Toro enters new market

Toro Co., the king of lawn mowers and golf-course maintenance equipment, is moving full-bore into the construction segment with a new line of machines dipped in Toro’s classic red and bearing its household name.

The Bloomington-based company jumped into construction last year when it bought key assets from Astec Underground and Stone Construction. With Astec, Toro gained a line of trenchers and horizontal utility drills used to bury power, water and telecommunication lines. One of the larger machines has a 6-foot chainsaw with teeth the size of a hand on one end and a backhoe on the other.

Toro also acquired a line of concrete mixers, compactors, stump grinders and motorized wheelbarrows it calls the Mud Buggy. The products are trickling into the marketplace and have become popular with rental equipment firms eager to dust off the recession and offer contractors newer building products. The change is happening one year shy of Toro’s 100th anniversary and promises to launch it in a new direction.

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