Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Small engine manufacturer Briggs & Stratton Corp., founded in Milwaukee in 1908 by an inventor and an investor, on Monday filed for bankruptcy protection.
Briggs filed for Chapter 11 in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Missouri. Under Chapter 11, a company and its creditors work out a reorganization plan that enables the business to continue to operate. More
Strange, just the month before the Journal Sentinel reported Briggs & Stratton paid their executives a “cash retention awards” rather than make the debt payment due their creditors. Here
Chinese buyer in 3… 2… 1…
They must have Mittens Romney on the board of directors offering his guidance.
1980 Briggs & Stratton Hybrid – Jay Leno’s Garage
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftMxCehD08U&feature=share
Strange? Nope. Crooked as hell, but all too common. The reason is that once a company has filed for bankruptcy any bonus money handed out has to be approved by the judge handling the case. It is very common for companies to pass out the big bucks to themselves immediately before filing because they don’t have to ask pretty please for permission.
I said “crooked” didn’t I? Yes, I did. But I’ll say it again: CROOKED.
Byline-Mini Cooper and Smart Car owners scream at the sky in panic as they realize that they may have difficulty obtaining repair parts for their engines.
Not surprised – had a Troy-Bilt mower with a B & S engine on it; it argues in favor of lemon laws for garden equipment – what a POS.
@JDHasty- Leno is a lib. Wash your hands when you’re thru, please. I used to like him,too.
Meh. All my yard stuff is Honda.
I have two 20+ year old Briggs powered lawn mowers. They both start first pull first mow every spring. I have a Honda powered generator and pressure washer. Hardest starting SOBs I’ve ever head. Something to be said for a low compression flat head.
@ Uncle Al: I’ll give a different perspective. If the company is going to go into Ch. 11 and they don’t pay the execs, the the execs leave. Consequently the company will now go chapter 7 and the creditors will get nothing. If the company needs the execs to reorganize, the creditors will actually come out better if the execs stay and nurse the company through the tough times.
There are a couple of caveats. First, it’s true that crooked execs can raid the bank account of the company, but there are ways to try and get that back. Second, there are times that the execs who caused the company to go into Ch 11 are the same ones the company wants to retain. If they cused the problem, they should be dumped with no bonus.
Sounds like they were counting on a bailout.
Agreeing with Cynic here. In certain circumstances, a bk judge could clawback some or all of those distributions.
Doesn’t mean they will. Some companies abuse or, ahem, take full advantage of troubled environments such as we find ourselves to unload, renegotiate or ameliorate debt or employee obligations they would be bound to honor.
US law is different in that the courts try to help the cash cow to survive. Creditors can get the shaft in relation to the priority of their security interest status
Briggs rested on its laurels for too long. Their Vanguard engine can run with anyone’s but the consumer grade stuff has been parted out to China and Mexico. Maybe the engines are “assembled” here but it’s no longer anything I’d buy. My last consumer Briggs was on a K-Mart high wheel push mower that lasted ~24 years for me and I sold it with the house in 2016. Don’t expect that kind of service any longer.
My $800 BS powered lawn mower was Shit from day one. The only thing keeping it running is a cap full of seafoam in every single tank for 20 years. Tune ups, plugs, trip to the dealers were all a waste of time.
My Honda snow blower is 30 years old and has never been to the doctor once.
Good riddance B.S., Don’t let the door fuck you in the ass on the way out.
Sounds like a typical pre-bankruptcy looting by the company execs. I saw the same thing happen at the first company I worked in out of college, Syntex Pharmaceutical. The CEO actually went to jail over that, because stockholders tend to get a little raw over such behavior.
I bought a Husqvarna pressure washer at Costco. Yep, B&S engine. Same with my Toro TimeWaster—I mean, TimeMaster—mower. Every small engine is B&S, it seems.
My kids gokart has a predator engine in it. Look them up. Literally HALF if not even less than the price than a BS or a Honda.
