Since March, because of COVID-19, many people in the U.S. are spending more time at home, leading to a larger focus on the back patio, outdoor kitchen and fire pit areas. Homeowners want this area lit up, says Rick Baird, national sales manager at Vista Professional Outdoor Lighting.

“You put light out there, it just kind of pulls you outside. It's kind of an extension of the indoor family room or kitchen outside now with lighting,” he says.

When lighting this space, Baird says a professional contractor will strategically place lights to create an environment that’s inviting, safe and comfortable: lighting on the grill, lighting over where the cutting board will go and soft lighting around areas of conversation. It’s about using fewer fixtures to create more effective lighting with a larger output. When done properly, the difference is “night and day,” he says.

“This expands the living space and possibilities during social distancing,” says Scott Pesta, senior product manager of landscape lighting at Kichler Lighting.

In designing outdoor spaces, creativity is often needed to solve niche lighting issues, says Sarah Auyeung, associate product manager for Hunter Industries’ lighting brand, FX luminaire. For example, instead of a pathway being lit by path lights, perhaps a homeowner would want something that isn't a potential tripping hazard. There could be a wall nearby where a light could be positioned, put a shroud over it to control the glare and throw the light across the path.

This can change how the fixtures are designed in the future. Auyeung sometimes sees what homeowners and contractors do with the fixtures and will change them accordingly to be more versatile. Also, there are more products that are multipurpose.

“There is much greater diversity in landscape lighting products, especially individual fixtures that can complete a broad range of tasks formerly accomplished by less efficient models,” says Todd Goers, national sales manager for landscape lighting at WAC Landscape Lighting.

“You put light out there, it just kind of pulls you outside.” Rick Baird, national sales manager, Vista Professional Outdoor Lighting

Contemporary style.

Recently, the look of the landscape lighting fixtures have trended differently. Now, many take on a contemporary look, often to match contemporary architecture. They don't distract from the house, having thin, clean lines and clear colors, like brushed nickel, aluminum, black and sometimes white, says Jon Bowman, national sales director at Coastal Source. Instead of a standard path light with a rounded top, a contractor might purchase an L-shaped one to match the clean lines of the house. Another type is a bollard-style fixture. It is a square, simple and clean design that comes up from the ground.

Homeowners are looking for a “New, fresh look,” Bowman says.

Homeowners also want small fixtures because they don't want to see them, he says. They have a “small footprint, but fairly significant output.” This is possible because of light emitting diode (LED) technology, as opposed to the old incandescent light bulbs, Baird says.

Baird says today, almost all sales of lights are LED. They have come a long way in the past decade. When LED first came out, there was hesitation to buy it based on ignorance and skepticism. Many people were first introduced to LED as a bright, stark bluish light. It didn’t fit in most lighting situations, especially indoors. Now, it can produce light that’s softer, warmer and can match any color temperature.

LED brings efficiency with it. A product that uses one and a half watts of electricity to give the same amount of light that a 20-watt light bulb did eight years ago, Baird says. A good quality LED can get 50,000 hours in the landscape, Bowman says.

“There's probably not a citizen, homeowner, consumer ... that doesn't know about LED today,” Baird says.

Custom benefits.

As LED technology advances, automation and control also continue to advance. This automation allows light to be controlled through schedules and systems or manually through an app or desktop. It also allows the lighting to be connected to other systems, like home, voice-command and audio systems, so it all can all be controlled at the “touch of their finger,” Baird says.

“(Connected products have) really taken off,” Baird says. “Now… we can tell each individual light bulb what to do, to come on, to shut off and to dim, or to be green or red or blue.”

On some systems, homeowners can have lighting scheduled, so the lighting will automatically turn on when it gets dark outside, then turn off at dawn. They can choose their own schedule, too, says Eden Allen, product manager, Lighting for Unique Lighting Systems. This can be set differently for separate areas of the yard.

“So, if you want to, for instance, always have your front yard turned on from that time period, you can set it so that it turns on and off at ‘dusk till dawn’ in your front yard, but you only want to have your backyard turned on when you have people over,” Allen says. “So, just having that control is something that is a really big demand from the market.”

These integrations give more value to these products, which help customers.

