Please recommend American-made splitter

Creeping? They've been a major player since the 1980's. Only on mid to high-end equipment though. It's only in the last 10 years or so we've seen them showing up on the lower end of the spectrum. Good engines, have their own problems with certain models, parts can get a bit pricey and not on every corner, although that's less of a problem in the Internet age. That was a problem for Honda back before we ordered everything off the internet too.

I still have an old Winpower Generator with a little 5HP FA series on it. Fires up first pull every time.

They sold a lot of it under license branded as John Deere handheld OPE. The trimmers and blowers were entirely decent, underrated even, for their time. Some of the designs were also sold as Maruyama equipment too. Why does it not surprise me the Japanese can build great trimmers? Unfortunately, John Deere was where handheld OPE went to die. There was so much good, built by Homelite, Echo, Kawi, and Efco but was mixed in with so much suck from post-1980-something Homelite, that the name was tarnished forever in the minds of residential customers. Deere constantly changing suppliers from the 1980's until they finally threw in the towel around 2008, made for sub-par (especially for something that wore Deere colors) parts availability and they were never particularly competitive vs Echo, Stihl, Husqvarna, Redmax, etc. This made the equipment unpopular with dealers doing well with competing brands. I know we carried it in small quantities, and a lot of it ended up getting sold at cost to employees or as clearance to customers looking for a deal.

 

It only took Deere 14 years (1994 Homelite buyout to exiting HH-OPE and handing the torch to Stihl & Honda in 2008) to figure out they had no clue how to do small equipment. They were treating it like retailing their merchandise. Order en masse, put it on the shelf, and never see it again. Deere's presence in the handheld OPE industry had a pronounced effect that lasts to this day in emission standards.

Homelite lost their way due to competition from the European manufacturers. Saws like the 024, 034, 044, 064, 084 made the American saws seem heavy, underpowered, and very maintenance intensive/unreliable. Even saws like the Homelite 360 Pro lost to saws like the Stihl 028 not because the 028 made more power (which it certainly did not) but because the Euro saws were so much more reliable, even and especially in the homeowner/farm models. This goes back to your point on using better materials.

I don't think they made a mistake putting Stihl in Deere dealerships. No dealer was forced to carry Stihl, if they wanted to focus on just tractors, they were free to do so. If they chose not to support a product they were selling, that's not Mother Deere's fault. Many of these giant Ag Dealerships are a lifeline to the farmers in their area, so if the farmer is in for corn-head parts, and lawn mower just took a dump, why not buy a new corn-head and roll in a new ZTR?

I come from a background of a fairly high volume (for one store) C&CE only dealer, which is quite rare these days. A 3 series compact tractor was a big purchase there. I later moved on into a heavy equipment dealership but I worked in the Light Equipment shop which was dedicated to smaller machines. Even there, the techs didn't see repairing small tools as worthwhile, not because the tools were crap, but because they weren't able to diagnose and repair them efficiently. They were used to jobs that took a week or more to complete. Banging through 5-6 smaller 1-2hr workorders a day, day-in and day-out, was just nuts from their perspective.