Garden Tractors for the Small Country Place

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Confused? Welcome to the small-engine business. Unless you are an experienced small-engine and lawn-equipment mechanic, you will have to rely on professional repair service. Even if you do most of your own work, you'll need a knowledgeable source for major jobs and for parts.

Thus, the single most important rule I can suggest in buying a tractor: GET A BRAND NAME THAT IS COMMON AND THAT IS REPRESENTED BY A SERVICING DEALER IN YOUR AREA especially if you live west of the Mississippi, far from the Wisconsin, Midwest and South Central State manufacturing centers. I can't stress enough the two words service and dealer, meaning a franchised new-equipment dealer with a fully equipped shop, a complete inventory of common parts, and a hot line to the central parts depot, plus a staff of skilled, factory-trained mechanics. I suggest driving around on Saturday and Sunday afternoons to see which tractor brands are most plentiful on local lawns and garden, then check the Yellow Pages and locate the most substantial looking local dealer. Much know-how, gained through hard experience, is not recorded in any text books. I find that the best country-town small-engine shops are father/son operations ...some that have in continuous operation through four generations. None will sell small tractors exclusively; some will also sell chain saws, others outboard motors, still others a line of farm and industrial tractors.

Your best bet is usually to buy a brand name that is listed alphabetically (under Garden & Lawn Equipment, Lawn Mowers or Tractor Dealers) in the local Yellow Pages. This usually means that the manufacturer has joined with local dealers in underwriting the ad, so they have-and will want to retain-the service network that guarantees a continuing presence in the local market.

In particular, go local and go brand name in buying a new machine. If something goes wrong during the warranty period, a local dealer with the brand name displayed proudly alongside his own on the sign outside the shop will come out with his trailer, take the machine in and make it right. "Chasing the warranty" on a no-name mall store tractor or accessory is an exercise in frustration that I wouldn't wish on Beelzebub himself. I've done that too; I had to haul the machine around myself and it took over a year of phone calls and the threat of a lawsuit to obtain even a small measure of satisfaction.

Sears/Western Auto, Montgomery Ward and J.C. Penney sell third-party manufactured lawn and garden equipment coast to coast. Not all their stores have service operations, but they stand behind the subcontractor-made machines they sell and retain local servicemen to perform warranty and repair work. Fair warning, though... not all the freelance shops are reliable and some parts (especially for new or limited-production models) may take any shop some time to locate. In my own experience, an entire summer flowed by while I waited for a small but crucial warrantied engine part to arrive for a new model of mower I'd purchased from one of the big retailing chains. I finally got so tired of tripping over tall grass that I bought another machine and demanded a refund, which I got quickly and without much quibble.

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