7 ms·

ugh don't even get me started on landscaping crews. I want to start a business to displace all of these guys on my surrounding streets using solely electric equ

ugh don't even get me started on landscaping crews. I want to start a business to displace all of these guys on my surrounding streets using solely electric equipment. I'll even run it at a loss just for my sanity. My neighbors are importing this crap to my neighborhood and some of them realize it and others are oblivious I guess. Here in my area they blow all year around even if there's no need for it.

whyenot 3y ago
Switching to electric is better for everyone. Almost everyone I know in the arborist/landscaping industry has some degree of hearing loss.
- wutwutwat 3y ago
  Good luck cutting down a 60 year oak tree with an 18v electric chainsaw, or aerating a lawn going back and forth with a heavy steam roller-like machine with hallow spikes on the drum, or cutting inches into the earth while a second blade slices all the grass roots at the same time (edging) or digging fence post holes with an electric auger Commercial grade gas powered landscaping tools can't be replaced with consumer grade electric alternatives, or even consumer grade gas powered ones, not unless huge strides have been made in the tech and power output. Pro grade mowers are upwards of 10k and run hundreds of miles a day, every day, often in the rain. I don't see that being replaced with a EV type setup. Throwing gas in something is way faster and less error prone than quick chargers, battery swaps, or dealing with a bunch of electronics that are always deployed into dirty, wet, and unexpected envs
  - smileysteve 3y ago
    Why would you use an 18v chainsaw when 80v is the new norm? Jaws of Life are now battery powered instead of off a hydraulic system. There are certainly pro grade electric devices; industry has been using large ac motors for a while. Gasolind is certainly not easier than electric when talking about commercial vehicles with frequent starts and stops and heavy loads (a good reason why many fleets are more likely to use turbo diesels for the last 20 years). A diesel electric locomotive is a great example of heavy industry (and 2 very , and guess which system has higher maintenance costs.
  - jedberg 3y ago
    I guess we'll find out in a few months, when gas powered gardening tools are banned in California.
  - vel0city 3y ago
    > Good luck cutting down a 60 year oak tree with an 18v electric chainsaw Who said it had to be 18V? All my outdoor equipment is 56V. https://egopowerplus.com/18-inch-chain-saw/ https://egopowerplus.com/18-inch-chain-saw/ Good luck cutting down a 60 year old oak tree with a 2cc gas motor!
    - wutwutwat 3y ago
      Don’t have to have doubts towards the 2cc 2 stroke because they’ve been deployed successfully in the field by literally every one in that industry for north of 50 years.
      - vel0city 3y ago
        Most chainsaws are like 40cc or above, nearly 20x larger displacement than a 2cc. I don't think I've ever actually seen a 2cc chain saw. It would be like pocket sized, suitable for cutting pencils. 2cc motors are used in hobby rc cars.
  - brewdad 3y ago
    Much like an EV can't be the only vehicle in most US households quite yet, we can still make a lot of progress in reducing pollution (noise and particulates) by getting rid of gas powered equipment where it makes sense. Cutting down a 60 year old tree is not a weekly occurrence. Aerating a lawn happens once or twice a year. Your other examples might happen once a decade or less at any given home. Keep the gas powered equipment where it's needed but the typical weekly lawn service can replace their mowers and leaf blowers today with only slight tweaks to their day to day operations.
    - wutwutwat 3y ago
