How come large commercial landscape companies use belt driven walk behinds?

[Richard Martin]

Originally Posted by MidwestTurfInc

Toro's are made in Minnesota, atleast thats where their primary facilities are and around here they are very popular.

Toro commercial mower production is split between Windom, MN and Beatrice, NE.

http://www.thetorocompany.com/career...locations.html

Being near a plant or even the headquarters has nothing to do with supply of mowers. Supplies are handled through a distributor.

[TriCountyLawn]

Originally Posted by MidwestTurfInc

Now why would a large business spend the money just for operator ease...well in my opinion, mowing lawns is already easy.

What kind of mowers do your guys run ?

[MidwestTurfInc]

And where a company starts and produces a product sets up a solid foundation for distributors to be familiar with. I'm not trying to argue a point but I've been to different states to see mowin operations and Minnesota happened to have a common familiarity with Toro. Basically the household name around here as is with commercial use. In turn exmarks are very popular and there's a prominent showing of walker. I rarely see other brands.

We use all Exmarks 60". We've tried almost all of the different models except diesel. In my opinion I haven't seen a mower cut nicer than an exmark. I do own a couple belt driven 52" toro walkbehinds as well for wet times or soft ground, but if we cant cut it with an exmark or pushmower unfortunately the next guy can have the job. As well we do primarily commercial and large residences. God gifted the town I live in with an ordinance that makes it illegal to build a home on less than 2 acres.
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[ryde307]

Midwest is correct on the exmark and toros here. Lots of them. Besides them there is alot of wrights.

Back to the original topic your price quotes aren't fair to compair when a large company can come in and purchase large amounts of equipment for large savings. Toro and exmark both have very good fleet pricing. It really comes down to dollars and cents. I would guess they are getting the mowers for around $4000 a unit.

[MidwestTurfInc]

exmark had a deal about 2 years ago, when the single gas tank models came out. If you buy 6 you get 1 free, i think they threw on free striping rollers too. But I'm sure that was a sliding scale, the discount can only get larger with more units purchased.