(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Got a lawn tractor? Maybe not a big deal, but it's not looking good if you need a new one... [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2023-11-03 I live in the Great Northeast, as the local media sometimes calls it. That means in the winter I can expect snow, sometimes in large amounts. (I grew up in western NY and moved east, trading Lake Effect blizzards for Nor’Easters. What a deal!) Well, a few months ago I decided to be proactive and get my snowblower looked at to get it ready for the upcoming 2023-2024 winter. The verdict I got back was that it would far cheaper to replace it than fix it — and admittedly it had put in years of service, both for me and the person who gave it to me. (Didn’t think they’d need it after moving to Florida.) With the days getting shorter and colder I started casually checking out options. I’ve got 500+ feet of driveway, and more years than are convenient, so I have been contemplating several things: contracting for snow removal, getting a new or used snowblower, or moving up from a walk-behind snowblower to a snow blower attachment for my lawn tractor. (There are now electric options. Hat Tip to spicey for the post with the link to the pdf file.) As I have a Simplicity lawn tractor that’s fairly new, I thought I’d price getting a snowblower attachment for it as part of the decision making process. That’s when I learned of something I had not been expecting. Nobody is building lawn tractors any more — they’re all getting out of the business At least that was the word I got from the guy who sold me my lawn tractor. To make a long story short, there’s been a lot of mergers and buy outs over the years. A lot of brands ended up being owned by fewer and fewer companies. The Troy Bilt lawn tractor in the picture up above? The company — based in Troy, NY for decades — went bankrupt years ago. (I took a factory tour years ago — they were loved locally.) They made fabulous rototillers and other products, but the minimal wikipedia entry mention sums up what has been happening in the industry. The name and a few products live on but the company is gone. So the story I got from the owner of the local business (not a Big Box store) was that they no longer have a line of lawn tractors to sell — no more Simplicity lawn tractors or Zero Turn mowers. They haven’t found a new brand to carry they think is worth it for them and their customers. This just happened in September. Briggs & Stratton has just gotten out of making Simplicity and Snapper lawn equipment following bankruptcy. Briggs & Stratton has cut staff and announced the departure of its power business unit President Brian Hazelton, according to a Sept. 15 report from The Milwaukee Business Journal. The company said the layoffs were due to a "a multi-year market decline for the tractor segment in North America, changing customer preferences and market conditions"." The company statement on the discontinuance: Rural Lifestyle Dealer has received the following statement from Briggs & Stratton regarding the Simplicity and Snapper brands: Due to a multi-year market decline for the tractor segment in North America, we will no longer offer Simplicity and Snapper tractors in North America. As such, we’ve discontinued the production of four Simplicity and Snapper zero-turns. We will continue to support warranty, parts, service and attachments. Briggs & Stratton offers a full range of zero-turn mowers in our Ferris brand at multiple price points for residential and commercial markets. We’ll work with our customers to transition them to a Ferris zero-turn equivalent. Simplicity and Snapper brands will remain active in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia due to their continued popularity. Here’s how the investment firm that bought out the bankrupt Briggs & Stratton is framing it: MILWAUKEE, Wisconsin (September 22, 2020) – Briggs & Stratton, a recognized global leader in providing power to get work done, announced today that KPS Capital Partners, LP (“KPS”), through a newly formed affiliate, has acquired substantially all of the assets of Briggs & Stratton Corporation and certain of its wholly-owned subsidiaries (collectively, “Briggs & Stratton”, the “Company” or the “Acquired Business”). KPS acquired the assets free and clear of substantially all liens, claims, encumbrances and interests through a sale under Section 363 of the United States Bankruptcy Code. The U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Missouri formally approved the transaction on September 15, 2020. With the completion of the sale to KPS, the Acquired Business has successfully exited from its Chapter 11 Bankruptcy proceeding. Briggs & Stratton will now operate as an independent company with the long-term support of KPS, a leading global private equity investor with a demonstrated track record of successfully transforming businesses and creating profitable, growing companies. KPS, with approximately $11.5 billion of assets under management, works to advance the strategic position, competitiveness and profitability of its investments to create