As the fall season has come to a close, you can use this downtime to winterize your landscaping equipment. Completing equipment maintenance tasks ensures that your lawn care equipment will last well into the future.
In this blog post, you’ll learn about winterizing your equipment to save money and time this spring, including
- Why It’s Essential to Winterize Your Equipment Now
- Prevent Equipment Hassles This Spring
- Winterize Now, Thrive Later: Key Benefits for Maintaining Your Lawn Care Equipment
- How Winterizing Equipment Sets You Up for a Productive Spring.
Why It’s Essential to Winterize Your Equipment Now
Your landscaping equipment is vital to your company’s success. Replacing a fleet of mowers that have sat without maintenance for four to six months is expensive.
To hit the ground running next spring, you must winterize your equipment during the slow season. This will keep your gear in top shape and provide work for your crews.
Staying in contact with your workers over the winter leads to less employee turnover in the spring. You won’t need to spend as much time recruiting this winter. Instead, you can focus on selling more of your landscaping services.
According to the NALP article “Design/Build: What to Know About Working in the Winter,” you should allow your crews to have a normal work/life balance while keeping them employed with your company.
“… Working in the winter helps with employee morale and loyalty. He says that since they started winter work, they’ve been able to keep 40 to 50 percent of their staff,” from Design/Build: What to Know about Working in the Winter.”
Your employees can do the following equipment maintenance duties:
- Clean lawn sprayers [WK1] and tanks per manufacturer’s directions
- Clean lawn mowers, including the decks
- Change oil and filters
- Charge and remove all batteries
- Drain lawn rollers as well as wipe away grass and dirt
- Empty gas from mowers and other equipment
- Inspect all equipment for damage, including hardware, tires, belts, and moving parts
- Lubricate equipment
- Complete “pull spark plug treatment”
- Remove or run your mowers until they run out of gas
- Service your mowers
- Sharpen mower blades
- Tighten any loose bolts or screws
- Wipe down your landscaping spreaders, ensuring no ice melt residue from the winter season.
Read more: 5 Essential Lawn Services to Protect Dormant Grass All Winter
Prevent Equipment Hassles This Spring
What happens if you choose not to maintain your landscaping equipment over the winter because you don’t want to pay your employees?
Depending on where you’re located, not winterizing your equipment could result in the following issues that could delay spring lawn services:
- Rusted equipment
- Damaged landscaping equipment, which results in delays and downtime
- Spring profits used to repair or replace equipment that wasn’t winterized
- Looking unprofessional because you have unworkable lawn equipment.
Winterize Now, Thrive Later: Key Benefits for Maintaining Your Lawn Care Equipment
You heard the old saying, “You reap what you sow.” The same is true for winterizing landscape equipment. You’re almost guaranteed a successful spring when you get the job done in the off-season.
Learn more: Top Strategies for Hiring a Landscaping Team: A Guide for Business Owners
Here are the key benefits of equipment winterization:
- Your equipment will be shiny and clean, ensuring your company’s professional look.
- Mower engines will work in top performance without any corrosion causing problems.
- You should have fewer equipment breakdowns during a job.
- You’ll feel like you’re using new equipment when everything works like new.
- Satisfaction that your equipment will last another season or two because of winterization.
How Winterizing Equipment Sets You Up for a Productive Spring
Get set, ready, go! Your spring season should start smoothly because you winterized your equipment:
- Mowers start right up
- String weed eaters power up without a problem
- Spreaders apply grass fertilizer, seed, and topdressing evenly.
You’ll also save money and time because you’ll have fewer breakdowns during the busy spring season. You don’t want to get behind in spring lawn care services because your mowers’ gas lines got gunked up while sitting in storage all winter.
Get Ahead of the Spring Rush: Buy Your Spyker Lawn Equipment Today
Don’t wait until spring to buy your next landscape spreader, lawn roller, or drop-in sprayer. Purchase spring lawn care equipment in the off-season and beat the spring rush.
Shop for your next Spyker Spreader at your local dealer, online, or at the Spyker store.
Have a question about your Spyker Spreader? Connect with customer service through our contact form.
Sources:
Blog.LandscapeProfessional.org, Design/Build: What to Know about Working in the Winter.
ProductiveParks.com, Winterizing Commercial Lawn Mowers.
YourGreenPal.com, How to Winterize Your Commercial Lawn Equipment (5 Simple Steps).