“Customers are requesting that contractors focus on the budget and getting the most value for their project dollars,” Pesta says. “This may be drop-in fixtures with LED lamps for some, while other customers want the advantages of an integrated LED product.”

Color-changing capabilities.

Another capability of this new technology is the ability to control the color of the light. The range is wide: it can produce millions of colors, Baird says. It can be changed to be season specific: red, white and blue for the Fourth of July and red and green for Christmas. These can also be changed in temperature and brightness to illuminate and highlight certain aspects of properties.

“You can change the color on those also to enhance your outdoor space. And that's really meant for enhancing like a green in a tree that will look better with a cooler white temperature versus if you have like a stucco finish on a house that looks better with a warmer white, so you can play around with that as well,” Allen says.

Landscape lights can be set to a soft pastel pink to highlight pink flowers when they bloom. Once they’re gone, that can be changed to a soft blue or green to highlight a palm tree in the yard, Auyeung says.

“It's accentuating and bringing out those colors. It's not masking the colors,” she says.

Allen says people also like to be able to play around with the color changing options. However, the trend is regional. It is mainly in southern coastal markets, where the landscape can be enjoyed year-round.

“That's something that's bigger than I ever imagined It would be. I knew that it was something that was kind of coming up in the industry, but the response to it has been really overwhelming,” she says.

While Allen has continued to see this trend grow, Bowman says he’s seen it decline a bit.

“The rage a couple of years ago was color,” he says. “It's still a need out there, but I don't know if it's necessarily what it was two or three years ago.”

In 2007, “everything was collapsing,” says Rudy Larsen, CEO of Lawn Butler in Centerville, Utah, of the economy. But while talking to potential customers, they beefed about getting landscape guys to call them back or deliver bids. They told him, “We can’t get anyone to do what they said they were going to do.”

Larsen thought, “I can do that.”

“There were enough landscape companies out there that were not concerned about taking care of their customers,” he says, jumping ahead to today and his $18-million firm, which has grown an average of 57% every year during the last decade.

Larsen started his business that year with his wife, Jena. Then, Larsen was fresh out of high school and determined to grow his mowing side gig into a legitimate, profitable business.

Larsen maxed out credit cards, purposely broke a bank covenant, barely made payroll and questioned whether he should be in this business. He hired the wrong people, completed jobs that weren’t profitable and stayed up worrying if he would make payroll. In other words, his experience is “like any true entrepreneurial story” in many ways, he says.

But he focused. And, he refocused, recognizing that “the single push on the flywheel” that his favorite author Jim Collins writes about in Good to Great, was adopting a guiding principle – this idea of a family culture. Certainly, labor keeps most owners in the landscape industry up at night. But for Larsen, his concern is about “making sure people are happy.”

“I don’t want people to feel left out or like they are not important,” he says. “If I lose my people, I lose my business.”

Here is how he grew Lawn Butler to be attractive enough to sell and continue to grow.

“We weren’t making any money. We didn’t know our pricing structure, we didn’t know how to bid. But I had a desire to take care of customers, so we were growing.” Rudy Larsen, CEO of Lawn Butler

The first five years.

“We weren’t making any money,” Larsen says. “We didn’t know our pricing structure, we didn’t know how to bid. But I had a desire to take care of customers, so we were growing.”

Larsen can count a good 15 times when Lawn Butler should have gone out of business.

He kept driving.

He kept thinking, too.

“I said to myself, ‘I’m going to make the decision right now to never consider quitting, ever again,'” he says. “That was a moment of ‘passing through,’ and once I passed through, I never went through that again. I was determined to make my business work and to stop worrying about whether I should or shouldn’t.”

This was 2010, and the business was only three years old. The moment changed Larsen’s mindset. With a full-boar attitude, Lawn Butler grew from $30,000 in 2007 to $2.5 million in 2012.

Getting there was a grind. The company began to dig into its bidding process and finetune pricing. In 2009, Larsen’s wife who was working as a dental hygienist and doing the books off-hours – came into the business full-time to focus on production processes. She also began focusing on team-building.

Jena says, “Rudy is good at the big picture and the vision, and I’m good at the details of how to make his vision happen."

