"Walker Mower" or walk on?

[Green Machine]

Originally Posted by Steve Give us a little insight now as to your thought process of why you are second guessing yourself and what you feel at this moment would work better for you? Well, I own a 2007 Tundra, so I could have potentially used this to start my business. I bought the F350 with the dump-bed because I did not want to be limited by capacity to haul material, cleanups, trees etc, AND, I did not want to trash my daily driver. However, it was a $7700 investment on the truck, so I am second guessing this decision a bit (insurance, maintaining another truck, diesel fuel etc). I am looking at a nice 36in mower with a skuly for about $950 (belt driven, Toro I believe). So I am glad to not be buying an expensive Walker and keeping the rest of my reserves for advertising and in the bank. I guess my thought process going into this was to set myself apart by making a an investment into a truck and to start as professional as possible. There are a lot of folks loading up their mowers into the back of Blazers and undercutting prices in this town. I'm not judging, everyone needs to make a living. I just thought having a nicer set-up would allow me to go after the more affluent properties and better jobs. Your continued thoughts are appreciated. Thank You.

[Green Machine]

Lawn care business tips

Originally Posted by 950thomas That chipper truck would be great to put a billy goat debris loader on for leaf season and a f350 is not to big for this type of work What u can do with the chipper truck is make the top removable that way u have a chipper truck when u need it or can be a true dump truck for mulch and other stuff in it that is how they are makeing them now Yup, it's got a roll-away net up top. And, I have never heard of a billy goat debris loader...please elaborate.

[yearroundyardwork]

have you considered looking for a plow for this truck possibly? i would think a truck of that size would be decent for plowing. this way you work all year round and the burden of paying off the truck is distributed over more services, possibly allowing you to lower your prices or make more profit. just spitballing here though

[Steve]

I guess my thought process going into this was to set myself apart by making a an investment into a truck and to start as professional as possible.

What other things are you doing or planning on doing to set yourself apart? What about truck or trailer signs? Uniforms? I'd love to hear more of your thoughts on that?

What do you feel sets one lawn care business apart from another? What would be the deciding factor for you if you were to hire one for your own property and weren't in the business?

[yearroundyardwork]

ive known billy goats to be things like leaf vacuums. you use them for sucking up large amounts of leaves and then taking the bag off and dumping them. however, i have seen them used at several festivals to pick up garbage that would take hours to pick up by hand.