On The Road: To ASV and Great Dane

Without a doubt, the deepest well of information for me to pull from over the past five years has been the contractors and manufacturers in the industry. I have literally spent thousands of hours on the phone with various people from different parts of the industry, and each of these occasions affords me the opportunity to learn. But perhaps the most beneficial time for me are those hours I spend away from the office and in the field.

I had two such opportunities last month, and I thought I would share some of the details of these two days with you.

Tuesday, June 7, 2000
Kevin Gilbride, one of the sales representatives for Lawn & Landscape, and I boarded a plane and took off about 7:15 a.m. EST bound for Grand Rapids, Minn., which is located in the northwestern part of Minnesota. Our plane landed at about 9:45 a.m. CST, and we were at the plant and headquarters for ASV Inc. just 15 minutes later.

For those of you not familiar with ASV, it’s a 17-year-old company that manufactures landscape construction machines with a unique tracks system that is designed to enable the machines to operate in more areas while inflicting less damage on the ground than traditional skid-steers or tractors. The key to the tracks system is the fact that the 46-inch-wide machine has 24 pressure points on the ground. So despite the machine’s overall weight of about 2,850 pounds, the extensive pressure points spread this weight out so there is only about 120 pounds of weight on the ground at any particular point. This allows the machine to even be driven over turf without causing much damage.

"Too often, hand labor and today’s equipment are not economical solutions," noted Brad Lemke, director of new product development at ASV. "With the growing expense and shortage of hand labor, combined with the importance of finishing jobs efficiently in any terrain or space, it was time to develop industry-changing technology."

ASV representatives invited us to visit their facility in order to show us their newest product, the RC 30 all-surface loader. ASV has marketed its Posi-Track unit to landscape contractors for the last few years, but the RC 30 is designed specifically with the landscape contractor in mind.

ASV’s success with the Posi-Track and its unique tracks system, combined with the increased popularity of more compact yet powerful machines for the landscape industry meant we thought we should see this product first hand.

From 10:00 to 11:00 a.m. we toured ASV’s 100,000-square-foot production facility and training room, which the company uses to educate new dealers on how to service the machine. From 11:00 to 11:45 a.m., Lemke and Kevin Yopp, manager of commercial communications, walked us through a video and PowerPoint presentation of the features of the new machine and answered our questions.

Then the fun began – a 30-minute opportunity for us to test out the machine ourselves outside behind the facility. We got to drive it, dig with it, dump dirt, put it through the rigors and see how quickly users can become familiar with the controls.

This session was followed by lunch and then a site visit to see one of the prototype versions of the machine in use by Lease Landscape & Excavating. We didn’t need to be there long to see the benefits of such a machine as the crew on the site was installing sod on a water-front slope that was nearly inaccessible aside from a 5-foot-wide access path down a hill and through some trees. Hauling wheelbarrows full of sod down such a hill would have made for a long day compared with the ease of filling a bucket with sod and driving it down the hill. And the crew was able to quickly switch attachments and put the machine to work preparing the soil for the sod installation.

ASV informed us the machine will be debuted at the upcoming OPEI Show in Louisville, July 22-24, and production will begin shortly. For more information on the RC 30 or other ASV products, call 218/327-3434. [EDITOR’S NOTE: Watch for live coverage of the OPEI Show right here on Lawn & Landscape Online. – S.H.]

By 3:30 that afternoon we were back on the plane bound for Cleveland.

Thursday, June 9, 2000
This was a day I had looked forward to for a long time. At 9:30 that morning I hopped on another plane, this time headed toward Louisville, Ky. Once there, I was but a 20-minute drive from Jeffersonville, Ind., and the new manufacturing facility for Great Dane Power Equipment. There, I was to interview Dane Scag, president of the company, and someone who has probably had as much influence on the development of the commercial lawn mower as anyone.

First, however, Rick Cuddihe, vice president for Great Dane, offered me a tour of the new facility, which opened just a few months ago. Of course, we spend a lot of time talking on the phone with various manufacturers and visiting with them at trade shows, but having the opportunity to walk down an assembly line in a manufacturing plant and see exactly how a mower comes together is particularly illuminating. Seeing this process at work gave me a greater appreciation for the complexity of mower development and the challenges facing manufacturers to produce innovative and successful products at competitive prices.

For example, I don’t imagine that many contractors have ever given much thought to the expense manufacturers bear in terms of building such a facility as this one, purchasing and inventorying a suitable quantity of replacement parts, finding and employing labor to work in the plant or even how much manufacturers have to spend just on the crates in which to ship these machines.

At the same time, I was given a glimpse into the process through which manufacturers develop their machines as I saw what mowers from other manufacturers Great Dane had purchased in order to study on their own (don’t ask me which ones they were – I won’t tell you!). Even more interesting than that, however, was when Dane and Rick showed me some prototype machines they working with as they look for their next innovation. (Again, don’t bother asking.) These concepts may never end up reaching the market, but they are real examples of how innovative this company can be.

Then Dane and I sat down for two hours of conversation. (Look for the story from this interview in our July issue of Lawn & Landscape.) We explored his personal background, such as how a physicist from Princeton ended up manufacturing mowers. We talked about why he has developed and sold so many mower manufacturers – Bob Cat and Scag Power Equipment, to name two. We talked about how mowers will improve in the future, referring to the prototype machines I saw earlier. And we talked about how he wants to be remembered when his days behind a mower are over.

It was a wonderful afternoon and tremendous opportunity. If you don’t know Dane or have never met him, you’re really missing out. Whether he makes good machines or not, he is truly one of the most colorful people in this industry, and he has a true love for the landscape maintenance industry.

At one point as we were concluding the interview, he told me, "You know, I think I can say without being humble that almost every one person in this industry has heard my name at some point or another." He then laughed as he compared that to the name recognition the current White House occupant has within our industry. I doubt that many people know who Dane Scag is. But I don’t doubt that you’ve benefited from his ideas and you’re using machines that he has influenced, whether you know his name or not.