Running a Lawn Care Business WITH NO TRAILERS!

Hey everyone, It's Mike Andes, landscapebusinesscourse.com I'm here at the Augusta Lawn Care Shop today. I wanted to show you around our trailerless setup. So in our market we do have to bag clippings. So a few things right off the bat that might be a little bit different than yours. If you don't have to bag clippings, I recommend getting the ramp that goes into the back of the truck. So there's the ramp rack, there's the mow and go systems. Those are all. You can just search those online, you'll find what I'm talking about. But in that scenario, you actually take the tailgate off and then hold dove to tail system. Ramp goes into the back of the truck and you put like a zero turn in there. Problem with us is we gotta fill this up with clippings. And so in our market it's very standard that everyone bags clippings. And so that whole back of the bed, we always try to get these eight foot beds because we do have a lot of clippings and so we have to leave that open. But if you don't bag clippings, I would recommend getting a rack or, sorry, a ramp instead of a rack. So let me start off on the back of the truck. We'll walk you through the whole thing, kind of show the efficiencies that are built in and what we kind of do to standardize our trailerless setups here at Augusta long term. So first of all, this ramp Here is from TrailerRacks.com and we've played with a lot of different types of racks and still not found anything that's super, ideal or perfect necessarily. The reason for that is because it's very hard to find what's called a cargo carrier, which is actually what the name of these racks are called as cargo carriers. It's hard to find one that's going to fit a 30 inch mower. So we have other racks that we've used that we really like for 21 inch mowers. But when you start getting wider than 29 inches, it's really difficult to find one that we are totally in love with stock. So right now we modify these slightly. And so this is the 30x x mark mower with the Kohler engine. And so if you have a 30 inch mower from Exmark, you might have the Kawasaki, which is. We actually prefer the Kawasaki's or that's what we've been used of. But the Kohler engines, they kind of up the power a bit. And we need that in our market simply due to the fact that we get a lot of wet clippings and bagging issues if we don' have enough power. And same thing like if you got, if you got a wet day long grass on a hill, going up a hill, the old Kawasaki would leave like a trail of clipping sometimes in between the two blades. So because if you walk around here, I can show you underneath on these mowers you actually got two blades here. And so if they're not, if it's not powerful enough to engine, basically you'd see like a strip of clippings in here. So last year, this is brand new from Exmark. They, they came out with the Kohler engine. It's a little bit stronger, a little more powerful. A couple things we like about it is the side discharge unit. So with a typical 21 inch mower, like a Honda, which we used to use a lot of for the 21 inch mowers or even the Exvarc 21s, if we didn't bag, you had to literally just take the bag off and like the clippings would be falling at your feet and then like disperse it very well across the lawn. Cause you're walking through the clippings. What's nice about this one is if you want to not bag clippings, you can simply pop this thing off.

