We've been in business for over sixty years and have worked on nearly every brand and sold quite a few brands. We currently sell three brands of skid steers, three brands of mowers and three brands of tractors.
To say that one brand is always more then another, not completely so, that is not across the board. With the differnent brands we often find that the cheapest parts are the ones that they sell the most of! Are there differnent costs of ownership? You bet! It does go deeper then initial costs, repair incident numbers as well as cost, fuel, and productivity.
Doing a bearing sale one day we had the same bearing under three brands, one around 27 one around 14 and one at 8. Difference was as to the 8 dollar one was current production use in a machine that has been out there for ten years. the one at 27 had been out of production for about 15 years.
Thing of it was that at 15 years out of production you still could get it!!!!
We do a lot of matching, the farmers get nervous when they can't get their crops in so quite often our parts people will find that a disc arbor bolt for another make disc we don't sell is about the same length as ours and often do to the volume ours are a better price the the original equipment manufacturer.
The biggest thing with many items is will the parts be there to get other then used in ten or twenty years and at any price! I know of recently trying to get a seal kit for a after-market loader, the company now does nothing with them and they are only into computer soft ware!
With everyone buying someone elses product and putting another name on it the future could get quite confusing in the parts departments at dealers!
Yes, you will have twenty years to see this come around possibly with a current product. We have been seeing it in the industry just with older companies selling out or the trends changing and they go out of business do to lack of competitive products.
