I'm sure it was pretty worthless but the ratings for the former were pretty good, and pretty bad for the (smaller) Craftsmen, Several of the complaints were that the suction barely pulled stuff up... not a good thing for a vacuum cleaner! (But why was this one on sale though? will one of the wheels constantly fall out? There's always a reason, if it's just a new model being brought in maybe trading out nameplates?)

Hard to say. I would doubt there's a Craftsmen factory for a lot of things, just the same factory for a lot of other nameplates doing a run for Craftsmen but could be wrong. Bought a Craftsmen router at Ace Hardware - which was great, very solid tool so very happy with that.

But yeah, the Shop-vac for biggest HP and volume.