Many of the lower cost spreaders are made by Cosmos in Italy and re-badged by other companies. I own a King Kutter / Cosmos that I paid $300 for when I bought my disk. Works good for fertilizers, soybeans, oats, rye, peas, radish No-g0 for smaller sized seeds. (also use the Herd seeders below for most of this work now.)
Mine has a steel hopper and corrosion is a non-event. If they rust....it's lily the spinner plate and other stuff will rust before the hopper rusts. I blow it off with air, then wash and oil it after use with fertilizers. No corrosion when cleaned properly. I like a product called "FLUID FILM" for coating such equipment.
I also own two Herd Seeder / Spreaders. One for the 3 point and one for my wheeler. The one on the 3 point is a good find off CL and works pretty sweet. I am not too sold on the GT model for my wheeler.....and have trouble recommending such a spreader. They are quite high-priced and require a bit of re-engineering to meet my standards....and keep operational. "Almost" a good product....IMO.
We use hand-held "whirly birds" for seeding brasica and clover. These get the small seeds more evenly distributed and provide fewer problems for me.
