Lawn & Landscape 2010 Mower Buyer's Guide

Find the full, unabridged Mower Buyer's Guide here.

Mowing and maintenance services were a bright spot in a dark economy in 2009, and many companies are hanging their hats on the service to pull them out in 2010. According to Lawn & Landscape research, mowing and maintenance saw 6.3 percent growth last year, and is predicted to grow 13.5 percent this year. Lawn & Landscape magazine talked to several contractors to find out how they make their mowing crews more efficient, productive and profitable.

Choose Your Weapon
Mike Rorie, who operated Cincinnati-based Ground Masters for 30 years and grew it to $29 million before selling it to The Brickman Group in 2006. Today, Rorie is a vice president of The Brickman Group.

Rorie, who focused on commercial maintenance at his company, says contractors looking to do more with their mowing crews should focus on finding the best pieces of equipment. And by best, he means the one or two kinds you use the most – not the fastest, biggest or even most expensive mowers you can find.

“There’s a piece that’s going to have the biggest application at your work,” he says. “A lot of guys say ‘give me the fastest, biggest mower and I’ll be the most productive.’ But that’s not the case.”

Contractors are likely servicing the same types of accounts day in and day out, and need to find the “bread and butter piece,” Rorie says, that will fit all those accounts. At Ground Masters, with 30 trucks and crews in five cities, he used 48-inch walk-behinds and 72-inch riders.

Whatever size or style mower you choose, it should be available easily from a good dealer and easy to repair, Rorie says. And go with a well-known manufacturer who provides a good warrantee.

Having the same machines on all your crews allows for efficiencies in all facets of the business – training new employees, buying parts, repairing them and the logistics of fitting them onto trailers. By having fewer variables, it makes this part of your business as repetitive, easy – and boring – as possible.

“The only thing we want to be unique is the experience for the customer,” he says.

Maintain Your Mower
If you have 40 mowers in your fleet or just four, like Tom McAnany, owner of 4 Seasons Landscaping and Lawn Care, they’ll all need basic maintenance to keep them running right through the season.

McAnany, who runs the Clementon, N.J.-based company with partner Greg Porco, runs a zero-turn, 36-inch rider and two push mowers. He learned the importance of maintenance the hard way this season.

“Keep your mowers up on maintenance. We didn’t change the oil, (and it was) down for a week,” he says. “It’s just like your car. It went completely dry on us. We had to replace the mower.”

He was without the machine for three days, which backed up his accounts a week. To avoid this problem next year, he’s setting up a regular maintenance schedule – oil checks, blade changes – on a spreadsheet.

Tim Thornton, president and owner of the Chesapeake Lawn and Home in Tuxedo, Md., agrees. He brought in $820,000 in 2008, and runs 10 mowers – eight ride-ons and two for trim. Basic oil and spark plug changes are left to his 14 employees, but any mechanical problems beyond that get sent right to the dealer.

“It’s cheaper to do it that way,” Thornton says. “We don’t have enough to put in a mechanic full time.”

Go With GPS
The only real way for your mowing crews to get more work done is if they’re actually at the job site.

Three years ago, Eli Hall grew suspicious of one of his crews when their time sheets showed them taking 15 minutes to drive 45 minutes away.

“I knew they were lying, but needed a way to prove it,” says Hall, who owns the $1.3 million-a-year Association Maintenance Services in Phoenix.

So Hall installed a GPS unit in their truck. Turns out the four crewmembers were simply adding an extra half-hour to their time and route sheets. “The GPS paid for itself after one truck,” Hall says. “The first day I saved $50 and the machine costs $30.”

He now uses computer programs to schedule each of his five maintenance crews, and hard-copy route sheets to record the start and stop time for each account. Hall says it took him six months to set up and implement the program so it ran well. And he said contractors don’t have to go whole-hog; they can add GPS units to their trucks slowly.

At the end of every day, he compares every route to make sure he makes at least 50 percent profit. If not, he digs into the data to find out what knocked things off kilter – a flat tire, a down mower or a trip to the dump to drop off clippings.

“It’s very systematic. Everybody knows their budget time,” he says. “We’re really close on watching that stuff.”