The government sale in Maryland got me to wondering about Gravely Lawn & Power, and I just noticed that they lost their domain name:
http://www.gravelylawnandpower.com
Have they gone out of business?
Gravely Lawn & Power loses their DNS domain name
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The government sale in Maryland got me to wondering about Gravely Lawn & Power, and I just noticed that they lost their domain name:
http://www.gravelylawnandpower.com
Have they gone out of business?
For those who don't know, they were [or are] in Hagerstown:
http://www.yellowpages.com/hagerstown-md/mip/gravely-lawn-power-2392490
.
http://www.yellowpages.com/hagerstown-md/mip/gravely-lawn-power-2392490
.
Well that very late model 20-G in the government auction was "rolled", and had at least a bent steering wheel & a bent steering wheel rod.
So I figured that "whoever it was" in state gubmint went to their local Gravely dealer and asked for an estimate on repairing the tractor, and [courtesy of Dan Ariens, no doubt] the repair estimate so flabbergasted them that they said, "No mas" and sent the tractor to auction.
Anyway, I was wondering who their local dealer would have been, and I thought to myself that it must have been Gravely Lawn & Power, but then when I googled GL&P, I realized that GL&P had lost their DNS domain name.
And that sort of thing typically happens when someone goes out of business.
Now "Go Daddy" says that they are holding the domain name [it expired on September 5th], so if GL&P is still in business, then they could renew the domain.
But the fact that they have had about five weeks now to renew the domain, but haven't renewed it, strikes me as NOT GOOD.
In other words: We may have lost another one of The Old Guard.
The picture that I posted was something that I grabbed from the Google cache of the old website:
The original picture at the website was much larger than that.
And it was about the biggest "Gravely" storefront sign that I ever saw in my life.
Our local Gravely dealer is 79 going on 80 [years old].
And I met an ex-Gravely dealer, about 1.5 hours away, who told me he got so fed up with the drop in quality, which came with the move from Clemmons to Wisconsin, that he quit Gravely altogether, and now he sells Bad Boy.
I don't want to get anyone in trouble [I know that "channel" stuff can get highly political], but are you saying that Ariens is maybe getting just a little aggressive in trying to force inventory off of their books and onto the channel's books?
PS: If this question is too political, then just ignore it - again, I don't want to get anyone in trouble with The Powers That Be.
If you were a dealer in an area where there is little flat land and all you were able to offer from Gravely were ZTRs, how do you think you would do if you had to buy each year the number of them that you might sell in 10 years? Gravely offers no tractors, only Ariens has them and they are really rebadged Huskys. The Rapid 2-wheelers are higher priced than most people will pay. There are some things in the stream but it might be too little, too late for many dealers. http://www.countax.com is now owned by Ariens.
Why Dan Ariens would shut down all of the old Gravely manufacturing plants, ditch all of the old Gravely intellectual property, and instead purchase tractors from the likes of Husky, Rapid Technic AG, or Countax, is almost beyond my ability to comprehend.
It's like he's ****-bent on pursuing the "glorified-middleman slapping his label on someone else's product" Harvard MBA business model of profiteering.
Whatever happened to Americans actually making stuff?
Getting their hands dirty?
Inventing stuff, like, oh, say, old man Gravely himself?
Sheesh.
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This has been discussed a lot, I think (meaning, my opinion is) that the traditional rider design, at the price they were selliing them at, was no longer competitive with what you could spend on a Green or Orange tractor, and get a bit more standardized with the attachments (I'm talking rear PTO and 3pt here). I'd love to get some insight into what Ariens was thinking in the late 90's, which must've been when they starting planning the 2-wheeler and 4-wheeler's demise. I'll bet we'd all like to hear from an insider, what was going on in those days, but I've heard most of the old guard left Gravely rather than move to WI, and those folks must have passed on by now, or at least not found MTF. Wouldn't it be cool to chat with one of the Gravely engineers from the 70's and 80's?
Yes YES YES!!!
Or any of the accounting guys, who were privy to the $$$s discussions about the cost of the classical Gravely chassis.
I mean, heck, the classical Gravely chassis is such a workhorse that maybe the problem was that the chassis didn't die often enough - that its expected lifetime was way too long to satisfy the Harvard MBA business model of built-in obsolescence.
Many of the Dunbar and Clemmons employees are still around and kicking although they are in their later days. Several were at the Mow-In in 2008 in WV. The last Dunbar workers could be as young as 60. The last Clemmons employees could be as young as in their 40s. One of the Clemmons employees is on the Yahoo Group.
Overall, I'd have to say the unfortunate bottom line seems to have been too expensive to continue production. How many of us would actually have Gravelys if they were all 7 grand? When I sell my extras, it's hard enough to get $1000 for a nice 5665! Although it does seem gov't organizations loved them -- they are everywhere. If we had production numbers for the last few years, I bet it would give us a better idea.
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3,443 Posts
Agreed, I love 'em but no way could I drop that kind of money on a new one if they were still offered. That's been discussed on the various GT forums here, too - look at the capabilities you get in an older GT that you can pick up for a fraction of the price of new (then or now).
Well, for the record, given the enormous price drops I'd say it's seriously unwise for ANYONE to go to home depot or sears and buy a new, modern, throwaway piece of garbage over a Gravely, Bolens, Cub, etc. But that's just me. Unless you're so completely lazy that you can't handle changing oil, points, etc. there's no reason to give up the amazing quality of these machines at next-to-nothing prices.
Also true. There is a huge glut of restorable Gravelys out there because they quite simply NEVER BREAK. Anything that goes on a Gravely is repairable. The distinction between the "parts" and "rebuild" machines is usually whichever one is around when you need parts for the running one, or whichever has the nicer paint!
Inflation adjusted, our 8162-T fits the 7 grand price.
What cost $3275 in 1981 would cost $7630.71 in 2009. At that time I was making about $6 an hour working for the State of Florida. 7 years ago I was making 3 times that amount. So there would have been more money for a new tractor.
Problem is, what are you going to do for parts in another ten years? Gravely is killing off the parts slowly. Throttle cables for 24-Gs are gone as are the Conduit Fittings from Gravely. Same applies to the cylinder jugs for the Ls/Cs. Want a new K181 short block, good luck with that. Want a new rotor shaft for the Comm 40 spindle? Current price is about $225 and only 5 in stock. And you can't buy a whole spindle if you wanted to. You can still build one from parts but not for long. Gravely only has 3 of the Spindle Housings for them in stock. Time to start hoarding parts if you can.
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