Freeway Roostertails

[Acute Cut]

At the end of a long day i might end up with half to full load of grass. I do alot of residentials with walk this year and am collecting more again. I was going down the freeway and noticed that all the traffic was quite a ways behind me. I was only doing 55 in a 60. Reason: As i was doing a whopping 55 i was letting the wind disperse all my grass clippings in a nice rooster tail behind me. I had one person drive by me and give me a dirty look. I deserved it totally. i know that.

How do yall keep the grass from hitting the fan so to speak? I dont have any tie downs but am looking at installing them soon. Look forward to hearing what yall have to recommend.

[Sammy]

In Michigan you must have your load tarped or get a ticket.

[geogunn]

In my area people do that with their household garbage! the less they get to the dump with, the less they have to unload! DISGUSTING!

as a LEO I have torn through many a bag of household garbage and identified the rightful owner. they then get the opportunity to come and "re-take possession" of their "lost belongings" or they can see me at the courthouse at 9:00am in about 30 days!

GEO

[Grateful11]

In Rowan County if you show up at the dump without your load covered you will be turned away and told to come back with it covered. That way you drive home and lose even more crap. My fatherinlaw done this the other day.

[awm]

around here if you do that,
you are no different than
all the farmers that do it all the time . just part of country life. im talking grass not trash.
better yet wait til corn time , the corn is all over the pavement.

[bob]

Do you have to bag it? Try mulching or double blades. I refuse to bag grass because after you've left a lawn, you still have to contend with the clippings. So your still working on that lawn until your trucks unloaded.

[MikeGA]

We cover our corn up, mostly cotton scattered down the road, put a tarp over it, put it in a truck with a cover over it and you can still track it to the gin.

[Acute Cut]

I do mulch with my 52" Exmark. I bag with my 21" on the smaller residential customers. It doesnt mulch as good as the exmark so i pick it up. no one has any sort of contraption to hold the grass in?

[HOMER]

"You might be a redneck"!

I've seen it done, of course I'VE never done it before.

[gene gls]

Mesh Truck Covers

Manufactured and sold by J.Lamco, Inc.,Tel 302-422-7531...

I have had one for 2 years now and use it often, works great! They are made 14' wide and you buy it by the running foot length.

A friend of mine could have bought two to fit his pick up for the price of his ticket for driving with an uncovered load..

Gene

[KD'sLawns]

I am pretty sure that littering is against the law everywhere. I know that it is only grass, but if a policeman sees this, he will ticket you. Down here where I am at, our household trash goes into 65 gallon containers and they dump it once a week. Well, for two dollars extra a month I rented two extra containers and I load them on my trailer and put all of my clippings into the containers. Works pretty well, but somedays I might dump the containers 4 times ( that's about 520 gallons of grass ). It's a pain in the neck. I am going to try to start mulching more, but most of my customers are from the old school and think that bagging is the best.

[rixtag]

Tarp it or mulch it. Tarping= big pain in the a**. mulching is the way to go even if you have to 2x cut it beats getting home late or smelling the decomposing grass after a couple o days.


Rick

[Remsen1]

What do you guys do with the clippings?

[Acute Cut]

Clipping Disposal:
You can do many things. When i started out i was going to the local dump and disposing of it there. Ever wonder what a FULL truck load of grass costs to dump? How about when it is wet?

now i give it to gardeners or cows. They are mooooooocho happy to have it.

I guess most of the ppl didnt read my whole post. I (and the monkey that rides with me) is aware of the legal applications of this activity and am also aware of how it looks to the public. I was asking HOW do you keep it in. Mulch it is not an answer. I have lawns that must be push mowed. It looks better. My customers dont require it, i choose it. I guess that many of the companies in my area go and do what is fastest and not what looks best. Think about it folks, who looks at it all week? You? no, the customer. so wouldnt it make sense to mow it with a 21" if that is what looked better. I am not talking about on larger properties either. I am talking about the 5-6K or less lawns. Just the small residential and commercial. I know one operator that does his commercial acct (maybe 3K at most) with an exmark. He is my friend so i wont steal it. One week with me though and they would switch for sure.

I know how to mulch, i know how not to bag, i know the legal applications, i know about litter, i know about how it looks, and all the other things. So lets try this again, HOW DO YOU KEEP THE CLIPPINGS IN THE BED OF THE TRUCK FROM FLYING OUT ALL OVER THE PLACE! (Did the caps add the appropriate implication here or shold i add more !!!!?)

Thank you to those who did have solutions stated. I will check out that mesh thing next week. Thanks gene gls

[Sammy]

Tarp it.

[jeffyr]

Acute,

Mesh Tarp as Gene said. If you use a regular tarp th wind will grab it unless it is strapped all around.

jeffyr

[turfguy33]

I mainly have commercial accounts, but have a few residentials and some of them get bagged everytime. I bought this thing called the Dolly-bagger. It looks like a regular dolly but has a folding arm that comes down. you hook a bag on the extending arm and the main frame, extend the arm out and the bags stays open, thus easy unloading of the mower bag. It works great, and when a bag is full, un-do the bag, tie it up, and place another bag on the dolly. Maybe this will help. Costed only $25.00

[Chopper Lover]

It was cheap and easy...

Go to your local Walmart, K-mart, or where ever, and buy a cheap nylon tarp to cover the load. I have one that fits just inside the bed of my pickup and only paid $5 for it. It works well and has lasted 2 years so far.

Mark

[Greenkeepers]

Tarp or mesh tarp....

[Barkleymut]

What type of truck do you have? Is it just a standard pickup type bed? If so just throw down a 5x10 tarp in the back then load grass then put the next tarp which should be a little bigger on top and throw your toolbox, chaisaw, a brick, bag of lime, etc. in the corners to hold it down. Then get to the dumpsite and pull the bottom tarp out and your done in minutes unless it is super heavy in which case you use the pitchfork for unloading 1/2 of it then pull out the bottom tarp. As for me, I will triple and quadruple mow before I bag anything.

[1MajorTom]

Acute Cut: I know exactly what you are talking about. Those 5K yards can be a pain sometimes in the spring.
We hate to bag, and a lot of the times we don't, but I'm sorry, there are just some times that you have to bag those small yards.

We use garbage cans. Very simple. We try to keep our bagging in one route for one day. That way we only have to deal with those small bagging yards once a week. We aren't taking a lot of grass from each yard so it is not too bad to deal with. For the other days of the week, we carry one can with us incase we have to bag somewhere right around the house or patio.
I'm talking about those heavy duty large cans they sell at Lowes. Those cans work well for us when bagging is a must.

Today as an example, it was raining hard in the morning. Couldn't cut, so we went to a customers house that had two large pine trees. They wanted all the pine needles removed from under the trees. We ended up taking one FULL bed of pine needles away. After we were done and driving down the road, Matt says, "Could you imagine if we wrecked and the truck overturned? There would be pine needles all over the road!" How embarassing. We were glad to get rid of that load :)
We didn't have it tarped but nothing was flying out, at least I sure hope not. ;) But now that I read this thread, I'm going to check out that mesh tarp for jobs that require a full bed of debris.