ILENGINE said:

@Dave in MD I would say that could run Craftsman down hill, but they are already at the bottom.

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Back in the 'old' days,Sears would have known good product makers make their Craftsman equipment. Husqvarna Turf Care made a number of the Craftsman rider mowers,and when Poulan was their own company,they made a lot of the Craftsman chain saws. In the new age of big box stores,this all went out the window and the lowest bidder got the Craftsman order for whatever. Sad,but that led,in part, to Sears downward spiral.

Scrubcadet10 said:

I have a feeling they'll keep the crapsman name, just because of how long it's been around and the possible "sentimental" value people associate with the name...

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Unless my dad got extremely lucky... craftsman was making good tractors as recently as 2003. His has over 1100 hours on it, lots of abuse pulling his trailer through the woods. Not sure of the model but it's a 46" with a 23hp Kohler command v twin. He had to weld the deck where it broke a mount off but he admits to that being his fault. A couple steering parts had to be replaced and belts but the engine and transmission have been fine. This was built before MTD bought them out, so it's AYP.

350Rocket said:

Unless my dad got extremely lucky... craftsman was making good tractors as recently as 2003. His has over 1100 hours on it, lots of abuse pulling his trailer through the woods. Not sure of the model but it's a 46" with a 23hp Kohler command v twin. He had to weld the deck where it broke a mount off but he admits to that being his fault. A couple steering parts had to be replaced and belts but the engine and transmission have been fine. This was built before MTD bought them out, so it's AYP.

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At one time, Craftsman mowers were being made by both MTD and Husqvarna/AYP at the same time.

MParr said:

At one time, Craftsman mowers were being made by both MTD and Husqvarna/AYP at the same time.

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There as also a few Murray and Ariens in the mix. I don't know about some of the other series but some of the 9000 series, the MTD and the AYP looked identical.

ILENGINE said:

There as also a few Murray and Ariens in the mix.

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True

Because all of the big box stores run the fake "find a cheaper one & we will beat it by x% " most of the brand names will continue.
That way Lowes HF, HD, & Wallies can all sell an identical mower at different prices because it is painted a different colour.

And when Stanley bought all 4 of the local hand tool makers they did exactly the same .
Closed the Aust factories and downgraded the tools to handyman quality .
Worst was they dropped all of the speciality lines and reduced the range so no longer could I get spanners with 6 different offsets which is a bugger because there are lots of times when you need a ring with 1" or more drop to get a nut under an obstruction

I noticed at our local HD they have Dwalt Zturns I guess MTD bult

@NorthBama Good chance of it.

I have a couple of the old riders made by Roper in the 70's. Back when Sears was good stuff. Buddy has an OLD sears chainsaw made by divid bradley. As far as i am concerned everthing after the Roper mowers by sears/craftsman mowers were throw away. Folks had one of the first Eager One push mowers. It was a POS.

This has turned into a fairly informative thread......

ILENGINE said:

B-D/Stanley owns Craftsman tools, and MTD because the exclusive manufacturer of Craftsman lawn equipment in 2019 according to what I have read

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BD owns the Craftsman name. To my knowledge, Sears has Husquvarna make their Craftsman mowers while MTD makes them for BD.

is sears even selling mowers now?

upupandaway said:

BD owns the Craftsman name. To my knowledge, Sears has Husquvarna make their Craftsman mowers while MTD makes them for BD.

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Some where in the history of MTD and B-D there is a note that MTD became the exclusive manufacturer of Craftsman mowers in 2019. And the Sears Hometown stores are a separate company from Sears holdings which is the company that went bankrupt.

ILENGINE said:

Some where in the history of MTD and B-D there is a note that MTD became the exclusive manufacturer of Craftsman mowers in 2019. And the Sears Hometown stores are a separate company from Sears holdings which is the company that went bankrupt.

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I know they switched makers of their riders but many if not all Craftsman push mowers were still Husq(917) last time i looked.
Looking at sears.com, looks like they don't sell Craftsman mowers at all now....

upupandaway said:

I know they switched makers of their riders but many if not all Craftsman push mowers were still Husq(917) last time i looked.
Looking at sears.com, looks like they don't sell Craftsman mowers at all now....

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The Craftsman mowers I have worked on for Menards the last couple years have been MTD. Looks like they have discontinued the craftsman mowers at Menards.