Basically just pull this out. Pops right off. And so then it's just a side discharge. And because the two blades I find that really does a nice job of mulching, like cutting up those clippings to be very fine. So we really liked it so far. A couple things that we have had some issues with is just the mechanisms up top here because now that we are using this as the primary mower on this setup you got little bolts and little wires. These things are not, you know, the best. We're still trying to figure out, you know, how to make these a little more systematized in terms of training all the crew how to fix these things in the field. So if something like this breaks or a bolt pops off or a spring gets loose, they can quickly fix it and not have any downtime. So we're still working on that. But right now we've changed all our trailerless setups to be completely 30x and we've seen about a 30% efficiency when they're mowing on lawns that are less than about 5,000 square feet. Above 5,000 square feet, it does take longer with this setup, 100%. So we have to Account for that in our pricing and making sure that they have the correct amount of budgeted hours on the job because they have this equipment. Alright, so let's move around. Actually let me show you the ramp here, the rack in the back. So this basically just comes straight down. It's an aluminum rack. So it's very lightweight. And the downside of that is it's easier to bend or like it's not the most rigid metal. But the nice thing and the reason that we got the aluminum is because it's really, really to move and take off of the 2 inch hitch receiver. So if we ever wanted to pull a dump trailer, we could just pop this off very easy, one person and you know, hook it up to a trailer instead of having to. We have, we've tried other steel racks and the problem is it takes two people. They're like three to four hundred pounds. It's quite an adventure just trying to put it on and off. And so with these very, very light. This is probably all of, you know, ten pounds puts up in place locks and ready to when they head out on the road. We have ratchet straps that we basically tie one through here across the front, one through the back to modify this rack because like I said, it's very difficult to find a rack that's wider than 30 inches. And the reason it was difficult is it's not necessarily. Even though it's a 30x and 30 inches wide, it's actually more like 31 and a half, 32 inches because you got the actual deck right. And so the problem is finding a rack that actually is going to fit. So what we do is we actually cut this out so that this is like a notch where the deck can sit in. And so it does a couple things. Number one, it allows the mower to be on the rack because otherwise it's about a half inch too thin, too narrow. But it also kind of acts as a locking mechanism because the decks in here, they can't roll around very much in addition to the extra straps that we got on it. So that's what we're working with right now. Down the road we'll probably have to custom fab something because we would like it something a little more rigid, a little more sturdy and about 2 inches wider. And because we kind of cut this and kind of comprom the structure underneath here, we actually had to put a piece of metal to reinforce this edge so it doesn't start bending. It is aluminum, it isn't super rigid. So underneath here we have to Do a bracket that kind of reinforces the floor of that rack. All right, so let's move around here to the side. All our trailer racks are from trailerracks.com greentouch. And if you're a franchisee, you know that we have a Coupon code for 15% off from them. And so they really have been a brand ambassador for Augusta and we appreciate that. So all of these lock in place. And basically this whole setup that you're seeing right now in terms of the racking systems, you're looking about a thousand dollars just on average, depending on your shipping where you're at in the country. But when you're putting this on a back of a truck, I really recommend that you do have an eight foot bed because you're gonna get so much more usage out of the rack. If it's only six feet, you really can only put like a couple attachments on and it just becomes less versatile. So we really like to use all of our racking systems on 8 foot beds simply due to the fact that we can fit everything we need on it. So this is the new version 3 system at TrailerRacks.com and all of it's locked. So you got your key, you just pop it in here.

And it's supposed to work.

See here?

There we go. All right. So once that's done, then you just have to move this, which unlocks it, and then you can take the trimmer out. I'm somewhat height challenged, so it's a little difficult. Difficult for me to sometimes unlock the top part, but for most people it's not that difficult to slide it in. You go here.

Locks in place, and it's not going anywhere. Sometimes when, when you got these, these racks on, it seems like they rattle around a little bit, but like they are not going anywhere. They're bolted from the inside of the, of the bed. And the first time you put these together, honestly, can be really frustrating. You're gonna spend a few hours, a lot of finagling. We've never had a setup where we don't have to do a little bit in terms of getting some different bolts or just playing around with stuff. So the first one can be a little frustrating. Now they have it down to a science. They can put the whole thing together in like 30 minutes to an hour probably. But the first one's gonna take you a little extra time. But what you gotta do on trailerracks.com if you go there, you gotta buy this bed rail system for everything to latch onto. Unless you're Gonna actually drill holes into the bed rail of the truck. And so I wouldn't recommend doing that. Because if you ever change your mind on what you want that truck to be used for. Or if you wanna sell it down the road, Then you got the bed rails, which isn't that great. So you get these bad boys, they attach onto here. And then you can put whatever you want, Move it in and out, move them from side to side. If you get different equipment, you can move them and not have to worry about holes in the bed of the bed rail of the truck. So that's the trimmers we use the. I think it's FS111. I don't even know what we use. Let's see.