world-class, industry-leading companies. Briggs & Stratton launches as a well-capitalized company, unencumbered by over $900 million of its predecessor’s legacy obligations, and access to the financial resources required to execute its ambitious business improvement and growth plans. This is the crazy way the economy has transformed over the years. The idea of a company developing a product line and supporting it is so passé — companies grow not by building superior products but by buying up the competition (while keeping the brand names), encouraged by private equity firms and investment bankers who profit from making the deals. And then there are Vulture Capitalists, who swoop in on companies in trouble, extract the value, and move on. The way regulations and anti-trust enforcement has been shifted for the last few decades has tilted economics towards playing games with money as a business model that’s more lucrative than simply offering goods and services. The dealer who sold me the Simplicity lawn tractor says he can still get me a snowblower attachment, but I had better do it soon because there won't be any new ones and the existing stock will go fast with the first snowfall. I’m glad I got a bagger attachment for the mowing deck when I did this summer — Covid supply chain issues meant it took months for it to come in. (Briggs & Stratton blamed the pandemic for their sales drop off.) I admit to being really tempted by the snowblower attachment — I’m going to need something, even though snow has really dropped off over the past couple of decades where I live. When we do get it, we can get a lot of it at once. You don’t have to convince me about climate change. We’ve had a record wet summer, and the dealer can’t believe they’re still servicing lawn mowers this late in the season. The Bigger Picture Have you run into this kind of problem, running out of real choices, having a brand you liked just disappear? Why this is happening is because we have a lot of invisible monopolies . You may see a lot of different brands out there, but the reality is they’re all owned by just a handful of companies. Robert Reich has a video on what we’re dealing with — take a look starting at about 1 minute in to see how a Supermarket seemingly filled with hundreds of choices is really only about a dozen or so. Your favorite brand will be available only as long as it fits in the mix of profits it generates. x YouTube Video So Now What? As for me, I still have to make a choice, and make it quickly. Facebook Marketplace has lots of used snowblowers for sale, for just a few hundred dollars in some cases. The issue there is (as always) what shape are they in, and what about service? As for electric options, the choices look pretty good for standard lawn care tools like mowers and string trimmers — but I have a lot of lawn (maybe ½ — 1 acre?). I also use my gas-powered lawn tractor with a cart to do things like move firewood, etc. and it’s still fairly new. Getting a snowblower attachment would leverage what it can already do. Plus although there are now electric snowblowers (see here, here, here for a few examples), I’d likely need multiple battery packs for my 500 foot driveway to be able to clear it in one session — more if I got a lot of wet heavy snow. (Here’s a round up from Popular Mechanics.) The first really big snowfall is still likely some weeks away. When I first moved to my present location 26 years ago, I could count on a regular number of snowstorms at reasonable intervals. By the end of the winter, I could expect to have a snow wall alongside the driveway just from where the snowblower would toss the snow over the course of a number of snowfalls. That’s not happening in the last few years. Snow, especially the bigger storms, seems to come later in the season, getting into January — March. There are fewer big storms, but when they do arrive they can be really big. Also, with warmer temperatures, the snow can be really wet, heavy, and difficult to move. I recall one recent storm that left what was essentially two inches of hard packed sleet that was almost impossible to shift. This is making things crazy for people who put plows on their trucks to make some extra cash over the winter. Regular light snowfalls make it easy to handle a lot of customers at reasonable rates. Sporadic but big storms can leave them scrambling to keep up, and going broke the rest of the time. It’s almost as bad a gamble as farming has become in the age of climate change. It’s also crazy for customers — how much snow do they have to get to make it worth the cost? Does it make more sense to sign a contract for the whole winter and pay for service that may not be needed, or gamble that someone can come on demand at a higher price? Granted, there’s a bit of “first-world problem” to this dilemma, but it’s still a problem I and my family have to live with. Feel free to share your thoughts, suggestions, and experiences in comments. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/11/3/2203296/-Got-a-lawn-tractor-Maybe-not-a-big-deal-but-it-s-not-looking-good-if-you-need-a-new-one?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/