Top considerations for purchasing plows

John Derringer, owner of John’s Lawn & Landscape outside of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, has a fleet of seven pickup trucks that stay busy all year round, hauling landscaping and lawn care equipment in the summer and plowing parking lots in the winter.

The transition times are toughest, when he’s attaching and removing the plows so that the trucks can do double-duty. “That’s when you really need to make sure you’ve got the right stuff,” he says. “You can waste a lot of time in the morning since the weather can be unpredictable.”

Derringer makes sure his crews all check the weather the night before their shift so they know if they need to show up early to equip trucks with the right equipment. He used to have crew members show up early every day during the late fall months, but realized he was wasting man-hours.

“Everyone has a smartphone now, so I just tell them to check the weather at night before they come in,” he says. “That way they can get some extra sleep and I’m not paying them to stand around.”

Derringer just updated his fleet two years ago, and here’s what he considered when he was shopping around.

Weight: Derringer says his No. 1 concern was finding something that was the right fit for his trucks. “I use them all day every day, so I don’t want something too big that’s going to put a bunch of strain on my fleet,” he says.

Read the full story from the June issue.