      > Cutting down a 60 year old tree is not a weekly occurrence The tree company I used to work for begs to differ. Our 2 man crew alone could do 2-4 trees a day depending on size, with one guy in the tree with a saw and one on the ground running the chipper and cutting the large bits into smaller pieces. Every example I gave was in context of the comment I'm replying to, and that comment was talking about commercial crews doing this stuff all day every day and replacing their loud gas powered equipment with electric solutions. Tree companies, lawn services, fence installers, lawn care/landscaping places. > Keep the gas powered equipment where it's needed but the typical weekly lawn service can replace their mowers and leaf blowers today with only slight tweaks to their day to day operations. Weekly for you. Every single day for the crew, sometimes all weekend too if they fall behind due to rain, etc. They have to have EV that is just as powerful and easy to jump on and get going, run all day long and operate in dirt and wet grass, and not cost a million dollars in chargers and spare batteries, which if they are lithium ion batteries, have to be replaced a lot more often than a gas engine w/ regular oil changes would. And when the electric motors burn out (they have bushings and coils which wear out with use), I can't imagine they will be cheap or available at lawn supply stores where you can go to get any gas engine part you need to fix your money maker that day I'm all for electric replacements, it's just a long way off imo. These machines get beat on daily and have to keep running. Gas is easy, produces plenty of power, and is cheap compared to an aresonal of batteries and chargers and electric motors and all that goes with wiring those things in wet enviroments
      - smileysteve 3y ago
  - lamontcg 3y ago
    > Pro grade mowers are upwards of 10k and run hundreds of miles a day Guarantee you that the guys mowing lawns around here in their beatup pickup trucks didn't drop $10k on a lawnmower.
    - wutwutwat 3y ago
      Most landscaping trucks are pretty beat on with tools going in and out, heavy equipment dropping bucket loads of stuff into the beds, etc. But let's assume they are small scale personal beater pickup trucks. If they can't afford a nicer work truck and aren't able to purchase professional grade equipment, do you think they will be able to afford electric alternatives and extra batteries, etc? Regardless, pro or consumer, they are all the same level of loud you are annoyed with. If you think it's bad as the person hearing your neighbors yard being mowed, think of what the operator is dealing with (ear protection is a must). Maybe I'm indifferent because I used to do landscaping and spent time around all kinds of loud machines, but imo it's not that big of a deal. It is loud, I'll give you that. But pro mowers are fast, because more lawns is more money. So on a regular city or suburb lawn they are in and out in 5-10 minutes. Walk inside, or close the window, or run an errand. Sometimes people's occupation is an inconvenience to us, but it's a tiny fraction of your day and there are plenty of things you can do to minimize it.
      - amluto 3y ago
        > do you think they will be able to afford electric alternatives and extra batteries, etc? If they can afford new equipment at all, then yes. Electric leaf blowers appear to be slightly less expensive than gas now.
        83 3y ago
        The cfm from electric leaf blowers are so far off from commercial gas blowers that I'm not confident they'll ever reach parity. Plus if you use high end commercial blowers you'll find that their effectiveness is somewhat exponential, that tail end of the performance lets you move a dense wall of leaves where with an electric you might as well be blowing a brick wall (I own both kinds).
  - Zigurd 3y ago
    Unless the oak tree is far from an electric outlet, even inexpensive plug-in electric chainsaws are much easier to use than gas chainsaws. The high torque means it won't stall out when all but the burliest gas chainsaws give up.
    - wutwutwat 3y ago
      You must have used some insane electric chainsaw because the ones I've seen take 15 minutes to get through a 2 inch diameter branch that you could snap by hand faster. Going to a customer's house and consuming their electric all day isn't going to work out, or having extension cords strung everywhere, where you're literally dropping heavy trees with sharp right angle cuts, and cord snagging brush and branches, and you know, the chainsaw itself which will go through a cord in an instant and if it doesn't you won't be worried about loud noises anymore. Cord powered saws for real crews are not practical at all. That leaves the options - battery powered, and those do not have enough power to cut down large trees (I'm talking about more than falling a tree), or bring your own electric, ie, run a generator, which would be gas powered and just as loud and non-green as gas powered saws and still has the whole cord issue.