Organizing field labor and keeping an eye on expenses positioned Lawn Butler to support its growing customer base. The team had grown to about 20 with five trucks in the fleet by 2011 when Dario Benitez joined the company. He had been working as a junior accountant and ran into his high school friend – Larsen – only to learn his buddy was still in the landscaping business. “I told him I was contemplating a career change and he told me about his business and the opportunity,” Benitez says.

At Lawn Butler, there is a formal Culture of Family philosophy, and though it wasn’t written down in a core values format at that time, Larsen had been operating that way since the beginning. It was just in a more casual way. “Rudy painted this picture and shared the goals he had for the business, and knowing him, I trusted that. Whenever he says he will do something, he accomplishes it. So, that is why I made the leap,” Benitez recalls.

Benitez came on board as operations manager and soon evolved into an account manager role, focused on sales as Lawn Butler aimed to increase its commercial maintenance business.

Today, Benitez manages a team of 12 account managers and two estimators as vice president of sales. And, Lawn Butler is primarily commercial maintenance, servicing retail sites, HOAs, commercial offices and industrial facilities. In ramp-up mode, Larsen recognized how much capital his business required to keep up with growth.

“Free cash flow is a great way to grow, and a lot of businesses do that,” he says. “There are plenty of articles out there about, ‘Why I never took out a truck loan,’ or ‘Why I have no debt.’ It’s slower and safer to grow with cash. But I can’t go slow. I can’t.”

The second five years.

Larsen wanted to grow fast. “I wanted to build something timely,” he says. He and Jena considered bringing on a minority investor, but losing control of the business was a concern. “A lot of investors have a horizon,” he says. “They want to invest for five years, and after that, they want to sell and get their money back. You might be able to pick your first investor, but you likely will not be able to pick the second one. You may hate their guts, but you’re stuck.”

With private equity or an outside investor, “You share the risk – but you share the returns,” Larsen says.

“We think we can do this on our own,” the Larsens concluded.

Well, that is – they could do it with the bank. Deciding that cash-only was too slow and an outside investor would be too overbearing, the only reasonable third option was debt.

“Debt is an accelerator – for better and for worse,” Larsen says. “We had to get good at managing the business and growing our company because with debt, you’re on the hook. You have to perform and deliver.”

Lawn Butler did just that.

Larsen describes the company’s financial approach as “offensive,” so banks never had to ask him to provide statements or stay compliant. “We approached the banks and negotiated lines of credit – and we approached them with the perspective that we wanted to continue to grow,” Larsen says.

Larsen fine-tuned Lawn Butler’s financial best practices, committing to detailed month-end reporting and meetings with managers to discuss performance. “Our average growth over the last 10 years has been 57%, so we had to produce 57% more working capital every year and service that debt,” he explains, adding that, “if you don’t know where you are financially, how can you make good decisions when it comes to debt?”

There was a point when Lawn Butler broke a debt covenant. “And, we were the first ones to tell the bank we broke it,” Larsen says. The company purchased a bunch of equipment from a different bank than the one that held its existing credit lines. “So, we had two banks,” he continues. “We went to the second bank and said, ‘We are going to break this covenant for about 90 days. Here are our projections. Here is what we are doing. We want you to know we are in total control of the situation and we are making a good decision.’”

“Every one of our processes has been developed because we learned the hard way. We started the business from nothing, and whenever we encountered a roadblock, we solved it by creating a process to bypass that situation.” Jena Larsen, Lawn Butler co-founder

Within 90 days, Lawn Butler went from breaking that covenant to dropping its debt to far below the required 3-to-1 ratio. After taking on the second loan, the company’s debt ratio was 5-to-1, higher than allowed. Post-90 days, its debt ratio was 1.8-to-1. The company had cut its debt to one-third of the total requirement.

Businesses need to think of debt as a responsibility to generate income, he says. “We weren’t just adding debt, we could service it with our customers because we understood that every customer generates X dollars, and every bit of debt is Y,” Larsen says. “(When) we increased our customer base, the X would outweigh the Y and we would be compliant.”

To further manage processes, Lawn Butler adopted Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software. “We started tracking everything so we could review production data and performance numbers,” Larsen says.

Jena adds, “Every one of our processes has been developed because we learned the hard way. We started the business from nothing, and whenever we encountered a roadblock, we solved it by creating a process to bypass that situation.”

Larsen calls this five-year period of time in the business, “the years when we started making money."

