About 35-40 years ago B&D was a decent brand tool. Then they started color coding their power tools into cheaper built units. Looks like they are leading PC sown that same path. The tools even look kinda B&D'ish.
For less than $160 you can get an 18v combo kit including a Drill/Driver, Circle saw, Recip saw, and Flash light.
Or, a 120 volt 13amp circular saw with laser for $59.99.
I already am well aware of PC having done the moonwalk for a while. Their production routers used to last me a few (as much as 8) years, then the later ones they were dead in (max) 2 years. Bearings. That all happened when the motors became too small to fit in the older bases. Crap. Just another example of idiots at the wheel.
I won't even bundle them with B & D and Ryobi and such.. When you buy today's B & D, you KNOW it's crap...to put a name like PC on it, is downright misleading.
Those $ 200K MBA's are doing a bang-up job, eh? " Look, boss, I saved us another 2 million by going to even cheaper plastic!!"
No wonder that the more serious (professional) tool jockeys are spending extra for Festool. You just can't trust the other guys anymore.
Yep ... Last PC router I bought was PC plunge model circa 2005 ... POS, with more plastic on it than Pamela Anderson. I have to use wrenches for setup because all the plastic knobs/parts broke.
Hardly worth the fire sale price I paid for it ... at a garage sale!
... and another example of what they KNOW an idiot public will accept!
's funny and I knew it would happen, I even called PC back when B&D bought them and had a hell of a time finding someone to talk to about my concerns. He assured me they were separate identities and PC would only improve towards the professionals. I told him I was not convinced. I also let him know how many tools I had and what percentage were PC and the story of my
14.4 drill/driver which has been going strong for 7 years with only battery replacements.
I remember all to well what AMC did to Harley Davidson. Hopefully PC will get the same message and grab it back from B&D shit.
It was bought about three years ago by an investment group named TTI. Until that time, there was no such animal as a Chiawanese Milwaukee tool. TTI owns several brand names of tools, and in some cases acts a jobber/manufacturer for other different companies.
A great deal of Hitachi is owned by B&D, hence the bizarro colorations, decals, and plastic gizmos glued all over their tools these days. I think at this time (not sure, no cite) that most Hitachi and Skil tools come off the same Chinese production lines.
Sorry, it happened long before that. I know it is popular to bitch slap Sears as an easy target, but this all started well before Sears started reducing the quality of their own branded products.
This is the high points of B&D's history, a la B&D.
It gives an overview of their larger acquisitions, and the last paragraph is pretty interesting. I didn't know they owned DeVilbiss. Sadly, they don't list everything they own.
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searching around on this subject, it appears that B&D is actually a company with no centralized form of ownership itself. It is a "hive" that is so large and so diverse that there are many different investment companies such as Barclay's, Vanguard Funds, etc., that own large chunks of this behemoth, including a lot of stock in private hands.
The tools they sell are nothing more than another page on the portfolio, right after microwaves, weedeaters, coffee makers, etc.
I'm wondering if there is room for a new company that truly makes the best tools made in all categories, sadly probably not. Guess this is called progress. Can't imagine what tools will be available in 20 years.
Quite a trick for B&D to own "a great deal" of Hitachi, considering that Hitachi is about 20 times the size. What B&D did do in 2002 was enter into a "cooperative business arrangement" with Hitachi. The current B&D annual report does not even contain the word "Hitachi".
Funny that if the reason is B&D ownership, Dewalt, Porter Cable, and Delta, all of which _are_ owned by Black and Decker, do not have similar "bizarro colorations, decals, and plastic gizmos glued all over their tools".
Regardless of the brand, the Japanese produce a surprising amount of stuff in China. But unlike American manufacturers seeking to have stuff made over there, the Japanese know how to get results out of recalcitrant Chinese.
Incidentally, you are aware are you not that Skil is owned by Bosch, not Black and Decker, and that Bosch is a privately held company based in Germany?
You are aware, are you not, that those "low quality made in China" Craftsman hand tools are all stamped "Made in USA", not on a sticker but in the die?
They own DAPC. That's DeVilbiss only in very small print. Part of the agreement when the compressor part of the company was split from DeVilbiss, the makers of high quality spray coating equipment.
Not likely that 12 company will build the best of everything, there never has been. Festool may be the closest today. Tools today will probably be better than they are today. IMHO tools today are better than they were 20 years ago, they have just change names. GM and Ford used to be considered top notch, Now Honda and Toyota fill the position and both of those are much better than GM and Ford ever thought of being.
This is the nature of publicly traded companies. You'll find that the same is true for IBM and GM and any other big company that is listed on the stock exchanges. If you want a piece of it all you have to do is call your broker and pay the price, currently about 60 bucks a share.
This is also true for Bosch, which is privately held. Most of their income comes from auto parts, not tools.
Cool, Dude! With you around I feel like I have my own editor, fact checker, and wife all in one shot! Thanks for the careful reread.
My comments were made in simple idle conversation with my Saturday morning coffee, but once again I appreciate your efforts to bring my meanderings up to the expected standards of this group.
Our perspectives might be quite different. I had read somewhere that B&D (sorry, no cite, but I am sure you will supply a "yeah" or "nay" as needed!) had bought a stake in the tool arm of Hitachi America which was (in my understanding) formed in order to manufacture and distribute their current line of consumer tools.
It is perspective; for example (don't apply these to Hitachi/B&D when you are looking the numbers up, I pulled them from the air for purposed of illustration) if company X buys into a family member company for 200 million, that may be a lot for the family member company. If the parent company of the family member is worth a trillion dollars, it isn't worth mentioning.
What B&D did do in 2002 was
Wouldn't argue that one. I have no doubt you have read all umpteen thousand pages of the subsequent back up documents, so I believe you.
I wonder... it is possible that they have resisted putting all that stuff on DeWalt, PC, etc. because some still consider them professional tools? Are you saying that if they are all owned by the same company they should all look alike and not target specific markets? My personal opinion (ha!) is that with today's tools, the marketing department identifies the niche, and the tool, the design of the tool including how and where it is made are all done with the niche (dollar specific) in mind. You could be right, though. Other forces could be at work.
No, am not aware, I am not, that Bosch is privately held. Bosch GmBH is held by the Robert Bosch foundation, and
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