      - floxy 3y ago
        >take 15 minutes to get through a 2 inch diameter branch That sounds more like a dull chain than a saw issue.
      - coldbrewed 3y ago
        > You must have used some insane electric chainsaw because the ones I've seen take 15 minutes to get through a 2 inch diameter branch that you could snap by hand faster. Maybe that was the case 5-10 years ago but not these days. A buddy and I cut 10-12" dia tree sections into rounds in short order with a 16" bar Ego chainsaw. It was, let's say, 10% slower than an equivalent Stihl but it had more than enough grunt and was incredibly quiet - no need for ear protection. If you're using a dinky little 18V chainsaw then they'll choke on anything but the new stuff using 56+ volt batteries pack some serious punch. Gas chainsaws are still needed for some use cases but the lack of noise, exhaust, vibration, and fuel/filter maintenance positions them to fully replace gas chainsaws in the reasonably near future.
  - kevan 3y ago
    Commercial mowers do exist, for example Exmark[1] (some not launched yet) and Toro[2]. Based on the pricing I'd guess the breakeven vs gas is still >3yrs without tax credits. [1] https://www.exmark.com/electric https://www.exmark.com/electric [2] https://www.toro.com/en/professional-contractor/commercial-mowers?filter=5af6690f-bc47-4523-86aa-79dbd15f2716-filtertext-Battery https://www.toro.com/en/professional-contractor/commercial-m...
  - foobarian 3y ago
    > Good luck cutting down a 60 year oak tree with an 18v electric chainsaw, or aerating a lawn going back and forth with a heavy steam roller-like machine Yeah because this is what the landscaping crews do every single week on my street. Not.
    - wutwutwat 3y ago
      You're talking about the annoying workers running electric tools instead of gas ones. If you want them to be quiet on your street, once a week, they need propre electric equipment in their day to day jobs. This isn't hard to understand. They arent' going to only use electric when they come to your block just for you.
  - rnk 3y ago
    100s of miles a day? Are these mowers going 20 miles an hour? That seems like a lot, 10 hours a day, driving on unleveled ground? Probably a lot smaller distance.
    - wutwutwat 3y ago
      The square footage they cover, going back and forth, back and forth, over your entire lawn, and many others, some that are 2+ acres, easily becomes hundreds of miles of total distance that mower drove.
      - rnk 3y ago
        I can see they'd use a lot of power, but I'd guess the mileage is lower than you think. Anyway they need lots of batteries!
lsllc 3y ago
Personally, as my garden equipment has needed replacement, I have been switching over to Ego battery-electric. Awesome equipment, very happy with it (I now have a mower, weedwacker, blower, chainsaw and hedge trimmer). The only real issue is that the blower doesn't last long on a battery, which is no problem for cleanup after mowing, but not so good for leaf cleanup in the fall. Since I now have multiple pieces of equipment, I do have a battery (and charger) for each including a large one for the mower that I can swap out as I'm working. By the time the last one is drained, I have been able to charge a couple of fresh ones.
- thrill 3y ago
  I'm doing the same, and also with the Ego which works well. My wife makes me mulch the leaves and dump them in one spot so she can use the compost in the spring.
  - lsllc 3y ago
    These days in the fall I use the blower to spread the leaves across the lawn, then I mulch the leaves with the grass using the mower with no bag on "mulch mode". Gets rid of the leaves and also fertilizes the lawn.
- livueta 3y ago
  Ooh, cool: mind if I ask how well the chainsaw works? Taken down any trees large enough to require proper notch/hinge cuts? A lot of the battery-electric chainsaws I've looked at in the past looked like glorified pruning saws, but this one looks like it could be better.