Makes no difference who makes them anyway since they been junk since 2000. I bought two new 4200 models and both hydros failed around 200hrs mowing just about 2 acres even keeping fans clean, resting every hour to not over heat them & fluids changed yearly they both still failed. The Briggs #2 push rod fell out on both, one did that twice.
I was smart enough to keep my 1976 Wheel horse around for tilling so I sold the engines & scrapped both Crapsmans bodies. Just used my horse since then.
My old Wheel horse got its first non maintenence repair in 45yrs this spring when I replaced its rear axle seal, cost me $6 and took me 20 minutes.
My Crapsmans were AYP Husqvarna units btw, both 2006. One black supposedly higher end units the other red but both had same junk TuffTorq trans under them.
Get wise and go find a well maintained old school "real garden tractor" like a Wheel Horse, Cub, Deere etc.. with cast iron Kohler (no Onan, obsolete) & iron trans. Not a pos cookie cutter with GT stickers a real garden tractor here I mean. If you want you can restore it to new again for way less than their new junk cost now days. I assure you, youll never regret not pizzing your money away on a cookie cutter that will soon rag out within no time. I bought another like new 260 hr bigger Wheel Horse 414-8 14hp last year and a Simplicity 16hp true Hydro tractor just last week with cast iron Sundstrand hydro for wife. So Ill never see another pos in my truck bed getting hauled to a dump again.
Youll never wear a manual wheel horse trans out even riding it to mow every yard in town its the Champion of all tractor trannies. Not a Bruce Jenner champion tranny like Crapsman uses..lol
Talking weekly tractor pulls with 150+ hp is just nothing for one without failures. True Champions here! Change the pulley on outside and speed them up too my 8spd 14hp hits 10mph with ease just dropping it down 1.5 inch smaller.
Sad how things are built to fail right after checkout these days but "Planned Obsolescence" rules all. Good luck even more china parts soon to come if Decker ownes them now. Okay, sorry I think Im still mad even ten yrs later, still want my money back for their junk...lmao

It is not the fault of the mower companies.
It is the fault of the customers who never got over Fantasy Land they watched as kids on TV
If customers refused to buy cheap junk then the factories would stop making it .
But for 99.999999999999999999999999999999989999999999% of owners bragging about how little they paid & how much a discount they got is far more important than the actual quality and longivity of the mower .
This is why so many quality brands went bust & got taken over by garbage makers .
Technical advances & volume efficiencies stopped reducing the manufacturing cost of ride on mower around 1990 .
When people ask me what to buy I suggest the 2 locally made mowers , Toro or a JD with 2 letters before the numbers otherwise they will be doing the same thing in a few years time .
People are still suffering from the effects of the post WWII brainwashing that "technology" will allow them to have every thing they want for so small a cost it is almost free .
Add to that the effect of poor legislation allowing competition between makers to be compromised by allowing large cashed up companies ( like B & D Stanley ) to become virtual monopolies .
When the USA had leaders who believed in the consumer market , you had strong competition laws, in fact the USA had the first laws to cover this ,"The anti trust act " .
I don't think they have been used in the past 50 years .
Then you have the capital protection systems so the very wealthy can use their wealth & power to send every honest business broke
Walmart, Amazon & Uber being the perfect examples.
But people never ever learn
If you troll through these pages you will see hundreds of people wanting to know where they can get one of those magical mowers made by the elves who work for free using pixie dust that will fall within their budgets
Steel prices are doubling every 5 years , Zinc prices are doubling every 3 years and copper prices are doubling every second year.
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 .

We can now throw Oregon in the mix with their sale to Platinum equity.

Oh just great I can't keep up with all the changes. I take it Oregon quality is going to tank too now.

Oh why do I stay in this business anymore. Oh I know because Medicare will be bankrupt by 2026 and SS will be in 2034 if they don't fund them now and I supposed get on both in 2024. Pay in all my life and then when I finally get to retirement age nothing is there.

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

Scrubcadet10 said:

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

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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.

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 .

bertsmobile1 said:

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 .

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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.

Thanks

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

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.

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

ILENGINE said:

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

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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 .

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?

CLStout said:

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?

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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.

Yeah, I don't know if we're being lied to, or they have changed the way hp and torque is measured. Maybe someone can chime in.

You would think that 12hp extra would make for a mower that would run through anything. The only thing I didn't like about the old Sears riding mower was the recoil starter.

Well when upgraded my Yard Machines 42" from the wimpy 16.5 hp engine to the 21 hp that is currently on it, it did make a world of difference so much so that had upgrade the 1/2" deck belt to a 5/8" belt. Now it walks through 12"+ grass Only have slow down due deck is needing to clear itself. Probably would not need to do that if I change those mulchers out to high lift blades.

Maybe someone can answer this question that's been on my mind lately. Is there any correlation between the hp rating of a particular engine and the size of the mower deck? I had a riding mower several years ago (Ranch King) that was an 18.5hp engine, but the deck was 46". My Ariens is a 20hp with a 42" deck. Is there some way that the factory decides the deck size, and is it dependent on engine hp?

