That is the kind of CRAP that we will have to put up with, now that a lot of things are being made "Off-shore" Especially in China!
To those who buy for less--expect to be "taken" by the wolves in the manufacturing community--off-shore, especially!
There is a saying: Those who sell for less, know exactly what their product is worth!
And now, the hens are coming home to roost! Since most every maker of goods that used to have factories in the US of A, have now sold out to off-shore companies, and laid off countless of our resident workers, we are having a down-turn in business! I always said:" If you put a lot of folks out of work---just who is going to buy the products we use here in the USA!?"
I used to buy Hershey candy bars for my wife, but since they went across the southern border, to Mexico, and closed their plant in Hershey, Pa, and laid off a whole big bunch of faithful workers, i and friends don't buy their candy any more!
Any way, sorry for the diatribe, but your broken wheel is part of our problem nowadays, with cheap, off-shore junk being sold to us! And, you should consider yerself lucky that Sears is going to replace the wheels!
Rusty J.

Excuse me, but Sears (Husqvarna) contracts the production of those wheels to Carlisle... a US company.

The Sears DGS6500 steel wheels I bought in the "chevron tire kit" were Made in USA as were the OEM wheels on the DGS6500 I bought and returned.

Based on the reputation of Carlisle and "good old US labor and QC" I suspect you just got some Monday morning or Friday afternoon wheels on your tractor. They will make it right.

There are plenty of shortcomings to rant about regarding the new Sears but the wheels on your tractor is not one of them.

Thanks. I do have the Carlise Made in USA tires on mine as well. Guess I'll have to bring out the 13 year old Murray tractor untill the wheel guy gets here!

I think Sears policy when they buy from manufacturers is they get the best price break (so can sell products cheaper than other sources) on a lot when they accept a percentage of less than 100% products. They have their own service techs so they eat the cost of repairing the ones that drop in the field. I worked as a Sears tech and that is just my take on it. One thing is Sears takes care of their customers, no question about that!
I was on one service call about a water softener that was just out of warrantee and had no maintenance agreement. The customer was put out because it had had a number of repair calls on it previously. He didn't want to pay for my call which I maintained he would technically have too. He said get the president of Sears on the line and he wouldn't talk to anyone else. My supervisor gave me the number to the office of the pres. at Sears tower and he got through! He explained things and then put me on the line and the pres. said repair it no cost period to the customer. I did and the customer bought a two year maintenace agreement he was so happy. Shortly after that the pres. sent down a memorandom to all supervisors to give technicians the power in the field to accept responsibility for free repairs in questionable circumstances. Don't know if they still do that or not but Sears was a good company back in the 80's when I worked for them. Two months after I started with Sears the area report on tech achievement levels came in and I was 16th of the Northwest region including Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Utah and my head tech was number 1. What a suprise , when we would go to regional training meetings I was suprised that so many knew who we were aand where we were from. Quite an honor for a tech.
Paul

pipsydog, sears service has gone to crap in the last 5 years or so. you schedule a call, they come 2-3 WEEKS later, they never have the correct part so they have to order it and cannot reschedule the call until YOU have the part in hand. after X years certain parts on covered equipment are no longer covered under the contract, though they won't tell you that until it fails. this has happened to my parents 3x inteh last 24 months! last time was a fridge. Sears said someone would be out the next day. 3 days later they finally said it was supposed to be 3 WEEKS, not next day. when the guy did show up, he looked at it and said i don't even have any guages, have to reschedule. they told him no thanks and went and bought a new fridge from Lowes. good thing they had a spare fridge, i don't know what they would have done for 3.5 weeks without it.

