TRENDS: ROBOTS & BATTERIES people to two people, and to focus more on the detail work that I usually couldn’ t get a supervisor to focus on.”
Langton said his crews used to look at each job and say the senior guy got to sit on the mower. With his robotic crews, that supervisor is the one doing the weeding, edging and the final touch of detail.“ I now incentivize the detail, and I pay those two-person crews more money and have the redundant tasks done by the automation. That was a big player for us.”
“ Our company has grown with automation because we’ ve been able to increase the other verticals that are very profitable in this industry by having the redundant task done by very predictable autonomous mowers,” said Langton.
“ We mow 28 times during the season on a typical commercial account,” said Todd Reinhart, Reinhart Landscaping in Illinois.“ If we can turn that 28 visits a season to 14 visits a season by having dedicated robot mowers on site, we think we can double the revenue per truck.” He thinks they could cut it down to just one person,“ just specialized to do the high-touch activities the robots aren’ t doing.”
Beyond labor efficiency, robots are helping landscape businesses find and retain new talent.“ We’ re getting people interested in robots, young people who don’ t look at landscaping as a career,” said Reinhart.“ All of a sudden, my son was running a lot of the robots and his friends started asking,‘ What is going on here? What are you doing?’ We’ re starting to see that through some gamification with the robots and with marketing, we’ re getting young talent and new customers.”
“ The new Kress robot mower is revolutionary for us,” said Brian Cormier, of R. P. Marzilli Landscaping in Cape Cod.“ Let’ s be honest, labor is scarce. We can drop off robots on our properties and upgrade existing clients to more expert workers. They can grow in their careers, earn more money and stay with us. It will be very helpful for our business.”
Building owners love robots too
Each of the panelists, whether discussing battery-powered equipment or autonomous mowers, said that property owners are beginning to request non-gas-powered equipment. Most prefer the quiet of battery-powered equipment. Some want the environmental benefits. And some are finding they just love to watch robots.
“ Once you deploy these dedicated robots to a site, the customers will never let those leave the site,” said Reinhart.“ If you do junior highs or grade schools, they’ ll name the mowers. They’ ll want you to wrap them in different colors. They glue googly eyes and action figures on top of the mowers. They adopt them as people.” www. OPE-Plus. com April 2025 OPE + 13