It’s 99 bucks. That’s why BS is going tits up. Of course it’s from China. Runs like a watch so far. The understanding is that you simply replace the entire unit instead of repairing it.
I have it as a test unit while I work out the kinks in the steering and frame. Once that’s straightened out, I’ll get a 300$ Honda engine that goes faster.
P.S. if you’re having trouble with your small engine, you may want to replace the carburetor solenoid.
Many small engines that “don’t run” have this issue.
Briggs and Stratton went South in the 70’s..My Dad used to be a Fan…Then He
turned against Them…I’ve got 4 Generators…One Mitsubishi, Two Ryobi (5000
&2200) And My Baby…10K Watt Porter Cable with a Honda 20 HP…and I’m a
buy American Rah Rah MF’er!….The Little Ryobi I picked up for $100
It powered a Refrigerator , Coffee Pot, and Fan for two Weeks after Hurricane
Irma… I call it the Little Green Bastard…It stays in the Van full time.
(got rained out of Work Today at 1 PM…Been drinkin since then…and ramblin)
Aaron, I built a Paddleboard out of Wood…Named it Natalie in case it doesn’t
float…If it does..I might buy on of those cheap Chinese Outboards and make it
fly…it’s 12’6 and 40″ wide in the middle…it looks cool…but will Prolly sink
Any moisture getting into a small engine will rust the flywheel, then no sparky or hard starting. The fix- sand flywheel. With the gas they have nowadays carburetors can have problems, cornfield fuel makes lots of trouble. Sometimes it’s easier just to buy a new carburetor on eBay than fix the old one.
Bobcat, any damn thing will fly if you have enough horsepower.
Or, as Mr. Ford was fond of saying, “there isn’t a problem in the world that cant be fixed with more cubic inches.”
one last thing….. order some briggs and stratton stickers.
Slap them on your friends harleys.
Ish goes from zero to Boondock Saints in .0004 seconds. Funny as hell.
B&S made good products for years.
The last one I had was on a zero turn.
Damn thing blew a hole out the side of it, so I ordered a brandy new one.
That one lasted about four hours until the coil gave out.
When the mechanic I hired tried to take he flywheel of, the crankshaft broke off.
I ordered another bandy new engine after being assured that the warranty would be honored.
It ran six hours until the valve train piled up.
That was three years ago, and no warranty.
The last I heard from the dealer was that he was no longer able to do warranty work due to the company downsizing the warranty network to one representative per state.
So now I have one six year old worthless engine, and two brandy new worthless engines and no reason to wonder why B&S is going under.
My Power Tim edger had a two horse B&S and now has a commercial B&S three horse. It is forty years old and ran like a top until it through a rod three weeks ago. We took the three horse off a reel mower and it is thirty years old, but going strong. Damn good little edger, the whole neighborhood uses it.
I bought a Honda 194 in the mid 80’s and it runs like a champ. Cost me a small fortune. I was going to buy a second Bobcat and they talked me into the Honda.
The last B&S mower I had was a push Snapper. Gave it to my brother and he left it out all year round. I think he got about five years out of even with that abuse. It was new about 1985. I gave it to him in 2004.
Both of these tools start within six or eight inches of pull.
I used California Trimmers for quite a while. The last one I had was Honda powered and it was a Jim Dandy.
This is a Bobcat. They were the bomb in their time. https://www.pinterest.com/pin/513410426251043279/
You could cut in a rainstorm and bag every blade of grass.
That ol’ Bobcat looks tuff.
B&S also has a shitton of bad debt owed to it by their dealers and large OEM purchasers. But I was told five years ago by employees in A/R that some upper management asshole (CFO?) decided to keep all debt collection efforts in-house and save the contingency fees instead of farming out their bad debt to an agency.
The result is that their A/R Dept basically stepped over stacks of hundred dollar bills to pick up pennies. 80% of their bad debt was from 20% of their customers, usually small customers. So instead of taking good care of the 80% of their customers who paid on as timely basis and farming out the deadbeat anklebiter remainder to an agency, they neglected their good paying customers, alienating them.