Wow, I am sorry to hear that..but guess I kind of knew things were going downhill in the service dept. In our little town of 8,000 our little sears store at one time had four techs and four service trucks stocked with parts for most every thing. One after another two of the techs got laid off permanently then I got arthritis and retired till they begged me to just come in and work at bench work which I did for about three years and then left for good. the last to go was my superviser the head tech and the only reason he left was that after 25 years they tried to screw him out of some of his retirement money so he quit and walked out in one day. They never replaced any of us but began running service out of Yakima 32 miles away. A few years..middle of the 90's they shut down the Yakima service department and the headquarters for this region was the Tri Cities about 150 miles away and I think that these days that may have shutdown or at least have been reduced service wise. Not good times to work for Sears service I think. When Montgomery Wards shutdown we began hearing serious noises from the Sears Tower of big cutbacks and reorganization coming. So then if they are still buying on contract from certain manufacturers and accepting a number of appliances that need repairs right off the bat with practically no techs to repair them don't think I would rush right out to sears to buy that appliance. I think I heard recently that Whirlpool manufacturers of the Kenmore/whirlpool ine of washers and dryers is closing its doors. They also made refigerators and ranges both electric and gas. They really cut corners on many crucial parts such as ceramnic ignitors on the gas appliances and thermostats on electric ranges and gas. Also air conditioners had a great number of problems. Lately I have gone to Hotpoint for refrigerator with good success. In my day Hotpoint was a troublesome brand but no more from what I see. Always depended on the Kenmore washer and dryer as the best made and easiest to repair don't know which direction to go if they are no longer available from Whirlpool. But that hasn't happened yet. Our set is getting towards ten years old and only has had one service call on the washer in warrantee in all that time. Doubt I can repair them anymore due to my arthritis. So far we still have reliable techs from our Hotpoint dealership locally. (Used to work for that company too for a while years ago.) Don't know what the service world is coming too these days. find a good local repairman and stick with him I guess. You know it will be expensive because the company paying the techs salary has to make ten times his wages in profits for covering ocverhead and personal profit. they've always been greedy and I have worked for a great number of these companys, local small and national (2 of them...guess which two?). Sears and MW's.
Paul

face it - the motto for the USA for the last 10 years has be "Quantity not Quality"

This is exactly why Ford/GM/Chrysler are in the jam their in. No one in those companies ever bothered to think that they should be producing a quality product, and one that at least got good gas mileage... (serves em right). Although I feel for the working man - some how those senior execs should be demoted to the assembly line.

Its about the bottom line boys - the most money for the least acceptable quality... (and its not even acceptable)

Yep and the food industry is floating the same boat. Look at what has been going on in pet foods. It is atrocious what they expect we should feed our animals and at a pretty high price. Euthenized animals including pets, dead farm animals of disease and old age maybe and unknown mounds of roadkill. It is sickening. I won't go into it. All industries are doing the same thing and the citizen foots the bill and gets screwed to boot. Sad days for America.
Paul

Geez guys and gals, there isn't enough bandwidth on the entire internet to discuss all the companies, products, and things that aren't what they were in the good old days.

How 'bout we keep the thread on point?

It is good that Sears is replacing the wheels -

For those that like the good old days - today you can buy a "ride-on mower" from the $500-$600 range to the $12,000-$13,000 range.
Good old days (1960's - early 1970's) you were limited to in range from $600 to about $2,500. Low pricing was in the low price stores that no longer exist, with the exception of Sears which offered service and a decent warranty.
I will let you take the good old days pricing and turn it into today's dollars - and then run your comparison of old the new.

I lived in both era's, I owned products from both era's and will take the new days over the old in most cases, "There are some exceptions" Mowers ain't one of the exceptions.

AYP in Swainsboro GA made the tractor, good ole American non-UAW labor,where all of the carmakers should be. The wheels are probably from another vendor, not Sears or AYP's fault. I've looked at the new Sears tractors and they appear to be a quality product. Fear? Look at the feedback for some of the new front load washing machines.