Meanwhile, people were always central to Lawn Butler’s operation – and just as the company evolved its financial and production processes, it also paid close attention to how people were given opportunities to thrive.

As Vice President of Operations Clayton Phillips, who joined the team in 2011, describes: “Because we are like a family, we can be more open and direct with each other. As managers, we focus on a ‘sandwich system,’ which is to compliment something they are doing well, address the issues we need to talk about, and remind them we support them and want to see them succeed.”

Developing Culture of Family is a work in progress. “We always have to adapt and make changes as we grow,” Phillips says.

All about people.

The biggest change Larsen names is Lawn Butler’s intentional focus on people and doing what’s right for the team – even if that means doing things that would make a typical HR manager cringe.

Case in point: Lawn Butler does not have a PTO policy and never has.

“Our policy is, you take the time you need for your family and we expect you to show up and work and create a successful company – to do your part and carry your weight,” Larsen says. “And if you don’t, you won’t work here.”

To determine whether employees are “carrying their weight,” each crew member and manager is assigned a production goal that is measured monthly, quarterly and annually through the ERP system. If a team member is not meeting his or her goal, a manager will hold a meeting to find out what’s going on. “Sometimes, they have a good reason why – and we ask, ‘How can we help?’” Larsen says.

You’ll always have people who abuse freedom. Lawn Butler has a “slow, managed exit process” in those cases, where the company gives a team member who is underperforming a few chances to meet goals. Because production goals are based on specific job production times that have been tested and tweaked, they are realistic.

By managing performance and giving people the time they need when they need it, Larsen says 90% of the time team members make the right decisions on their own. “You empower people when you say, ‘I trust you to make the right decision.’”

Operating in Utah, where winters can demand long hours through the night for snow and ice removal, Larsen also expects that employees will give to the company. “We expect you to work with the company if we need you and it’s snowing at 2 a.m.,” Larsen says. “But when you need that same courtesy when it comes to time off, we will be there for you as well.”

Another key component of Lawn Butler’s Culture of Family philosophy is treating employees the same as customers. Twice a year, the company gives customers gifts like calendars or mugs, pens. “We decided we were going to buy the same things for our employees – our team is just as important as our customers,” Larsen says.

Every year, Lawn Butler hosts a family barbecue, a company swim party and multiple team-building events – axe-throwing, going to the movies, etc. Employees look forward to the annual holiday party. “These little things quantify into something much bigger,” Larsen says. “We hope it shows people we care about them – we genuinely care about them.”

This culture goes a long way toward attracting labor in a tough market. Specifically, Lawn Butler shows invested, hard-working individuals who are H-2B workers or interested in a work visa that the company cares by sponsoring their journey toward citizenship. It costs about $10,000 per permanent resident card. They move to the U.S. with their families and essentially take a loan from Lawn Butler to pay back some of the initial housing and setup expenses over time.

“It’s a long-term investment,” Larsen says of this project and recruiting, in general.

The last three years.

Just as wise debt is a growth accelerator for Lawn Butler, so is smart technology. After starting Smart Rain in 2012, an irrigation platform to help scale the company’s remote irrigation management business, Larsen began exploring other tech options.

Recently, Lawn Butler introduced a custom-built mobile app. It tracks photos and infield work, progress on jobs and prevents “time theft.” Previously, the company relied on paper time sheets that crewmembers filled out. The pay-per-day sheet had a significant human error risk, though. If an employee forgot to fill it out, he or she would not get paid. In addition, there was a risk to the business, too, if a team member wasn’t completely accurate since Lawn Butler is so focused on managing production time.

“When we implemented the mobile tracking app, we figured our guys would hate it, but they came back and said, ‘We like the app better!’” Larsen says. “I asked, ‘Why?’ They said, ‘We don’t have to spend time filling out paper day sheets.’ And, they are getting paid like clockwork because the recording is happening like clockwork.”

As for in-field technology, Lawn Butler invested $100,000 in a pilot robotics program and hired a dedicated employee to manage it. The company has a few commercial-grade mowers that also perform sidewalk clearing in winter. So far, customers are receptive.

“Everything we have figured from a dollar-savings perspective tells us this makes sense, and we are always looking at ways to reduce production times,” Larsen says. “We are looking at how we might be able to replace an individual for a task like mowing and use that person for another aspect of the business that generates more profit.”

