Age Defying ZTR

WB's have their place as do ZTR's, but I have always sacrified time to use a WB on my residential lawns. My clients have became spoiled to the fact that I will lay down a great stripe and leave their lawn spotless.

I talked myself into the fact that this was never going to change. WRONG!!! I have a 40 year old body that feels like it is 70, so I decided to take out the ZTR on my residential and model homes yesterday. I took a trimmer guy with me and set my rear on the Gravely 260Z all day long.

Productivity was about the same (maybe a bit better), but I feel so much better having not walked (or sulky) all of the lawns.

In fact, I am thinking about a change in strategy. How many of you use riders exclusively? I am thinking about a rider and a 21" on each trailer.

 

I use only ZTR's here even on the smallest lawn (only two really small ones). When not in the middle of a severe drought like we have going now, I have a guy working for me, we run two Scag ZTR's. He has good instincts, i.e. when we are close to being done he will pull up on the trailer & grab trimmer, gets that done, backpack blower & cleans off common areas. We are able to reduce a substantial amount of time from the props we service, especially the larger ones, frees us up to get after the higher end profit jobs

-Geoff

 

I too have a Gravely 260Z.

On days my back really hurts I walk behind instead.

I have experieced the least pain by switching periodically, and letting my employees ride while I only occasionally ride, usually I WB or "weed-eat."

 

ZTRs are the way to go my personal crew 60 inch lazer and a 44 inch lazer no wbs or 21s.

My second crew has a 52 inch lazer with a trac vac just like my 60 but this crew is designed for the smaller accounts so it also has a 36 TTHP and a 21 inch snapper its a real tight fit but we stuff it on a 12 foot by 6 foot 4 inch trailer.

My next crew that I will be building will also be pure riders for all the guys that say they do not help I say this my 2 man crews bring in 700-800 a day each I will be keeping the riders.

 

Whats a walk behind???

 

I'm fifty and to the point my knees won't take a full day of walking. We intersperse riding on the large lawns with walking on the very small jobs which keeps the stiffness at bay. We have a lot of gate work so we opted for a 34" Ariens machine. We have a 44" Craftsman tractor for the heavy weed and huge open areas. Great pieces of equipment and perfect for what we do.

 

I run both ZTR and WB, all SCAG. I have two 61" Tigers and two 48" WB and one 36" WB for where it's needed. The correct size machine for the job, provides a better service to the customer. I can not see paying the extra money for something as small as a 48" ZTR. I run a three man crew (myself included) and we average 20 - 25 accounts a day, on a residential and commercial mixed route.

Just my opinion.