The Aussie perspective is interesting!
You're right about mowing the grass, the whole lot of the grass. Lol
In the US, or should I call it America, lol (interesting side note like 30 something years ago I always refer to it as the United States or the us but it seems a lot of Canadian people refer to it as America but I don't know about other parts of the world or what it has become now. I just thought it was funny when I was talking to a young girl on the phone and she said America)...but here, you're right, most everybody knows every square foot if not every square inch of grass 98 plus percent of the time.
In fact the stupid rules and regulations which is all zoning forces you to.
Only if you can find a piece of property like when we looked at a number of years ago that had three acres but only one acre was built on and the other two acres was woods can you leave the wooded part alone.
However, I can guarantee you if there were not trees there and you cut them down or it was an early situation for the it had not grown up yet to be trees and to be actual woods they would come out and force you to cut the whole thing every week. SMDH!
As reading your comments about the trailer laws I was thinking Where in the world is this guy live? And I immediately went to New York or some snooty rich East Coast area because they are often more restrictive but that seems so ridiculous to me.
The industry standard for commercial guys forever has been a 60-inch mower and they just recently started making like a 61 or 62 so they can market it as being better but this created a situation where some guys couldn't fit them on there already established trailers so that created a problem..
The most common in existence over the entire country would be a 42 inch front engine lawn tractor style rider.
Years ago they made her number of 38's and even some 40s but not many of the 40s but it seems prior to that the rear engine rider like the snappers and stuff was pretty popular and those were only like 28 to 32 inches with a single blade.
They make a good number of 48-in three blades and then popped out some 46-in two blades a while back and they can often go up to 50 or 52 in the residential style but 42 definitely dominates.
For the commercial guys they never use riders as people somehow look down on it as a cheaper guy on the side cutting grass or kid mowing lawns and not a professional company but you can have the oldest beat up truck without even a magnetic sign on the side of it and a 25-year-old walk behind skag 36 or 60-in cut and come out and do it and they think you're a fine professional.
The market, people, industry just expect zero turns, larger commercial walk behinds or standards when you're charging people money to cut their lawn as in multiple accounts style business and not just a kid cutting a few lawns for extra money or just getting started.
Some people keep a smaller pistol grip style walk behind so I can fit through smaller Gates but 36 in is the most common one and even that doesn't fit through all gates so most people just use the larger ones and then half 21 or 22 in self-propelled push style mowers for the areas they can't get to with their big ones which are almost always 50 in to 60 in.
I personally don't like to cut grass at all! I like to play with the mower or test one out for somewhere between 4:00 and 12 minutes depending on whether it's a walk behind or a rider but that's it!.
After that it just becomes work.
I love zero turns as far as using them but again for only 12 minutes and even with a 60 inch or larger I can't get my whole lawn done in 12 minutes, but I can get my front lawn done in almost that time.
I don't work on many of them but I used to do a decent number of them but I peeked out at my busiest year doing over 620 mowers or items I should say in a year which is actually not even a full 8 months of demand in the season.
I've cut that back a decent amount now to try not to stress me out so much...
I followed a lot of information over the years and seeing a decent amount of things myself and it just saddens me how so many people have hydro failures and problems at such low hours on these residential grade machines.
I believe that's why more of them started coming without our meters on them because it was incriminating..
Having a mower 10 or 12 years doesn't sound terrible to have a major failure or to have to replace it because one of the transmissions is going to cost so much to replace but looking down and seeing you only have 250 hours on it is a lot more disappointing!
I have seen hundreds of riders from my and surrounding areas which is actually on the edge of rural but still a suburban area and certainly not anything like a downtown city, inner city or big city with my immediate area being a city of 47,000 and most all of it built on half acre lots because it hasn't been a city as long as most of the surrounding cities and everyone had wells and septic tanks but no city/county water, or even natural gas.
People only start mowing typically in April but sometimes the second to the last week of March and they typically mow until through September with some going into October or at least to mulch up some leaves a couple of times.
Of all the mowers I have seen since doing this professionally on a larger number basis, the riders all seem to average between 25 to 35 hours per year with most being closer to 25 or 30.
So they often come in 12 years old, 15 years old, 17 years old and they rarely have over 220 hours on them.
In fact I hardly ever see one with over 270 on it but I have had three or four exceptions and the past four or five years that caught my attention.
I had an Ariens zero turn come in that was at least a 48 inch cut with a Briggs V-Twin intek 22 horsepower or something like that that the people bought brand new and said they never had an engine problem or transmission problem the whole time they had it.
It was just used for residential use but they had I guess a little over an acre to cut.
It had 1400 hours on it and I told them that frankly if it blew up today they more than got their money's worth from it and more than hardly anyone else gets from mowers.
I had another that was in the 12s and a couple in the 800s and 900s.
This is all for residential. I don't do much commercial for the commercial guys at all.
Some of my residential customers had commercial bars but they don't use them but about a tenth as much.
Had a kid a couple of years ago bring me a commercial 50 in John Deere with a Kawasaki twin on it that we needed to replace one side engine head and it had 1200 hours on it too and of course it was coming up on 10 years old but he had bought it from a private homeowner who had a decent sized lot.
Other than that, the mowers I see might be older and might even be a little beat up but they are just babies in there amount of usage and it's sad to have problems so early on.
I just couldn't bring myself to buy a zero turn with the smaller output shaft of the 3100. I would have to get the 3400 to step up to the beefier unit and we even get bigger ones if a decent price increase allowed it.
I sent a guy to a local dealer last year and I believe he bought a bobcat that was commercial with some really good hydros size-wise. Maybe a 4100 or something like that.