All the hard worked paid off for the Larsens and their employees and has set the company up for even more growth. In April of 2020, Lawn Butler was acquired by Outworx Group, a facility services management company that’s part of the New York-based Mill Point Capital portfolio. Larsen will still be involved with Lawn Butler and has no plans of leaving anytime soon.

“I plan to stay engaged in helping them grow my company and their company into a successful industry leader,” he says. “I chose to partner with them because I felt at the time, and still do, that together we are much better than we are apart. We can do more and accomplish more in a shorter time then we could apart.”

Employees know what they want out of a company, and if yours doesn’t check all the boxes, they’ll find it somewhere else.

That’s the perspective of John Munie, and perhaps that’s why his team at Focal Pointe Outdoor Solutions headquartered in Missouri is so hellbent on constant improvement. Munie, the company’s president, says employees need a fair wage – that’s a given. But then, Munie says the best company owners are the ones who start thinking beyond the paycheck.

“If you really think about it, what matters more? At the end of the day, you’re going to make a nickel if you run a decent-sized company,” Munie says. “When I take our people out to dinner for their (work) anniversary, I ask them: What are your dreams for the company and what are your dreams for yourself?”

It’s these types of conversations that helped Munie conclude his company needed to do more. He says the culture at Focal Pointe was always strong, but with the recommendation of a consulting group, the company still set up five committees dedicated to improving all facets of the business. In particular, Munie wanted to examine marketing, innovation, safety, team education and charity work.

The company had a strategic meeting in November where they established the committees, and leadership collaboratively helped place employees in each committee where they felt the employees’ strengths fit best.

And whether it’s the newly launched Focal Pointe University – a program that will teach employees valuable life skills like English as a second language, financial literacy and more – or it’s workplace safety, Munie says his company is always looking to improve. And, despite the pandemic, Munie’s goals have not changed. He hopes his company is better in 2020 than it was in 2019.

“Are some of the initiatives we wanted to do going to get done? No,” Munie says. “But are we going to get the emotional benefit of overcoming something and adversity? Absolutely. We just shift that focus a little bit.”

Munie says the company is currently hovering around 185 employees and earned $17.8 million in revenue last season. They handle largely commercial accounts like the Enterprise Rent-a-Car headquarters and nearby Busch Stadium, home of the St. Louis Cardinals, plus some larger residential clients.

Though maintenance makes up about 50% of what the company does, Munie expects some drop in revenue this year because less people are doing enhancements and construction projects.

Even still, Munie says he’s optimistic. The committees meet with Munie at least once a month and then weekly or bi-weekly on their own volition.

“Our goals are not changing,” he says. “Our bar is not lowered for the year. Even if we’re dealing with adversity, that doesn’t mean our customer should notice. We still expect to perform very well on our customer satisfaction.”

After a strategic planning meeting in November, Munie helped the team devise five committees that would help Focal Pointe improve in areas that aligned with the team's mission statement.

Lessons learned.

Focal Pointe spent the winter constructing a 30x30-foot expansion to their main office, complete with a projector, whiteboard, two large flatscreen televisions, a sink and a fridge. But by the time it was actually finished in early February, the pandemic started to ravage the nation and the company needed to postpone its new Focal Pointe University.

Even though the University was paused, the space did come in handy, creating a spot for small company meetings during COVID-19. Munie says they were able to keep employees socially distant because of the extra room in the office; however, they weren’t able to use the new add-on until August for the education component.

That’s where Sandra Gonzalez comes in. The director of talent and development helps find educators for Focal Pointe University. She says as of now, the company brings in an English teacher twice a week to educate the employees who largely speak Spanish fluently.

She adds that Focal Pointe has always hired outsiders to help teach lessons, but they’re trying to create concrete curriculums and plans so education is ongoing.

They’ll do classes on how to become an account manager next and will eventually move into more life skills lectures, such as long-term planning for a child’s cost of college.

“If we don’t have the right skills in house, we look for somebody to come in and teach those classes,” Gonzalez says. “We’re not going to try and teach something we’re not familiar with.”

