How about a primer on who makes what? Lots of names and colors, very few manufacturers once you go beneath the paint.
MTD...Modern Tool and Die, produces the following brands: Cub Cadet, Troybilt, Bolens, White, Yard-Man, Huskee, Ranch King, Yard Machine. And this doesn't include the "house" brands, made for Wal-Mart, Lowes, Kmart, etc. Same part nubers, with an added 3 digit suffix that indicates what color to paint that part...Cub yellow, Troy red, etc.
EHP....Electrolux Home Products, (yep, the vacuum cleaner folks), turn out the following brands: Husqvarna, Sears-Craftsman, Poulan and Poulan Pro. Same part numbers, same equipment with Husqvarna adding a 3 digit prefix to try and claim individuality...doesn't work boys, we know better.
John Deere....lots of rumors, very few hard facts. All of Deere's premium line of L&G is produced and manufactured by Deere themselves. Good stuff, and my most recommended product. And I toured a Deere plant 12 years ago and watched their consumer brand stuff rolling off the assembly line...THEIR line. Can't say these days, however.
Wheelhorse/Toro....Gone. Toro still sells tractors, but MTD builds em'. Interesting side note here however, in that Toro absolutely refuses to mention this to their customers, even going as far as spending extra $$$ to replace all the MTD part numbers with Toro nubers in the manuals....meaning you need to go to them to get belts, blades, etc. Unfortunately for them though, once you get those belts, blades, etc removed they are stamped with the MTD numbers and brand....again, nice try. By the way, this applies to Toro's with steering wheels.... Toro themselves, build their commercial ZTR's, and they are good stuff.
Simplicity, Snapper, Murray.....all owned by Briggs and Stratton. And while the top of the line Simplicity's are superb machines, equal to Deere I would say, Briggs has begun combining assets in an effort to streamline manufacturing. So the lesser priced consumer stuff is pretty unremarkable at best, and downright shoddy at worst.
Interesting stuff, Spark! Don't know about today, but Deere was yanking some stuff out of China about 2005 for some of their big rigs. A company a couple miles from here was tasked with making the parts.
Quite a bit is outsourced. Pretty much, no company builds all of their own stuff. Might be an assembly plant, but parts come from all over the world.
I needed a new battery for my truck. Researching a bit, I found that the DieHard Platinum, group size 65 would be a good choice because I'm installing a 1000 watt inverter. It's an AGM that can deep cycle pretty extreme and has plenty of CCA. While digging around, the Odyssey came into sights. Same battery. Well, EnerSys has the Odyssey for their brand, but make the DieHard Platinum as well, along with a battery for Interstate. These are all AGM batteries.
I had Sears install the DieHard. It was ~$286.00 installed. The thing is, Sears is about 9 miles away, had it in stock and took care of it quickly. The other two had to be ordered, wait a few days. I had to install, then drive back with the core to get my core fee back. Besides, the other two were more expensive, had to pay for shipping, warranty not as good. Still made in the USA.
Well, now I have to get another charger, should it come to that.
Last winter I had to get a jump start. Guy asked me what type of battery it was. I said OEM stock. He said, we'll use this then.
Almost 11 years for an OEM battery ain't bad tho. I can tell you, that one don't owe me nothing
