Tools of the Trade: A Stand-Up Guy

Mike Halloran is 100-percent Chicago. He was born there, he lives there, he cuts grass there and he even sells equipment there.

Halloran, whose voice sounds uncannily like actor George Wendt doing his famed “Da Bears” skit on “Saturday Night Live,” is owner of Aesthetic Landscape, a highly successful firm that primarily serves apartment complexes and bigger commercial sites around the Windy City and its suburbs.

And, by the way, he also operates a dealership that sells the Ariens line of equipment and other stuff for his fellow contractors. During the past 12 years, he’s built his distribution business to incorporate two – soon to be three – locations.

So, when you’re both a customer and a dealer and you can sell to yourself, what do you buy and why?

His answer is simple: “Da Stand-On because of Da Profitability.”

Well, that’s not exactly what he said, but here’s his story.

More than a decade ago, Halloran already had 15 years in the business as a contractor. He’d been operating primarily with riding decks and really hadn’t thought a lot about alternatives. Then, at a trade event, he was introduced to the Surfer – one of Great Dane’s earliest stand-on units.

“It took me about two minutes to decide that this was the way my business needed to go,” he recalls. “I immediately realized the implications for my operation and decided on the spot to sell my six zero-turns and replace them with stand-ons.”

The nature of Halloran’s client base – apartment clusters with mixed areas of open turf and lots of edges, corners and other obstacles, convinced him it was a perfect fit.

“I looked at those machines and compared them to what I was running and I knew I could put more of them on a trailer, get them into tighter and more confined sites and not have to switch between the big and small units I was using then. We haven’t looked back since.”

The original Surfer also was kinder to operators on hills and slopes. “It was a smaller footprint and we didn’t have nearly as many problems with scalping. The hilltops looked much better and we had fewer complaints.”

Aside from the versatility he found with the Great Dane models, the number-one benefit was simplicity. “The original Surfer and the newer models have very few moving parts. Just look at a parts diagram and compare it to any riding unit. It couldn’t have half as many parts. Fewer moving parts means fewer problems in my book.”

Another advantage was limited blade changes. Given his location in the northern part of the Midwest, turf is nearly always mowed at 3 inches. He didn’t need a unit where constant cutting height changes were easy. In short, why bother with a feature you’re not going to use all the time?

The switchover wasn’t perfect at the time. Major problems included re-educating a few of his operators and changing the mentality of his customers. “Initially, there were two issues. The first was retraining older guys who’d been on sit-downs for 20 years. We had to change their mindsets and get them used to covering an entire space instead of just the big areas.

“The second challenge was that, on some residential work, we couldn’t go at full speed. Quite frankly, going that fast intimidated a few customers. The units went so fast that it scared the bejeebers out of Mrs. Smith and I’d get calls. That was a problem, but a good problem to have in the long run. Fast is good in this business.”

The other challenge was changing the mindset of team leaders who were used to ride-mowing large areas and then finding something to do while the crew finished the smaller spaces and trim mowing.

“Back then, the leader would run the big 60-inch rider. Once he was done, he’d turn into a taxi driver by the end of the day. He’d be running errands for the crew and getting lunch. With the stand-ons, they’re more productive.”

Ultimately, it comes down to finding the right fit for the business, in Halloran’s mind. “Why have a machine on the trailer that won’t work on every job? It’s wasted space, wasted fuel and wasted maintenance. I can’t overemphasize the labor savings we’ve realized.”

Looking back over the years, what was the biggest benefit from the change? “The biggest thing is that we’re logging 1,100 hours per year on the stand-on versus an average for the sit downs of 400 or 450 hours per year. Plus, they can go everywhere. We fire ‘em up in the morning and they go all day.”

Aesthetic has relied on its fleet of Super Surfers for years now, but Halloran does plan to make a change soon. “I’m going with the new version of the fixed-deck model. It’s old school, baby. The simpler, the better.”