After yesterday’s blog post on remote controlled slope mowers, we received a number of questions concerning the use of standard commercial lawn mowers on hillsides.
When mowing on slopes and hillsides, operators of lawn care equipment must use extreme caution. Each individual lawn mower has different center-of-gravity characteristics. Though we give quite a bit of lawn mower handling procedures within the pages of our lawn care business training course, we strongly suggest you check the manufacturer’s guidelines of your particular lawn mower.
As a brief example, Scag Power Equipment has published a safe handling pamphlet outlining proper use of their Zero-Turn Radius commercial riding mowers. Though each manufacture will have differing guidelines for their lawn mowers, Scag says that their Zero-Turn commercial mowers should never be operated on a slope greater than 15 degrees and they should never be running unattended. There are many general guidelines telling operators to reduce speed and use care when approaching blind corners.
Government regulations on lawn mowers is becoming more strict too. In fact, in a recent report the CDC send a strong message to lawn mower manufacturers on such things as developing Roll Over Protection Systems for their lawn mowers.
Mowing on slopes increased the danger of operating a lawn care business. So, we hope you will heed your equipments mfg.’s instructions.
Take care and be safe mowing slopes.