  - bombcar 3y ago
    The M18 chainsaw can conquer trees up to and probably a bit larger than the bar length. However you need to keep the blade sharp.
  - foobarian 3y ago
    I've been using the Kobalt-branded 80V line (which they discontinued, sigh) but their 18" chainsaw is awesome. Lots of runtime and it cuts comparable to a midrange gas.
jauntywundrkind 3y ago
DC passed a ban on gas powered leaf blowers. It has been excellent Longer term I feel like two thirds of this job is very automateable. I fully expect a fleet of little mower bots to be rolling off some mothership vehicle in under a decade. There's still shrub trimming & gardening roles that seem infrequent enough to be manual. And for a while I expect there probably would be an onsite human, but eventually it feels like it'll be regular enough for many dwellings. I also wish this sort of thing were just done municipally. Trimming is once every other week. Bot swarm has a preprogrammed path. Rates are incredibly low for basic service. Shuttling gear & crew around for individual lawns like is bonkers inefficient.
- ryantgtg 3y ago
  Los Angeles banned them in 1998. Nothing changed. No enforcement.
hindsightbias 3y ago
My QoL has dramatically improved since the ban on gas leaf blowers. The cafe people say I seem so much happier in the AM. Still a ways to go. Beer truck this morning had non white-noise backup horn. Nearly jumped out of my shoes.
saalweachter 3y ago
Please, for the love of god, teach your crews to back their trailers into customer driveways. It's always frustrating to me trying to get around landscaping trailers street parked on winding roads with no shoulders. Half the time you just have to hope that there's no one coming the other way too fast to stop. I can understand that in some places there's just nowhere to park, if the driveway isn't particularly long or already filled, but even when there's a hundred or more feet of empty drive no one ever seems willing to back in and get out of the street.
varenc 3y ago
For a landscaping service I imagine battery run time would be a challenge? The electric mowers I’ve seen can run 2-3 hours on a charge. That’s more than enough for personal use but won’t last the whole day if you’re a landscaper. And charging while they’re on the go seems hard as well. Perhaps there’s options with large swappable battery packs.
- Grazester 3y ago
  Why no simply add more battery. I own a cast aluminum gas mower that weights about 80lbs. If these plastic owners 70lbs of batteries I bet they would last the day. That gas owner is 28 years old. I would if a battery operated plastic one would have lasted me that long?
- adgjlsfhk1 3y ago
  swap-able battery is probably the answer here. You don't need the structural rigidity of a car and you have a truck/garage to store the other battery in.
- cookingmyserver 3y ago
  There is a youtube channel that covers this. It works really well for him. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93F08kdiOfE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93F08kdiOfE He can charge his mower while between jobs and while using other tools. I would say it works for companies that do mostly residential mowing in sunny places. If you were a larger landscaping business you would probably want at least two crews with different setups: Heavy duty gas equipment for larger yards or tough first time mows and a battery setup for residential "maintenance" mowing.
- cowsandmilk 3y ago
  Nearly every landscaping brand has backpack based battery systems that set you up with tons of power. And you just toss in extra charged batteries as needed. Lawn care companies have historically carried gas cans, nothing blocks them from carrying batteries. https://opereviews.com/ryobi-40v-backpack-battery-system-review/ https://opereviews.com/ryobi-40v-backpack-battery-system-rev...
klooney 3y ago
I don't know where you live, but where I live it's an all under the table business, mostly done by people without papers, presumably for under minimum wage. It probably wouldn't pencil out to go straight.
- DiggyJohnson 3y ago
  They might not have papers but it would be rare that they are not charging above minimum wage. Just my $0.02, as someone living in a medium COL city.