Once the pandemic settles and groups can crowd together again, Gonzalez says they’ll be able to hold up to 50 people in the office extension. This means they’ll save the future costs of renting out a hotel conference center or other space for their larger group outings.

In the meantime, the committee that gets together to discuss Focal Pointe University will continue structuring its education paths for the employees.

“As time goes on, it will only get better because we will get feedback,” Gonzalez says. “That’s our goal is to get better every year and streamline it so that it is seamless a few years from now.”

The next big thing.

When Elyse Harpstrite first joined Focal Pointe seven years ago, only five people in the whole company used their software program. It was clunky and outdated, she says, and it wasn’t particularly aesthetically pleasing, either.

That’s a stark contrast to today. The company had paperless time sheets within 18 months of implementing its newest software four years ago, and crews were clocking in on their mobile devices. Now they can even track materials used and leave notes for others in the company about a particular jobsite. The communication is largely digital, and that’s been huge in the COVID-19 world.

Harpstrite admits that change didn’t come easily. As she was formerly the contracts manager (now an account manager), she paved the way in terms of implementation with the new software.

“I think with any kind of change, you have a sense of panic. That panic comes from different personalities. Some people love a challenge, love a change. Some people say, ‘I’m good here. This is working here. What are we doing?’” she says. “When we came out with it, we knew it’d be a process and that we couldn’t download everything on everyone at one time.”

Harpstrite says they gave crews three to five months to figure out mobile time sheets while also still documenting everything on paper. This way, management could turn around and educate employees on why they did or didn’t use the software properly. They also rolled it out in increments, starting first with the people they felt most apt to working with a new software.

“Instead of a manager encouraging others to use the technology, (you should) get their peers to encourage others,” she says.

Now, Harpstrite sits on the team’s innovations committee. They discuss a wide variety of technological advancements and are currently exploring ways to streamline their new jobs and finding new ways to track their equipment. She says another recent focus has been enhancing the customer experience, which Harpstrite says are all about the little touches. If, for instance, an employee at a client’s home notices carpenter bees, they’ll notify the customer and provide references for businesses they trust to take care of the issue. All of that information is backlogged in the team’s files and can be pulled whenever an issue arises.

“When our clients walk by, you’re just (someone) on a mower,” she says. “But once you wave, you’re more of a person. We’re not just a land care company; we’re their partners.”

Streamlining safety.

Weekly meetings have helped change the culture around safety, says Raymundo Ramos, the team’s safety director and foreman on one of the crews. Each team manager creates an annual schedule with their crews to discuss seasonal issues. For instance, they talk about how to stay safe while pruning when pruning season starts.

Ramos says proactivity is better than reactivity, but one thing that’s also helped is the technology. When there’s an incident out in the field, Ramos and management can send accident reports cautioning the remainder of the crews to avoid repeating that mistake. Then, the next morning, Ramos and the team will go over the safety infraction again in greater detail.

“We are very focused on identifying obstacles or hazards so we can remove them before it becomes an incident or accident,” Ramos says.

Ramos, a 16-year veteran of the car manufacturing industry, says Focal Pointe implemented LEAN, which is a common, systematic approach to proactively eliminating some items that might cause frequent accidents or injuries. He says the crews pushed back a little on that, but once they saw how much time they were saving – Ramos estimates roughly 15% – they embraced the program.

Of course, the pandemic has shifted a lot of this initiative digitally, and it’s added a new wrinkle that the team will wrestle with for at least the coming months. Focal Pointe has 27 mowing maintenance crews and 11 installation crews, and they had to facilitate all the proper PPE and keep crew sizes smaller to encourage social distancing. For the employees who are there on visa programs, Ramos says they’ve rearranged housing assignments so they can minimize potential outbreaks.

“In the event that somebody tests positive, we can contain that to that specific three- or four-people crew,” he says.

All things considered, Ramos says safety initiatives are still going well – even if they aren’t as seamless as he’d like due to COVID-19.

“Efficiency this year is going to be a challenge,” he says.

Looking ahead.

Munie says his committees are dedicated to answering critical questions that align with the company’s four pillars: great place to work, operational excellence, uniquely positive client experience and partner in the community. Using technology to drive these initiatives is key, he says.

“Everything we do is in that prism. If it doesn’t support that, then why are we doing it?” Munie says. “I believe technology is going to be a game-changer in our industry more than people realize.”

