Effective Mowing: Putting The Pieces Together

The process of scheduling mowing maintenance and executing the work in the field is often taken for granted, especially by less experienced contractors. It takes a lot more to be truly professional and profitable than sending crews off with machinery and a list of properties and wishing them luck.

Successful contractors have the process well laid out —the machines have been selected to match the properties assigned to the crews, and the crews understand what is expected of them in terms of quality and productivity.

SET THE BAR. Phil Christian, president of pdc Associates, Atlanta, Ga., said one of the most important exercises in the process of matching manpower and machinery to job sites is setting a benchmark for productivity against which performance is measured.

“Contractors have to establish a point of departure,” stressed Christian. “Think of the benchmark as a horizontal line across the wall, with good performance above the line and poor performance is below the line.” As you go, he continued, make adjustments to the benchmark if crews are always performing above or below the line. “If the line is in the wrong place, it’s not really important — make adjustments and learn. But if the line is not drawn, you don’t know anything.”

The first step in the process is setting a standard of mowing that can be applied to the majority of properties under contract.

“One of the things that prevents us from setting benchmarks is that everybody is doing their work a different way,” said Christian. “There are probably several different ways a crew can mow the same property in about the same amount of time, but with every crew doing it differently — and some crews doing it differently every time they are at a property — there is no way to set up a point of departure to say how quickly it should be done.”

To figure out what the initial standard mowing methods should be, Christian suggested selecting a test plot that is representative of the properties the contractor services. “Measure it carefully, and let several crews mow it so you can develop the best methods. Even if you end up picking the second best method, you’ll soon know.”

In terms of other efficiency, productivity and value-adding mowing program ideas, contractors provided some interesting thoughts.

GROUPING SITES. Robert Winter, president of Oak Brook Maintenance, Naperville, Ill., said there’s been a decreasing of turf areas in the landscape that has changed the type of mowing equipment he keeps in his arsenal.

“This has gotten us away from some of the larger equipment,” he continued. “For example, we used to keep large gang mowers on site for some of our larger clients, but we don’t do too much of that anymore.”

Their area of Chicago is also highly dense, so proper routing is also a big factor in efficiency. It is important to keep mowing jobs with nearly the same turf acreage together, keeping in mind that the travel time can have a significant impact on the timing of the entire route.

“When you compare a 52-inch walk-behind to a 36-inch walk-behind machine in terms of timing and efficiency, it will only cost about 10 minutes on the job to go with the smaller piece of equipment.” Therefore, small site crews might be assigned a larger job on their route if the travel time for a large site crew would be prohibitive.

The walk-behind mowers are the units of choice for Winter. “We’re finding we use less and less riding units,” Winter said. “We use the larger walk-behinds — I just haven’t seen the benefit of using the smaller zero-turn riding units. The walk-behinds are smaller machines and have greater maneuverability.”

To keep mowing crews productive, Oak Brook keeps maintenance crews separated between high productivity mowing and horticulturally oriented groups. It’s possible, however, for interested crew members to move from mowing into horticultural services such as bed maintenance, ornamental care and pruning if they wish.

EFFICIENT SCHEDULING. Brian Miller, manager of the maintenance division of Stano Landscaping, Milwaukee, Wis., said the company gains efficiency by separating mowing crews and detail crews. The most prolific mower operators want to do nothing but the mowing. “When we have someone who loves to cut the grass, we want to keep him moving,” said Miller. “They are much more efficient when they can keep running the mower and don’t have to keep switching between mowing and detail work.”

Stano uses two types of mowing crews — one type carries riders and larger walk-behinds and the other carries walk-behinds and small rotary push mowers. Typical crews carry a 19-inch or 21-inch push mower, a pair of 36-inch walk behinds and either a 60-inch riding unit or large walk-behind with sulky or a 72-inch rider on larger sites.

Miller explained that the jobs are divided up by geographic region and by the type of property being mowed. The customer category determines what day of the week their property will be mowed.

Commercial accounts are mowed at the beginning of the week, usually on Monday and Tuesday. “That’s when the commercial accounts want their properties looking their best,” noted Miller. The only exception is shopping centers, which are mowed at the end of the week to prepare for weekend consumer traffic. Single family properties are scheduled on Thursday and Friday to ensure that the properties are in shape for the weekend when people are home.

Wednesday and Thursday are mostly reserved for the more complex, obstacle-laden multifamily and condominium properties. “We won’t schedule these on a Friday because we want to give ourselves some flexibility in case we experience a rain day,” explained Miller. “The last thing we want to be doing is mowing condos on a Saturday.”

FOCUS ON THE CUT. “When we lay out machines for the jobs, our philosophy is to put as many riding mowers out there as we can,” said Jeff Reager, manager of the maintenance department with Dennis’ Seven Dees Landscaping, Portland, Ore.

This works as long as the landscape is relatively flat and moisture is not excessive, but in the Pacific Northwest moisture is at a premium, especially through the winter and spring months. Wet, sloping turf requires walk-behinds to be used more often.

Smaller accounts are separated out so that efficient, two-man crews carrying walk-behind mowers can work more quickly and productively.

Reager also has mowing crews separated from crews doing landscape detail work. The mowing crews are responsible for only the cutting, edging, string trimming and blowing and are not expected to make a great deal of client contact.

“Our bed crews are responsible for making contact with the building manager or owner,” said Reager. “We want to get our mowing crews in and out of properties as efficiently as possible, and the crews tend to want to get as much done as possible without having to stop.”

The author is Managing Editor of Lawn & Landscape magazine.