Last Updated on August 29, 2023 by ILGM Ninjas
Have you ever been in the car on a trip with a ten year old? Pretty annoying right? I mean you want to get them there but the incessant questions, geez. The recent rain storms reminded me of this. One or two days and you can overcome the challenge but throw down 12-18″ of rain in three weeks and it begins to take it’s toll. The the phone calls start coming, you know like 2 hours after the rain stops and you hear, ” I’m paying you, where are you?” It can get a little stressful. My favorite was back in 2019, you know during the “Bomb Cyclone”, when the weather just would not stop. Whoever named that by the way deserves a raise. That name was marketing genius. Anyway, we had gotten a call from a new customer who called to complain that she didn’t feel like she was getting what she was paying for. I had to remind her that we had just had a blizzard and that she had a foot of snow on her lawn. See what I mean? What is poorly understood is the logistical challenges that have to be overcome in order for a crew to get from point A to point B and so on. Most of this is taken for granted but during these conditions the grass does not stop growing and when yo udo finally get to the job the work is much more than you are getting paid for.
One thing that I noticed during the recent storms was that we did not receive one single call from our customers who had robotic mowers. You know why? It is because the mowers were cutting the lawns before, during and after the storms, day and night around the clock. Most people draw a blank when I mention robotic mowing. It has been around since 1995, mainly in northern Europe. You may be amazed, curios, skeptical or dismissive but currently we have a few dozen mowers out cutting a few acers of turf everyday. Times are changing and the business model of a V8 and two guys with big equipment are coming to an end. It’s called automation, you will soon learn about it or you will be stuck in the past paying for an outdated business model. See that little white AWD mower? This guy is going to be your new best friend, leveraging time and money to free you up from a mundane task. We have written about this in another blog:
Step into the future and invest in a smarter way of turf management.