Leaf Collection in comfort

[picframer]

I took my Dr. Lawn vac and my x749 to the guys at John Deere yesterday, the boot that attaches to the deck would never fit the X749 or the X500, even though they do not sell this unit they agreed to make a universal boot work, they did an amazing job, a 10 out of 10. Sorry for the poor quality images, it’s bitter cold here with wet flurries, it was getting dark and I wanted to try it, the leaf pass you see in the image was without the mower deck running, I wanted to see how it did, then I did my entire lawn with the deck on and it is spotless.....did most of it in the dark, the only down side to this time of the year. I bought two Commercial units and will drop the X500 off tomorrow for fitting, these things are amazing, I want to see how well it shreds the leaves, it sounded interesting but it was so dark when I finished I decided to check in the morning. So far we have 107 residential and commercial properties to do, this is all from no advertising at all other than my website, an email to all the people we worked for this summer and about all we can handle this year.

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Andy
Halifax, Nova Scotia

[Steve]

Lawn care business tips

That seems like it can hold an amazing amount of leaves. How many of your yards does it take to fill it up? How heavy does it get? Are those tires on the trailer up to par for the weight? It looks fantastic! I'd love to see a picture of it run straight through a yard with leaves, and show a path of cleared grass behind it LOL that would be amazing! I can't wait to hear more as you use it more. You are going to make everyone jealous! Here I am talking about blowing leaves into a snow fence on GopherHaul and here you are saying, just mow them up! It's so much easier!

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[picframer]

Originally Posted by Steve

That seems like it can hold an amazing amount of leaves. How many of your yards does it take to fill it up?

How heavy does it get? Are those tires on the trailer up to par for the weight?

It looks fantastic! I'd love to see a picture of it run straight through a yard with leaves, and show a path of cleared grass behind it LOL that would be amazing!

I can't wait to hear more as you use it more.

You are going to make everyone jealous! Here I am talking about blowing leaves into a snow fence on GopherHaul and here you are saying, just mow them up! It's so much easier!

It will hold 315 gallons of leaves, you see it shreds them as they pass through a steel impeller, it also has a wood chipper chute and will chip up to 2".

I have no idea how heavy that many leaves would be but the tractor it is attached to is four wheel drive all wheel steer with a diff lock front and rear, weight should not matter, what I wonder is how tippy it will get.

Now here is what I have been doing and man it works well, just for example I will collect your leaves for $65.00, if we haul them away it's $25.00 however if we dump them on your property, we will sell you an Organic Compost Activator for $35.00 (cost is $14.80) if you apply you will have compost in the spring for your flowers. Not one person has asked to have them hauled away.

This time of the year we have too much wind to be blowing leaves into a tarp or fence, just too much time. I did my half my place last night, probably 50,000 square feet, took 45 min. I am charging $90.00 for a property this size.

[Steve]

It will hold 315 gallons of leaves

I never thought of gallons of leaves as a measurement

50,000 square feet

When you did this section of your property, how many gallons of leaves do you feel it sucked up?

[ckoffman]

Hello
I have a cyclone rake that is vary similer to the dr it holds 418 gal.of leafs.
But i have found to do leaf removal or just a cleanup on properties that have alot of trees it does not hold near enough, and you have to empty to many times. I am currently in the process of using the vac unit and building a leaf box on a 5x10 open trailer that will be 6' tall. It will hold a lot more volume
and then we just haul off to dispose. The extra time to empty the unit means we cannot compete on price with other companys in the area.
ckoffman

[jasonw]

How do those tires perform on the turf? I have the factory Turf Savers on my tractor and found they tear it up unless you over inflate them then they work great. Do not exceed 14 PSI front and 10PSI rear but I find I need about 30 all the way around to save the turf.

[picframer]

Originally Posted by Steve

I never thought of gallons of leaves as a measurement



When you did this section of your property, how many gallons of leaves do you feel it sucked up?

I have no idea how many gallons I collected but I have 16 mature maple trees the leaves were probably 4" thick, 80% have fallen, I just checked the unit and the product left is as they advertise, it shreds the leaves into an almost powder, they report a 10 to 1 shredding. I would guess the unit is 1/4 full tops and that is over an acre cleaned.

As with any purchase I do my research and talk to owners of various manufacturers, based on this there wasn't anything on the market that compared when it came to commercial leaf collection.

It took me 45 seconds tops to dump, I also bought the accessories to collect leaves 30 feet from the unit using an 8" hose and another attachment that allows me to suck the shredded leaves and place them in a neat pile on the customers property.

Hauling leaves to a dump site is not an option due to cost and time, I also feel one can give the customer a perfect option, compost by spring, every customer I have has gardens of some sort and guess what, Many of the lawns we are doing are from my website and these are people we have never done work for yet, what a perfect opportunity to upsell as we will do a professional job, offer a service no one in this city is offering and get a chance to upsell.

I always have reasons for doing things, this is to build the lawn care side for 2010, I am willing to bet we will pick up an additional 50+ lawns, we use Gator mulching blades on our equipment, the leaves are probably 60% shredded before they even hit the unit in back, by the time it does it's shredding there is just powder.

Both of them start Monday, I will have a better idea and tweat if I need to.

[picframer]

Originally Posted by ckoffman

Hello
I have a cyclone rake that is vary similer to the dr it holds 418 gal.of leafs.
But i have found to do leaf removal or just a cleanup on properties that have alot of trees it does not hold near enough, and you have to empty to many times. I am currently in the process of using the vac unit and building a leaf box on a 5x10 open trailer that will be 6' tall. It will hold a lot more volume
and then we just haul off to dispose. The extra time to empty the unit means we cannot compete on price with other companys in the area.
ckoffman

I am curious, I am familiar with the Cyclone Rake XL as it was part of my research, most of the feedback from lawn care friends that tried it was it blew far too much dust on the customers property as it has a cloth type bag. I wrote Cyclone as I wanted to know what the shredding rate was however they never did give me an excact number, Dr. Advertises 10 to 1, I figure with the high lift gator blades I use, I am getting a good 15 to 20 to 1, how fine is the leaves after they go through the shredder with that unit?

Also the Commercial Dr. I have has a built in chipper for fallen branches 2" and under, It chips very well, does the cycone rake do this, I have asked but no one seems to respond.

[lawncrafter56]

ckoffman...I am curious to see a pic or two of the trailer you are manufacturing for leaves. I too have never been satisfied with the volume of leaves the units handle. Sounds to me you are on the right track. I have gator blades along with the factory Toro vacuum shredder that attaches to the mower deck and then send it into a unit similar to Andy's to get ground up yet again. I am also very interested in Organic Compost Activator that Andy speaks of. I like many options.

[picframer]

Originally Posted by lawncrafter56

ckoffman...I am curious to see a pic or two of the trailer you are manufacturing for leaves. I too have never been satisfied with the volume of leaves the units handle. Sounds to me you are on the right track. I have gator blades along with the factory Toro vacuum shredder that attaches to the mower deck and then send it into a unit similar to Andy's to get ground up yet again. I am also very interested in Organic Compost Activator that Andy speaks of. I like many options.

It's a simple and very easy upsell, you can easily make 50 to 100% profit on the Activator and it works well. We buy in fairly large volume's a get a great discount, there are many on the market but I use Biowish