Unless you have buckets on money I would strongly suggest buying a used mower ( or 3 ) to kick things off.
Nothing worse than having $ 15,000 sitting in your shed while you are pushing a hand mower around yards.
You won't know what equipment you need till your contracts start coming in.
For example I have a commercial customer who has contract with the local council to mow the verg on a 15 mile stretch of country road.
For that he uses a 42" Great Dane fitted with Gators.
He also does some churches & a cemetery and for those he uses a Walker as they want the clippings removed so the lawn looks like green carpet.
HE does some farm land that is vacant waiting for redevelopement .
For that he uses his Toro Timemaster fitted with High lift blades.
HE also has a JD EZ225 with a 32" deck which he is no longer using much , he had that for residentials so it could go through side gates which down here are usually 36".
He used to do a lot a 1 to 1/2 acre lots with houses at the front that went almost fence to fence but he has given most of them up as they are not particularly profitable.
A different customer got retrenched & decided to be a lawn contractoor, walked into the local lawn mower shop and came out with $ 62,000 ( AUS ) of Husqvarna gear.
HE had been working 10 hours a day for 3 years before he became my customer and in those 3 years he had not made a cent and still owed $ 20,000 on the gear.
I sold him some of my loan mowers more suited to what he was doing and a tear latter he had sold most of the gear the Husqvarna shop had sold him & was using my gear
Four years on he is now making enough to look at new gear to replace some of the stuff I sold him.
A 61' deck is not much good for doing 1/4 acre blocks & a 36" deck makes hard work of 3 acres of pasture.
Thanks for the input, and I certainly get what you are saying. I wound up ordering a new Pro-Turn 152 with the Kawasaki engine. The only other option in that line was the Kohler engine, either with or w/o EFI. The dealer mainly recommended staying away from EFI.
I understand the idea of going used, and easing into it. I would agree to do that with a budget limited business plan. I do have enough capital to start off with a new rider, however, and don't need it to pay for itself right away. I've got a several year business plan to get this on solid ground, and then a plan to build it up from there with multiple teams, I hope, over the next decade or so. As such, I don't want to deal with someone else's headache, and rather have a solid machine to start with that I know I can rely on. I went with the 52" as that seems to be the bread and butter size for the cutters around here. Yes, I don't know my end market yet, but I'm completely confident this size will be useful. A 48" was the other consideration, and I was torn between those two sizes, frankly, but I wanted the bigger mower to be my best model, and I'll probably look for a smaller one as move forward, which may even need to be smaller than 48", I don't know yet. And it could even be a stand behind, maybe. Either way, I could see getting that one used, maybe, knowing I have the 52" as a reliable model. A 60" seems like it would be more limited in what it would be useful for, I understand things like flex in the deck and rough terrain can be an issue for that size. I figure if I have a job that a 60" would work for, the 52" will at least be a usable alternative. 48" would be a harsh replacement for 60", and could be too big for some smaller jobs possibly? Anyway, it was a roll of the dice which way to do, but like I said, I do have a plan to add a smaller one down the road when needed.
The guy you described with $62k in gear is a crazy story. I don't see how anyone can expect that to pay off in this business in a short time period. I'm looking at a total investment of $15k-20k (US) for an initial investment, and don't need it to be really profitable for a couple of years. After that, I expect it to be doing well enough to stand on it's own. I hope with my budget, that will be reasonable. With 3x that budget? No, I can't see that being reasonable to expect. Unless you have some very profitable jobs, it would take many years to make that investment back for sure.