I think, yeah, These are, yeah, FS111s. That's what we use. We used to use the ones that are slightly larger. I think they're the 130s, but they're just a little bit heavier. And a little more fatiguing on the guys. And these, I think, are about 20 bucks cheaper, too. So that's what we use. You'll notice here on the top, we do use the combi system that steel has. So we can have the edger attachment. And we found that the star heads work better than the rectangular eds in terms of creating a nice defined edge for along concrete and things. So we use the star bit. That's what we call it. And then we. This is just really just an attachment to the combi system. Because this guy right here, we could take off the edger. And just take a hedger attachment. Or a chainsaw attachment. Or a rototiller attachment. And just pop it onto here. So if this truck is going out for mowing, but they also have to trim a couple bushes at a property, they just literally need to throw in the attachment for the combi system, for the hedger attachment, and then they get the whole job done. Throw the clippings in the back of the truck. Having the truck open in the back. The bed also allows us to use for landscaping jobs, cleanups, mulch installations. You can still put 2 yards of mulch over these racks. And fill up the bed of the truck. As well as you can put wheelbarrows in the back and the whole bed. So that's why we like to be able to take that ramp rack on the back off. Or, sorry, that rack simply do. The fact that we can then open up the tailgate. And throw all of our tools, Whether it be hardscaping, landscaping, into this truck. And still could Be used outside of just mowing. Like if we have. The one downside of having a ramp is if you keep your zero turns and everything on here, it kind of is designated as that unless you have to take it on and off every day. So we want to eliminate that as much as possible. We leave these on all the time. The only thing we ever take off this whole setup is the mower. And that's kind of leads me to the next thing here on these. What's nice about this ramp is you can open the bed of the truck and it's still have access to it. We had some other ones that the ramp was closer, and we kind of liked it at first because it just looked a little bit more sturdy with it, with the whole raft being closer. But then you can open this up and you couldn't have access. Like in here, I can leave this on and still get a wheelbarrow or get materials or whatever I need out of the bed of the truck, which is nice. Same thing here with the version three of the blower rack. These are steel 600 models. And again, all of these are labeled in terms of which trucks they're on, the blowers and trimmers, etc. Right. Walk around front. We label all of our trucks, by the way. Just the pickup number on the front. These are all painted yellow. And then we put the decals. Decals on. And the painting. Depending on your mark is going to cost. We've seen anywhere from $600 to $2,000. Really going to depend on your market. Down in. Even in Texas, we have one franchisee that it was like $2,500 they wanted at Mako. And then another guy was like, $600, $700 to get the whole thing painted. We pay about $1000 per truck, 1100 depending on the size of the truck to get them painted yellow. And then we pay another $500 to get all the decals installed. So that includes printing them and installing them. And so that is what you see here. And it has the yellow, the brown, and the green kind of are colors around Max, our mascot. All right, so here. These are the new fuel cages that I got over at Green Touch. And these are great because they have a locking system. They just pull this down, pop this off the top. You can access your gas cans. And then, as always, nice and easy to be able to lock this thing up at night. Now it's locked and ready to go. Can't get into this thing. If someone really wanted to get these off, like they could, they'd have to cut these bolts or take off these. We've never had a problem yet. As long as you have some good motion detectors and lights around your shop, usually you're gonna be okay. So, fuel cage is there. We have the five gallon and the two and a half gallon. For the five gallon, we use straight gasoline. And then for the two and a half gallon ones, we have the two cycle engine oil. And we started using these a couple years ago. This model of a gas can we used to use. Sure can. And it was okay. The problem with it was a lot of dripping. We had some issues with them. We just never really liked them as much as we do with these. These are great because they're spring loaded here. So if you tip them over, nothing happens. Then if I take this and I push the button there, it comes out immediately. We really like these. Since we got them, we switched everything over from our old gas cans to these. And a lot of times what happens is you get busy, you're out in the middle of a job, you're at a gas station, you're like, oh, I just need to pick up a gas can. Pick up like a cheap old $10 gas can that's just like super old. That thing will come back to bite ya. Invest in some of these. They cost like $25. They are a little more expensive, but in the long run, it's gonna save you a lot of time.

