If you want to avoid this, buy honda engines.

I have a small 5 ac homestead and this means a shit ton of small engines. Wish it weren't the case but often the PTO stuff isn't economical for my size operation. The Honda engines ( or Stihl) don't give me trouble . Techumseh etc - all f'ig cause me heartbreak each time I take em out of storage unless I just completely empty them before ..

Learning to do your own small engine maintenance - by which I mostly mean - cleaning carbs - will keep your crap running years longer that it otherwise would. You don't even need to "rebuild" the carb. Usually just pulling it off, spraying carb cleaner everywhere and cleaning out the needle and seat will fix most crap. Also make sure your float is not leaking..
Remember its one of three things - spark, air or fuel. And running for a while and dying is almost always fuel.. there could also be some crap in the gas tank being pulled against the intake filter.