TRENDS: ROBOTS & BATTERIES
( L to R) Greyson Walldorff, Justin White, and Chris Angelo share battery equipment experiences.
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It’ s as much about ongoing costs, according to Justin White, CEO of K & D Landscaping in Watsonville, Calif.“ We looked at all the work and tasks throughout a day, and we saw spark plugs fouling and issues with gasoline and two-stroke equipment, etc. Switching to battery powered tools, we saved 10-15 minutes per person per day, and that multiplies.”
At the meeting, I asked the group of landscapers about the business condition of traditional fuel. How much do these companies and their crews consider the gasoline they’ re buying?“ With two-strokes, most manufacturers recommend higher octane fuel and that’ s more expensive, if gas stations even have it,” said Joe Langton, owner of the Langton Group of landscapers in northern Illinois.( NOTE: Stihl and Echo, for example, recommend the use of 89-octane gas, and that’ s often 25 % more expensive than regular gas in most places.)“ And water in gas cans,” said Langton,“ is a big problem for us.”
California, with its mandated transition to electric equipment, created the CORE program that incentivized the purchase of zero-emission landscaping equipment. Chris Angelo, CEO of Stay Green landscaping covering Southern California, said,“ There were some very rich incentives that we took advantage of.” It not only let them acquire new battery-powered equipment but it helped them dispose of gas-powered equipment.
Greyson Walldorff, founder & president of Lawn Capital in Atlanta, Ga., was not as lucky, with no state-sponsored incentives.“ We got killed. There’ s no secondary market to unload four crews worth of handheld gas equipment. We lost it. And we don’ t want to give it to our guys who will then work Saturdays and Sundays on their own routes.”
The accounting impacts are real, too.“ Gas-powered equipment typically has been disposable, like handheld equipment right,” said Angelo.“ Our branch manager is the one making the decision. He’ s buying it and then we’ re telling him don’ t keep repairing it. With batteries it’ s a balance sheet discussion; it’ s longer term. We look at it differently than we did in the past.”
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4. Workers’ acceptance This topic is an important one to Gao, who believes, as he told me last October at Equip Expo, that battery-powered equipment can improve the health and quality of life for commercial landscape workers.
“ Today, they may say,‘ Oh I like the smell of gas.’ But tomorrow?” Gao continues to talk about potential problems from fumes, noise and vibration from gas motors, plus the frustration of pull starting or fouled spark plugs.“ In reality, batterypowered tools are much easier to use.”
“ I didn’ t realize the amount of dissatisfaction our crews had with the fumes and the exhaust of gas equipment,” said Justin
10 OPE + April 2025 www. OPE-Plus. com