More than mowing: essential zero-turn mower attachments for year-round profitability

Adding attachments to your zero-turn mowers can be a great way to increase productivity and lower equipment operating costs. The trick is figuring out which attachments make the most sense for your operation.

While many zero-turn mower attachments are designed to be easy to take on or off, many lawn maintenance companies have found that the best approach is to put them on and leave them on — at least during those times of year when seasonal services are more prominent than routine mowing.

Raking-in spring cleanup revenue

One of the more common attachments is a dethatcher that simply mounts to the mower deck. A full-service landscape company in North Dakota has made them a staple in its maintenance division.

“Each of our maintenance crews has two mowers, and each of those mowers gets a dethatching attachment in the spring,” says Jon Larson, lawn operations manager at Precision Lawn & Landscape in Fargo, N.D. “The dethatchers are used nonstop for about two weeks before we take them off and put them back in storage. Sometimes, depending on the conditions that year, we put them back on for fall dethatching.”

A significant portion of Precision Lawn & Landscape’s customer base consists of larger properties like HOAs, apartment complexes and commercial sites. There is simply too much acreage to cover using walk-behind dethatchers. So, from an efficiency standpoint, mower-mounted dethatchers are really a necessity.

“Our zero-turns are very comfortable to operate, and the dethatcher itself is very user-friendly,” Larson says. “The front gauge wheels are extremely helpful with the different types of terrain and grades we encounter on properties. It’s also easy to set the dethatcher up at different depths and angles to match the turf structure on a given property. With five minutes of training, a proficient mower operator can become proficient at dethatching.”

Precision Lawn & Landscape operates bagging mowers. Operators typically dethatch and mow/bag simultaneously for maximum efficiency. “Sometimes the thatch is really heavy, though,” Larson says. “In those instances, one mower will just dethatch while the other traces a different pattern to pick everything up.”

Gaining an extra edge

One zero-turn mower attachment that isn’t nearly as common as a dethatcher is an edger. But for one full-service company in New England, the maintenance division wouldn’t be the same without it.

“We are a big enough company that we’re trying to specialize our equipment to do one thing very well,” says Mark Peterson, grounds maintenance manager at Piscataqua Landscaping & Tree Service with two locations in Maine and two in New Hampshire. “That said, the one mower attachment we continue using is an edger. It’s actually the favorite tool of my experienced team members.”

Piscataqua’s mower-mounted edger provides a deeper and cleaner edge than a stick edger delivers, according to Peterson. More importantly, there isn’t even a comparison in terms of efficiency.

“On a typical spring cleanup job, that edger attachment can cut labor time by a third — if the right person is operating it,” Peterson says. “An unfamiliar operator could do some damage with it. It’s quite powerful. If you make a mistake and drive out into the customer’s lawn, you could end up creating what looks like an irrigation trench.”

Piscataqua crews will edge sidewalks with the attachment, but the primary use is bed edging. Peterson says it’s been a game changer on commercial sites and large estates where some of the edging runs are 300 feet long. “The time we save on edging has actually helped us win some bids,” he says.

Piscataqua Landscaping & Tree Service has a large fleet of zero-turns. Three are outfitted with an edger attachment for spring cleanups. Once that season ends, two of the edgers are removed so those mowers can be placed back into the mowing fleet. But a third stays attached and ready to go.

“Our construction crews often use that mower/edger on their projects,” Peterson says. “They’ll touch-up edges once the sod or seed has come in on a new lawn. When you put this kind of clean edge on a project, it really shines.”

A contractor down in Florida has also taken a liking to mower-mounted edging. His crews mow a lot of roadsides and medians and have hours of edging to complete each day.

“We used to hand-edge everything, but that really wore people down,” says Josh Campbell, owner of Southern Property Management Services in St. Augustine, Fla. “We heard about this edger attachment and decided to try it out a few years ago. It’s been a life-saver. One guy running that attachment can do the same amount of work as four guys with stick edgers. The efficiency is night and day.”

Campbell’s fleet includes two mowers that are dedicated to edging; separate mowers work alongside them to handle the routine mowing. He likes to utilize older mowers for edging because there’s less wear and tear due to the blades not running. The edger attachments his crews use are completely electric-driven by the mower’s battery.

Campbell also likes to shift two of his more experienced mower operators over to the edging mowers.

“They aren’t difficult to run, but they aren’t the easiest either,” Campbell says. “You definitely need a good operator on them so they’re comfortable with the controls and don’t accidentally hit things like curbs and manholes. It just takes a little time to learn how delicate you need to be. But once you get comfortable, you can really fly with it.”

Make more money with more zero-turn mower attachments

Other common zero-turn attachments include snowblowers, rotary brooms, debris blowers and aerators. Brett Ferguson, owner of Northeast Landscaping in Wallingford, Conn., uses all of them.

“The ability to use multiple attachments and use my three mowers year-round is very appealing to me,” Ferguson says. “For the money you have to spend on a good mower these days, it seems to make sense to use it as much as possible. If I can do more with less equipment, that’s huge to my bottom line.”

Ferguson uses both snowblowers and rotary brooms during the winter.

“I really like using a broom because it works amazing on sidewalks,” Ferguson relates. “It cleans them down to almost nothing, which has helped reduce the amount of salt we need to use. The broom is a little more forgiving on uneven sidewalks as well. A guy could get hurt if he’s going too fast with a snowblower.”

Ferguson’s crews also utilize the rotary broom for fall cleanups. The leaf blower and aerator also come in handy during the fall. Ferguson likes to begin fall aerating in September when the mowing regimen has begun to slow down. The blower has dramatically improved leaf-cleanup productivity in October and November.

When you’re looking to use your zero-turn mowers year-round, good attachments are only half of the equation. You also need good mowers that are going to maximize the potential of those attachments.

The author is a freelance writer based in Wisconsin.