The COVID-19 pandemic actually epitomizes what Munie’s team is all about, he says. As they communicated their way through the early goings of the pandemic, emails were not directives – they were calls for feedback on what could be done better.

“Any time we have a problem, we make our team part of it,” he says. “This is not John Munie sitting on top of a throne dictating how we’re going to be navigating the virus. My life improved the second I improved the company, and I want to continue that.”

If there is one word to describe compact tractors, “versatile” would have to be the winner.

“They offer great flexibility in what you do and how you do it,” says Kelcey Cockrell, product manager for Kubota’s BX, B, L, & MX Series.

“Skid-steers do a good job, but they are not as versatile or as easy to use, especially for a new owner. Not to mention that both the skid-steer and the implements for the skid-steers tend to be more expensive when compared to a compact tractor.”

Along with a price advantage for implements, the amount that can be used with a compact tractor is attractive.

“The compatibility with a variety of implements creates a do-it-all machine that can cut, dig, haul, trench and more,” says Joel Hicks, senior product support manager at Kioti.

Compact tractors can be smaller and lighter than some of the alternative solutions, making more room on a trailer for other equipment, says Jon Friess, product specialist at Steiner.

“Trailer ratings and driver license requirements may also be lower, which can be advantageous,” he says. “Less weight and size can also help when a compact tractor is properly equipped to minimize ground disturbance, reduce risk of turf damage or function in soft conditions.”

Ray Gherardini, product marketing at John Deere, describes a compact tractor as a “true workhorse” with the use of implements.

The machines can help maintenance contractors when equipped with mowers and rotary cutters, and also come in handy when the snow starts to fall.

“In winter months, blades, blowers, snow pushers and brooms help keep grounds clear in the heaviest of snow,” Gherardini says. “The true benefit of a compact utility tractor is the ability to tackle a variety of jobs in any season.”

What’s trending.

Angie Ryan, who is the compact tractor marketing manager at Bobcat, says she has seen the development priority of these machines move slowly from function to comfort. Changes like automatically connecting front end loaders and mid-mowers, to the popularity increase of quick connection three-point hitches, prove that landscapers are willing to pay for convenience.

“The compact tractor market is a mature one but there are still signs of innovation to keep the competition fresh,” Ryan says.

Cockrell says a trend she’s seen developing is the tread type within tire offerings. “One of the newest tread types to the market is an agriculture/turf/industrial crossover (R14T) which provides both a smooth ride with less ground pressure than ag or industrial tires, as well as the traction needed in snow, ice or muddy applications,” she says.

Hicks says contractors want more power in smaller frames because it allows landscapers “a wider array of options to use larger attachments in smaller areas therefore allowing them to do more tasks across their properties.”

Ryan adds that one element that hasn’t changed that much is the powertrain. “There are a variety of options out there for transmission but ever since the introduction of the hydrostatic drive system it seems that things have slowed a bit likely due to the incredible cost of the Tier 4 engine transition,” she says.

Friess says demand for compact tractors has been on the rise, especially as the benefits become better understood.

He adds that when a company doesn’t have enough money in the budget for multiple pieces of equipment, it’s important to assess for need.

“For example, if a wheel loader with limited attachment options and limited slope capabilities is needed 20% of the time, and a compact tractor with a host of attachments and the ability to work on turf or steeper slopes can be utilized 70% of the time, it would make sense to buy or lease the compact tractor and rent the loader as needed,” he says.

Missed opportunities.

With the compact tractor’s variety of ways to be used, that increases the chances contractors aren’t getting the most out of the machine like maximizing the backhoe compatibility.

“A backhoe is worth the investment because it allows the crew to do so much – installing underground utilities and building ponds or water features to moving heavy materials like rocks, gravel and soil particularly in the tighter areas on a property where a larger backhoe may not be able to access,” Hicks says.

Friess adds: “Not everyone realizes how capable compact tractors are when equipped with a landscape rake, but they can grade different types of material such as dirt or stone, or to gather limbs when clearing debris.”

Ryan says she often hears buyers wish they would have bought the next size up because of the number of ways the compact tractor can be used. “We would recommend looking at where you want to be in a few years instead of where you are today when researching a new compact tractor,” she says.