Is the cool lawn mower a friend recommended, the best mower for my lawn care business?
When I was at GIE in Louisville, Kentucky, I was reminded that you really don’t want to buy the cool lawn mower. What I mean by that is, walking through GIE, I’m reminded how many different brands there are and how many manufacturers there are selling walk-behinds and riders. There are Skagg and Toro and Exmark and those are just my local brands.
Then when you get out of those brands, there’s Dixie Chopper and Walker and about 10 other brands. You probably have a whole different set of brands in your market than I have. It’s so easy to go to the show or hear somebody that you’re talking with on a lawn site or in some other market talking about how great their rider is or their walker or whatever is. It might be fantastic.
It may be the mower you wish you could have but the dilemma is, if you don’t have a dealer right there with you that you can build a great relationship with to get parts overnight, to have it fixed immediately, then you really don’t want to buy the cool best mower that happens to not be in your local market.
You’ve really got to buy the best of what’s available to you in very close proximity of your shop because when you’re down and you have that much money in a piece of equipment, you’ve got to get it back fast. My word of caution is to be careful of the recommendations of friends. Be careful of what you see at the show. No matter how great it is, still only buy what you can easily source parts for that’s right near your shop.
Buy only the equipment that you have a local distributor that could fix it right away, and it’s not a very far drive from your office.
That makes the most financial sense because labor is where all your money goes, and you want to maximize the efficiency of your labor by keeping them on the very best equipment possible. So, you’ve got to get it back quickly when something goes wrong.