Westinghouse started selling dependable frontloads back in the late 40's and much later on White combined with Westinghouse and redesigned the whole front load system...bad in my opinion!!!!Trouble from the beginning was my experience and only got worse through the years. You couldn't run fast enough to give me one of them nor their dryers either. Don't care for White-Westinghouse laundry products period. But people keep buying them so I guess some like them. I guess now there are other brands building frontloads too, don't know anything about them.
Paul

Y'know, it gets real old reading all these "pity me" remarks from people who haven't done their homework. The OP isn't who I am talking about- it is some of the posters. Maybe some would do their homework before mouthing about a company that they don't do any business with. Craftsman mowers are NOT made by AYP, but by HOP. It is great that the OP found the defect in the tire before two years had gone by, because that is the only way that HOP will authorize the wheel replacement. I know that there are many on here who will hitch their belts, puff out their chests in that "manly" way, and assert that they can handle any repairs needed to their equipment without a separate agreement purchased from the retailer, but have you ever thought about the "other guy"? I'm talking about the person that is either too inexperienced, too busy, or too weakened by a health condition to do the same. The advice given that negates the repair contract will get these customers to have a repair shop that has no necessarily been authorized by HOP to repair anything that wears on their equipment, negating any manufacturer's warranty. If the mower is found to be beyond repair, it will be up to the owner to buy a new one, since Sears was pushed aside at the time of purchase, HOP was ignored on the terms of the warranty, and the shop that has been repairing will not buy one for them. Unfortunately, these people will be out in the neighborhood of $1000 extra for following your advice.

I once had a Craftsman garden tractor and I bought the service contract with it. What turned me off when I had the shift lever come off in my hand was that even though I knew exactly what part was broken, they would not just order it and bring it out. I had to schedule a repair tech to come out and verify that the part was actually broken, they only then ordered the part and had it shipped to ME, then I had to call them and schedule the actual repair after I received the part. As you can imagine, all this took quite some time. I no longer have a Sears tractor.

jim98520 AYP is owned by Husqvarna in 2006 Husqvarna Bought itself out from under electrolux and they got AYP with the purchase. AYP is alive and well. AYP is the U.S. operation of Husqvarna. Husqvarna is the parent company of AYP formally Roper I have a freind who is a field Rep for AYP at the bottom of his Buisness card it says a Husqvarna corpration. But it is still AYP where all the Outdoor power equipment is Built for Husqvarna in the United states.

"1988
Acquisition of gardening operations in Roper Corp in the US, one of the largest producers of lawn mowers, garden tractors and rotary tillers in the American market, with annual sales of about SEK 2,500m. The company's name is changed to American Yard Products. The US becomes the Husqvarna Group's largest market for garden equipment ."

Here is a link that might be useful: Husqvarna Timeline

Thanks for the info, sergeant, and sorry I haven't been on to deliver the thanks before now. I had noticed that early in my time at Sears, we were trained by Electrolux reps, and later by Husqvarna reps. What you pointed out just verified what I had assumed happened. It seems as if the problem being discussed is getting way off topic. People need to determine if they want the highest quality material and workmanship, or if they want the best balance for the money they are spending. I believe that it was pointed out earlier that Lawn Tractors have not gone through a significant increase in median pricing in many years. This is because the majority of consumers were crying out for an affordable product. Please understand that an affordable product is not the same as a premium product. Expecting todays two thousand dollar tractor to last as long as the two thousand dollar tractor you bought twenty years ago just shows either ignorance or dementia in the mind of the consumer. With material prices, labor prices, and insurance liability prices continually rising, it is impossible to build a tractor as sturdy as the old one at the same price. Maybe if American raw materials weren't sold to anxious overseas manufacturer's because the American manufacturer's were buying cheaper materials to keep pricing down, this wouldn't be such an issue. Bottom line- if you want a product today to be as high quality as you bought twenty years ago, be ready to multiply the price tag by about eight or ten. If you want your product to be affordable, take advantage of the people who have been put in place by the retailers to help you find a good match for your task at hand.

sears does not take care of their customers,my gt5000 kohler engine smoked since new they said put hrs on it,it has 1,200 hrs still blue smoke now they have no record of problem,kohler would not help.i repaird it it was a faulty breather i bought everything in my house at sears now iam finished with them Rick in ncpa

1200 hrs? I think I need to put a faulty breather on my B&S and Tecumseh! LOL!