CLStout said:

Maybe someone can answer this question that's been on my mind lately. Is there any correlation between the hp rating of a particular engine and the size of the mower deck? I had a riding mower several years ago (Ranch King) that was an 18.5hp engine, but the deck was 46". My Ariens is a 20hp with a 42" deck. Is there some way that the factory decides the deck size, and is it dependent on engine hp?

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The truth is horsepower sells mowers. And your 18.5 and 20 hp could be the same engine with different ratings. When I was growing up a 42 inch was typically a 10-12 hp and a 48 was 14-16 hp.

CLStout said:

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?

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The engines are rated to 75% of the total load or to put it another way the engines are 25% bigger than they need to be.
However Hp is measured on a dyno and is simply the amount of power an engine can generate under a specific ( low ) load , often almost no load at all .
Dynos can not put a shock load on the engine that is the job of a water brake and the water brake tests shows the inertial characteristics of the engine and these are not directly proportional to Hp but are proportional to torque .
To understand this google Hp vs Torque , lots of good stuff on the web to explain the difference.
This is why push mower engines are now rated by their torque which is a measure of the amount of work an engine can do .
A 6 Hp 2 stroke has near twice the torque as a 6 Hp 4 stroke which is why my 125 cc 5.2 Hp Victa 24" mower can power through stuff that a 160cc 21" Honda simply can not cut
Down side is it uses double the fuel per hour so you have to push fast to get good fuel economy.

Older engines were originally designed with slide rules so were way over engineered which is why they last for so long .
Older engines have much heavier crankshafts and few have counter weights to damp out vibrations so all of the torque the engine generates is available to the mower.
Those anti vibration counter weights gobble up near 30% of an engines power so the get the same power aa anti-vibe engine needs to be around 25% bigger capacity

Mechanical gear boxes and blade engagements consume far less power than hydro drives & electric PTO's
So old mowers with shakey engines and all mechanical drive trains could spin bigger decks with smaller engines.
Clearest example of just how much is the MTD line up
If you look at all their mowers with the same deck size
The one with the variable drive & manual deck will have a much smaller engine
The exact same mower with a hydro or electric PTO will have a bigger engine
And the one with the electric PTO & hydro will have an engine that is bigger still

Electric PTO's pull 2 to 4 amps and that energy has to come from the engine on top of the load from the blades pumping air & cutting grass and the tranny pushing things along .

Then there are things like the reduction of blade tip speed .
Faster spinning blades have smaller flutes thus less air drag and due to the higher speed more inertial energy so are less affected by the resistance the grass presents.
Then there are other things.
MY 8/32 Cox , the 8/30 Rover & Greenfields all have solid cast iron engine pulleys that go from 10 to 16 lbs so again they store a massive amount of energy .

The killer is the fixed timing because fixed timing relies on the stored inertia to accelerate the engine when extra power is required which is why the Kohlers with variable timing that JD used cut so well.
Down side is they are expensive & prone to electrical failures on an engine with a fairly primitive electrical system and small battery

Wow, that was very informative!

FWIW
I play with old ( very old ) motorcycles
SO I have a 750cc V twin rated at 7.5 Hp because being a side valve it is effectively limited to 7:1 compression & 5000 rpm
The exact same engine with overhead valves is rated at 11 Hp because it can rev to 8000 rpm
They both have the same peak torque but the SV gets there at 2750 rpm & the OHV doesn't get there till 5200 rpm
Basically HP is rpm x peak torque or torque x rpm at the end of the torque plateau & both x a fudge factor to keep the numbers small .
There are several dozen formulas for working Hp out as one would expect considering Hp numbers date back to the introduction of steam powered engines .

This is why the EU went to torque rating over Hp rating
a 100 cc engine spinning at 20,000 could have the same Hp rating as 1000cc engine spinning at 2000 rpm but their torques would be drastically different .
And unless tou are powering a clock then it is torque that does the work .

I don't know if it has been said but HP is basically torque times the RPM times a factor. If you have an engine that puts out say 10 HP at 2800 RPM, and you make some changes in cam, carb, exhaust etc., so it now runs at 3400 RPM, the HP will probably go way up because the torque will be about the same due to the piston area and chamber size being the same. When that new engine is running at 2800 RPM it will still only put out about 10 HP, unless the cam and carb are too much in which case it may put out less power. All engines are zero HP when they are turned off. Larger bore, higher RPM, more compression = more HP. Torque is what turns the pulley driving you. It has to do with physics. A flake of paint traveling at 35,000 mph has about as much energy stored in it as a VW bug doing 60 MPH.

Interesting info.