All right, so let's move on back to the sprayer. Now we use the steel sprayers. There are some really cool ones that I've seen that are electric that I'm interested in getting, but they are about two and a half times the cost of one of these bad boys. So for now, we're sticking with them. We've had some issues in the past with the p. Like just things getting bent sometimes. And partly due to the fact that when you are on a trailer with a setup like this, this is the last thing happening. And so sometimes what happens is the crew will just throw this back behind, which is okay until you throw a gas can on it or a bin of debris or it gets buried in grass for things. And so we've had some problems with that. We'll have to figure out some way of getting that to be. Technically, you should be able to put this handle around here and clip it here. But then again, like, if it just slips through, goes over a bump something and ends up down here, that's the last thing we want. So we might have to modify something there. But we have Seen some really cool. There's some really cool stuff. Even@trailerracks.com they got a battery operated sprayers that don't require you to have to be pumping all the time. Which is not a huge nuisance because on this type of a setup, without being at a landscaping job, there's gonna be small amounts of spraying. It's not like spraying a whole field. You're just gonna be spraying like a spot spray here and there in gravel or something like that. All right, so this is another attachment that again, you can just bolt right onto the side of the bed rail. And that is for the hand tools. So I'll hop up here in the back of the truck.

But again, we got just kind of a standard hand tool that you're gonna need out on a mowing route if you're doing some weeds or other general maintenance at a property. Hardware. Brake, shovel, soft brake. And again, you can put other different kinds of attachments on here if you like. There's also an attachment that if you wanted to, you could bend this out at a 45 degree angle. So these are all tilted backwards. We've never had to invest in that yet, but that's kind of the setup to there. So hopefully you learned something. Again, the big difference that you might have from us is that you don't need a bag clippings. If you don't need a bag clipping, it's a really good investment to spend $1200. As low as 1200 up to 3000 depending on which system you go with. But the mow and go system and then the ramp rack are two different models. I would recommend if you actually need to get a zero turn, because what's cool is you can get. If you have a ramp, you can get a good 36 or a 48 inch zero turn in between your wheel wells. Especially if you don't have to bag right. You don't have a bag. Like for us, even if we were to use this as a ramp and put a ramp on here, we'd have a bagging system on the side of our zero turn and that adds like another 12 inches. So like we would hardly be able to get anything of size in the back of this thing because we do need to have a bagger on it. So if you don't have to have this rack in the back and you're able to get a ramp instead, all the best. You know that that's probably the best route to go. And honestly, if we didn't have to bag clippings that's what we'd be doing. The bottom line is adding and adding a big trailer on the back of your truck reduces your fuel economy. It's a lot of maintenance on that enclosed trailer in terms of brakes and tires. And then if you have an enclosed trailer with the cords that come down on the back, doors that come down, those break all the time, tail lights get broken, the sheet metal on those enclosed trailers is so thin, they get beat up like crazy. Lots of maintenance, lots of damages on the. Those. It's harder to. The biggest thing is really, it's harder to train people. Taking someone off the street. Most anyone can drive this setup because it's literally just a truck with a few feet on the back that's added. Whereas a trailer, you got to learn how to back up. You got tight spaces. They got to be more intuitive in terms of traffic. And if they're blocking a driveway, they're easier to jackknife. There's just a whole bunch of more maintenance involved with an enclosed trailer or even a trailer in general. So really encourage you to use this if you have smaller properties and if you have larger properties and you don't need a bag having a ramp that goes in the back, you can get a 48 inch mower zeroed from the back of that thing and not need the big. The big trailer. I'd rather you spend the extra $6,000 on marketing or $5,000 on marketing instead of buying an enclosed trailer or some big setup where then you gotta feel obligated to fill it up with big mowers and all the rest of it. So that's my two cents. That's my takeaway. Hopefully something that was said that was helpful. This is our trailerless setup again. In our market, we have to bag clip things. But I hope something was helpful for you today. Thanks so much. Make sure you check out landscapebusinesscourse. Com and I'll see you next time.