Will Kelly shows landscapers how to cut mowing time by 5-15 minutes per property using four techniques: three perimeter passes first, rounding corners instead of backing up, keeping stripe lines arrow-straight, and mastering the pivot turn. Customers judge quality by line straightness, and these habits boost profit and free up personal time.
The guys on our team who make the most amount of money and get home the earliest have all one thing in common. They figured out how to master this one piece of equipment. Today we are talking about the lawn mower. Out of all of the equipment on your truck, this is the one piece of equipment that you will spend the the most time on. If there's one lever that you can pull that will give you the greatest return, if you take the time and study the craft and you master it, I promise you, you will make more money and you will get home to your family and the things that matter to you the most sooner. Let's lock in. Today we're going to be watching our awesome team member named Clyde. He just entered into the backyard. As you can see, anytime you enter the backyard, it is crucial that you do 3 perimeter passes around the exterior of the backyard. What that's going to do is give you enough clearance to be able to turn around when you begin striping. Now I want you to take note as he comes down this pass and gets up into a tight corner, he doesn't push the mower up and back and forth and push it up and walk backwards with it and try to get every little area inside of those corners, those tight corners. What he does is simply round the corner. Because this piece of equipment takes so long, the last thing you want to do is try to get meticulously all the way up and all the way back. That is the weed eater's job, okay? This is how you shave minutes off of every property. Now, as you go and start to stripe Once your 3 perimeter passes are done, you really want to focus on straight lines. Customers will cancel with not having straight lines. We want the lines as straight as an arrow, as straight as possible. And when we're turning, these turns matter. You're turning 50 to 100 times on every single lawn. You can flip this mower around with one hand. Be careful because when the mower's on, the blades are spinning. So watch your feet when you're turning. You want to be very careful of that. But if you can master the turns, you can shave off literally 5 to 10, even 15 minutes per property. As Clyde makes his way to the backyard here, you're going to notice he's going to go around these garbage cans and he's going to again try to start to do more of a perimeter pass here. There's a small section back there near the AC unit that you'll be able to see here in the next shot that he does not push the mower up back there. The reason for that is because if he did push it all the way back there to try to cover that ground, he would be forced to walk backwards. All he's going to do is cut the corner, keep moving, start striping, ideally straight lines, and make sure the weed eater guy will be responsible for that. The mower is only for the 80% of majority of the lawn. Now I want you to pay extra close attention to this section here. If you look where he just cut, it's starting to get a little bit yellow. Do you guys see that? Let's take a look at it on the way back. All right, let's go ahead and pause this. Look how green this section is over here. Good cut. If you look over here, this is borderline getting to the point where it's like, hey, we're cutting too low. Do not get comfortable once you set the height in the front yard, because there are times where the height you're cutting in the front yard can be different than the height that you need to cut in the backyard. Sometimes the sprinkler systems go off, or the grass is just healthier in the backyard. So what you mowed on the front yard may need to get adjusted to the backyard. So be mindful when you guys are up there to adjust the mowing height. This is another example of entering a backyard and again, starting with 3 perimeter passes. What Matt's gonna do here, if you notice, is he's actually gonna cut this corner right here. So where I see most people kind of get hung up is again, they'll take the mower and push it all the way up into the corner and then back, and then all the way up into the middle of the lane and then back, and then all the way up to the right, and then they walk it back. And that all of this is minutes. Precious minutes that are lost on a property. Matt just comes down and completely avoids that area. He's going to hit that with the weed eater. This is how you save those precious minutes on a property. Same thing right here. He's going to get into another tight corner. He's just going to round it and turn. He's not going to try to get all of the area inside of those tight corners. That's for the weed eater. And we're going to really focus on what a good turn looks like to maximize your efficiency on a lawn. I'm going to pause it here for a second. Watch this wheel. It ba— it basically pivots and completely stops and rotates. The entire mower rotates around and that wheel stays completely still. Check this out, completely still. All the other tires are changing and moving. Same thing on this one. Watch this back left wheel here. Watch what it does. It basically stops in its track when he's turning, and he is so efficient as at his turns. So to wrap this up, 3 perimeter passes, round your tight corners, never walk backwards with the mower, and master your turns so that you can maximize the money you make and get home sooner to your family and the things that matter most to you.
