[ndanger]

This is an old thread, but I am going to chime in anyway. I worked on Cub Cadets from 1972 to 1975, when I was in high school. We also sold Ariens, Toro and Lawn Boy. Not all products were garden tractors, but it was clear that out of all of the stuff we sold and serviced the IHs were much more solidly built than anything else by a wide margin. I did a couple of major repairs (I seem to recall rebuilding a Sundstrom hydro and replacing the frame on another 'cause the owner had slammed it up over a curb for years and broke the front axle bosses). The IHs were easy to work on (I remember that the Ariens machines were like Chinese puzzles). Over the years, I haven't owned any machines other than lawn mowers, but I have always checked out the machines at dealers and big-box stores. Looked at the frames, the sheet metal, the mechanics (steering, braking, controls, etc.) and I always concluded that, in the garden tractor category, no one did then or has since built a machine that comes even close in quality to the IH Cub Cadets. When I worked on them, we also had an IH pickup (what I used to pick up and deliver equipment) and it, too, was built like a dang tank.

When I recently decided to mitigate my property for wildland fire defense, Colorado State Forest Service kindly came up and helped me mark trees that need to come down. It turned out to be a lot. I decided I needed something to haul the logs to wherever I was going to stack them, and the first thing that came to mind was to find an "old" Cub Cadet.