whyenot 3y ago

Switching to electric is better for everyone. Almost everyone I know in the arborist/landscaping industry has some degree of hearing loss.

wutwutwat 3y ago
Good luck cutting down a 60 year oak tree with an 18v electric chainsaw, or aerating a lawn going back and forth with a heavy steam roller-like machine with hallow spikes on the drum, or cutting inches into the earth while a second blade slices all the grass roots at the same time (edging) or digging fence post holes with an electric auger Commercial grade gas powered landscaping tools can't be replaced with consumer grade electric alternatives, or even consumer grade gas powered ones, not unless huge strides have been made in the tech and power output. Pro grade mowers are upwards of 10k and run hundreds of miles a day, every day, often in the rain. I don't see that being replaced with a EV type setup. Throwing gas in something is way faster and less error prone than quick chargers, battery swaps, or dealing with a bunch of electronics that are always deployed into dirty, wet, and unexpected envs
- smileysteve 3y ago
  Why would you use an 18v chainsaw when 80v is the new norm? Jaws of Life are now battery powered instead of off a hydraulic system. There are certainly pro grade electric devices; industry has been using large ac motors for a while. Gasolind is certainly not easier than electric when talking about commercial vehicles with frequent starts and stops and heavy loads (a good reason why many fleets are more likely to use turbo diesels for the last 20 years). A diesel electric locomotive is a great example of heavy industry (and 2 very , and guess which system has higher maintenance costs.
- jedberg 3y ago
  I guess we'll find out in a few months, when gas powered gardening tools are banned in California.
- vel0city 3y ago
  > Good luck cutting down a 60 year oak tree with an 18v electric chainsaw Who said it had to be 18V? All my outdoor equipment is 56V. https://egopowerplus.com/18-inch-chain-saw/ https://egopowerplus.com/18-inch-chain-saw/ Good luck cutting down a 60 year old oak tree with a 2cc gas motor!
  - wutwutwat 3y ago
    Don’t have to have doubts towards the 2cc 2 stroke because they’ve been deployed successfully in the field by literally every one in that industry for north of 50 years.
    - vel0city 3y ago
      Most chainsaws are like 40cc or above, nearly 20x larger displacement than a 2cc. I don't think I've ever actually seen a 2cc chain saw. It would be like pocket sized, suitable for cutting pencils. 2cc motors are used in hobby rc cars.
- brewdad 3y ago
  Much like an EV can't be the only vehicle in most US households quite yet, we can still make a lot of progress in reducing pollution (noise and particulates) by getting rid of gas powered equipment where it makes sense. Cutting down a 60 year old tree is not a weekly occurrence. Aerating a lawn happens once or twice a year. Your other examples might happen once a decade or less at any given home. Keep the gas powered equipment where it's needed but the typical weekly lawn service can replace their mowers and leaf blowers today with only slight tweaks to their day to day operations.
  - wutwutwat 3y ago
    > Cutting down a 60 year old tree is not a weekly occurrence The tree company I used to work for begs to differ. Our 2 man crew alone could do 2-4 trees a day depending on size, with one guy in the tree with a saw and one on the ground running the chipper and cutting the large bits into smaller pieces. Every example I gave was in context of the comment I'm replying to, and that comment was talking about commercial crews doing this stuff all day every day and replacing their loud gas powered equipment with electric solutions. Tree companies, lawn services, fence installers, lawn care/landscaping places. > Keep the gas powered equipment where it's needed but the typical weekly lawn service can replace their mowers and leaf blowers today with only slight tweaks to their day to day operations. Weekly for you. Every single day for the crew, sometimes all weekend too if they fall behind due to rain, etc. They have to have EV that is just as powerful and easy to jump on and get going, run all day long and operate in dirt and wet grass, and not cost a million dollars in chargers and spare batteries, which if they are lithium ion batteries, have to be replaced a lot more often than a gas engine w/ regular oil changes would. And when the electric motors burn out (they have bushings and coils which wear out with use), I can't imagine they will be cheap or available at lawn supply stores where you can go to get any gas engine part you need to fix your money maker that day I'm all for electric replacements, it's just a long way off imo. These machines get beat on daily and have to keep running. Gas is easy, produces plenty of power, and is cheap compared to an aresonal of batteries and chargers and electric motors and all that goes with wiring those things in wet enviroments
    - smileysteve 3y ago
- lamontcg 3y ago
  > Pro grade mowers are upwards of 10k and run hundreds of miles a day Guarantee you that the guys mowing lawns around here in their beatup pickup trucks didn't drop $10k on a lawnmower.
  - wutwutwat 3y ago
