Trail Mart ... re: 6 stud knuckles

[jonesy]

wtf is going on with this? did trail mart steal another design from marlin?

PBB: http://www.pirate4x4.com/forum/showthread.php?t=546432

Trail Mart: http://www.trail-gear.com/steering.html


wtf is up

[yotacowboy]

Six Shooter KnucklesTM are a Marlin Crawler design and are manufactured exclusively by Trail-Gear Inc.

makes sense to me... Trail Gear is using a foreign manufacturer to make the majority of it's parts. I'm pretty sure marlin's design would be prohibitively expensive if manufactured here in the states (where a good bit of marlin's parts are made), so trail gear is likely exclusively licensing the design from marlin, while both marlin and trail gear retain distribution rights. seems like marlin, trail gear and the consumer win.

one very common misconception is that when you buy a marlin part (say, a SAS front crossmember) that it was actually fabricated by someone in marlin's shop. this isn't true. marlin (and possibly all-pro?) and trail gear all have thier manufacturing done off-site (and, for marlin and TG, by the same people).

From what i've read and inferred, the company that marlin uses to manufacture its parts recently decided to move some (or most?) of it's production to china. i don't think marlin liked the idea, but geiger saw it as a way to lower the manufacturing costs (and cost to the consumer) considerably and left marlin to start his company, trail gear. Few (maybe none?) of marlin's parts have functional or design patents, and once people saw that the parts that geiger was selling were for all intents and purposes the same as marlin's, they started crying foul. Repeat: Marlin & TG are getting their parts from the same place... and people started making a big stink over something that is truly good business practice (competition in the marketplace). business is business and i don't think that there is any bad blood anymore, hence Marlin branded products being manufactured and sold by TG.

Moral of the story: if you want to buy american made toyota parts, buy from marlin. if you want to buy chinese made toyota parts, buy from TG. the fact that you now have a choice is what keeps our economy going.

now, this is just my opinion about this and pardon me for the econ lecture, but it seems to make sense. i could be wrong, tho...