Plugging into electric powered equipment

What’s so quiet the neighbors might not know you’re servicing a lawn – and so clean that you’ll never have to worry about an engine flooding or a mucky carburetor? Electric equipment use is on the rise as more commercial-grade hand-held and mower options enter the market. Some landscape companies are even committing fully to electric-powered fleets. Two firms shared how and why they made the switch, and what they learned during the process.

Making the cut.

Bob Blundon hesitated for a while. He wasn’t sure the electric equipment on the market would hold up in a commercial setting – and while battery-operated hand-helds had been standard in the consumer market, there were few options for a landscape company. But when a major manufacturer released its electric hand-held line, his confidence grew. “We decided it was time to take a shot at it,” he says.

Blundon, president of Madison Earth Care in Madison, Connecticut, already had gradually converted his mower fleet to propane. The customer base is “aware” of the change, he says. “They are responding well to the change because they are tuned in to environmental concerns.”

Read more in our July issue here.