    Most landscaping trucks are pretty beat on with tools going in and out, heavy equipment dropping bucket loads of stuff into the beds, etc. But let's assume they are small scale personal beater pickup trucks. If they can't afford a nicer work truck and aren't able to purchase professional grade equipment, do you think they will be able to afford electric alternatives and extra batteries, etc? Regardless, pro or consumer, they are all the same level of loud you are annoyed with. If you think it's bad as the person hearing your neighbors yard being mowed, think of what the operator is dealing with (ear protection is a must). Maybe I'm indifferent because I used to do landscaping and spent time around all kinds of loud machines, but imo it's not that big of a deal. It is loud, I'll give you that. But pro mowers are fast, because more lawns is more money. So on a regular city or suburb lawn they are in and out in 5-10 minutes. Walk inside, or close the window, or run an errand. Sometimes people's occupation is an inconvenience to us, but it's a tiny fraction of your day and there are plenty of things you can do to minimize it.
    - amluto 3y ago
      > do you think they will be able to afford electric alternatives and extra batteries, etc? If they can afford new equipment at all, then yes. Electric leaf blowers appear to be slightly less expensive than gas now.
      - 83 3y ago
        The cfm from electric leaf blowers are so far off from commercial gas blowers that I'm not confident they'll ever reach parity. Plus if you use high end commercial blowers you'll find that their effectiveness is somewhat exponential, that tail end of the performance lets you move a dense wall of leaves where with an electric you might as well be blowing a brick wall (I own both kinds).
- Zigurd 3y ago
  Unless the oak tree is far from an electric outlet, even inexpensive plug-in electric chainsaws are much easier to use than gas chainsaws. The high torque means it won't stall out when all but the burliest gas chainsaws give up.
  - wutwutwat 3y ago
    You must have used some insane electric chainsaw because the ones I've seen take 15 minutes to get through a 2 inch diameter branch that you could snap by hand faster. Going to a customer's house and consuming their electric all day isn't going to work out, or having extension cords strung everywhere, where you're literally dropping heavy trees with sharp right angle cuts, and cord snagging brush and branches, and you know, the chainsaw itself which will go through a cord in an instant and if it doesn't you won't be worried about loud noises anymore. Cord powered saws for real crews are not practical at all. That leaves the options - battery powered, and those do not have enough power to cut down large trees (I'm talking about more than falling a tree), or bring your own electric, ie, run a generator, which would be gas powered and just as loud and non-green as gas powered saws and still has the whole cord issue.
    - floxy 3y ago
      >take 15 minutes to get through a 2 inch diameter branch That sounds more like a dull chain than a saw issue.
    - coldbrewed 3y ago
      > You must have used some insane electric chainsaw because the ones I've seen take 15 minutes to get through a 2 inch diameter branch that you could snap by hand faster. Maybe that was the case 5-10 years ago but not these days. A buddy and I cut 10-12" dia tree sections into rounds in short order with a 16" bar Ego chainsaw. It was, let's say, 10% slower than an equivalent Stihl but it had more than enough grunt and was incredibly quiet - no need for ear protection. If you're using a dinky little 18V chainsaw then they'll choke on anything but the new stuff using 56+ volt batteries pack some serious punch. Gas chainsaws are still needed for some use cases but the lack of noise, exhaust, vibration, and fuel/filter maintenance positions them to fully replace gas chainsaws in the reasonably near future.
- kevan 3y ago
  Commercial mowers do exist, for example Exmark[1] (some not launched yet) and Toro[2]. Based on the pricing I'd guess the breakeven vs gas is still >3yrs without tax credits. [1] https://www.exmark.com/electric https://www.exmark.com/electric [2] https://www.toro.com/en/professional-contractor/commercial-mowers?filter=5af6690f-bc47-4523-86aa-79dbd15f2716-filtertext-Battery https://www.toro.com/en/professional-contractor/commercial-m...
- foobarian 3y ago
  > Good luck cutting down a 60 year oak tree with an 18v electric chainsaw, or aerating a lawn going back and forth with a heavy steam roller-like machine Yeah because this is what the landscaping crews do every single week on my street. Not.
  - wutwutwat 3y ago
    You're talking about the annoying workers running electric tools instead of gas ones. If you want them to be quiet on your street, once a week, they need propre electric equipment in their day to day jobs. This isn't hard to understand. They arent' going to only use electric when they come to your block just for you.
- rnk 3y ago
  100s of miles a day? Are these mowers going 20 miles an hour? That seems like a lot, 10 hours a day, driving on unleveled ground? Probably a lot smaller distance.
  - wutwutwat 3y ago
    The square footage they cover, going back and forth, back and forth, over your entire lawn, and many others, some that are 2+ acres, easily becomes hundreds of miles of total distance that mower drove.
    - rnk 3y ago
      I can see they'd use a lot of power, but I'd guess the mileage is lower than you think. Anyway they need lots of batteries!

lsllc 3y ago

Personally, as my garden equipment has needed replacement, I have been switching over to Ego battery-electric. Awesome equipment, very happy with it (I now have a mower, weedwacker, blower, chainsaw and hedge trimmer). The only real issue is that the blower doesn't last long on a battery, which is no problem for cleanup after mowing, but not so good for leaf cleanup in the fall. Since I now have multiple pieces of equipment, I do have a battery (and charger) for each including a large one for the mower that I can swap out as I'm working. By the time the last one is drained, I have been able to charge a couple of fresh ones.

thrill 3y ago
I'm doing the same, and also with the Ego which works well. My wife makes me mulch the leaves and dump them in one spot so she can use the compost in the spring.
- lsllc 3y ago
  These days in the fall I use the blower to spread the leaves across the lawn, then I mulch the leaves with the grass using the mower with no bag on "mulch mode". Gets rid of the leaves and also fertilizes the lawn.
livueta 3y ago
Ooh, cool: mind if I ask how well the chainsaw works? Taken down any trees large enough to require proper notch/hinge cuts? A lot of the battery-electric chainsaws I've looked at in the past looked like glorified pruning saws, but this one looks like it could be better.
- bombcar 3y ago
  The M18 chainsaw can conquer trees up to and probably a bit larger than the bar length. However you need to keep the blade sharp.
- foobarian 3y ago
  I've been using the Kobalt-branded 80V line (which they discontinued, sigh) but their 18" chainsaw is awesome. Lots of runtime and it cuts comparable to a midrange gas.

jauntywundrkind 3y ago

DC passed a ban on gas powered leaf blowers. It has been excellent Longer term I feel like two thirds of this job is very automateable. I fully expect a fleet of little mower bots to be rolling off some mothership vehicle in under a decade. There's still shrub trimming & gardening roles that seem infrequent enough to be manual. And for a while I expect there probably would be an onsite human, but eventually it feels like it'll be regular enough for many dwellings. I also wish this sort of thing were just done municipally. Trimming is once every other week. Bot swarm has a preprogrammed path. Rates are incredibly low for basic service. Shuttling gear & crew around for individual lawns like is bonkers inefficient.

ryantgtg 3y ago
Los Angeles banned them in 1998. Nothing changed. No enforcement.

hindsightbias 3y ago

My QoL has dramatically improved since the ban on gas leaf blowers. The cafe people say I seem so much happier in the AM. Still a ways to go. Beer truck this morning had non white-noise backup horn. Nearly jumped out of my shoes.

saalweachter 3y ago

Please, for the love of god, teach your crews to back their trailers into customer driveways. It's always frustrating to me trying to get around landscaping trailers street parked on winding roads with no shoulders. Half the time you just have to hope that there's no one coming the other way too fast to stop. I can understand that in some places there's just nowhere to park, if the driveway isn't particularly long or already filled, but even when there's a hundred or more feet of empty drive no one ever seems willing to back in and get out of the street.

varenc 3y ago

For a landscaping service I imagine battery run time would be a challenge? The electric mowers I’ve seen can run 2-3 hours on a charge. That’s more than enough for personal use but won’t last the whole day if you’re a landscaper. And charging while they’re on the go seems hard as well. Perhaps there’s options with large swappable battery packs.

Grazester 3y ago
Why no simply add more battery. I own a cast aluminum gas mower that weights about 80lbs. If these plastic owners 70lbs of batteries I bet they would last the day. That gas owner is 28 years old. I would if a battery operated plastic one would have lasted me that long?
adgjlsfhk1 3y ago
swap-able battery is probably the answer here. You don't need the structural rigidity of a car and you have a truck/garage to store the other battery in.
cookingmyserver 3y ago
There is a youtube channel that covers this. It works really well for him. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93F08kdiOfE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93F08kdiOfE He can charge his mower while between jobs and while using other tools. I would say it works for companies that do mostly residential mowing in sunny places. If you were a larger landscaping business you would probably want at least two crews with different setups: Heavy duty gas equipment for larger yards or tough first time mows and a battery setup for residential "maintenance" mowing.
cowsandmilk 3y ago
Nearly every landscaping brand has backpack based battery systems that set you up with tons of power. And you just toss in extra charged batteries as needed. Lawn care companies have historically carried gas cans, nothing blocks them from carrying batteries. https://opereviews.com/ryobi-40v-backpack-battery-system-review/ https://opereviews.com/ryobi-40v-backpack-battery-system-rev...

klooney 3y ago

I don't know where you live, but where I live it's an all under the table business, mostly done by people without papers, presumably for under minimum wage. It probably wouldn't pencil out to go straight.

DiggyJohnson 3y ago
They might not have papers but it would be rare that they are not charging above minimum wage. Just my $0.02, as someone living in a medium COL city.