North East
Lincolnshire Council has purchased Toro for the first time, thanks to its
competitive price in the tender process, and recommendations from other local
authorities.
Chris Whitfield,
assistant fleet manager who co-ordinated the purchase, says: “We were in the
market for two cylinder mowers, replacing like-for-like.
"Recently we’ve
been purchasing more flail mowers in response to the longer periods we have
between cuts, but these cylinder mowers are intended for roadways, parks and
open spaces; areas that require cutting more often, for which a cylinder mower
is perfect.
“We followed the
usual procedure by putting the request onto ‘Yotender’ and the Toro LT3340
cylinder mower met our specification and came in with the most competitive
price.”
A good start, but
North East Lincolnshire Council had never owned a Toro machine before so Chris
needed a bit more to go on: “Jon Wright from Russell Group arranged for us to
have the LT3340 on demo for a week. It looked great, performed well and the team
confirmed it would be a good choice.”
It was at this point
that Chris decided to refer to colleagues from the ‘Yorlincs’ regional fleet
forum, a group of fleet managers from over 17 local authorities and councils
sharing best practice, advice and experiences.
“I wanted to see if
anyone had experience of using Toro and specifically this machine,” says Chris.
“Very quickly I had positive reviews. East Riding of Yorkshire Council in
particular stood out, they had a regional fleet of 17 Toros, including 12
LT3340 mowers. The fleet has been in use for a couple of years and the team
using them gave good feedback – they had no issues, in fact they had nothing
but praise for the brand.”
This is certainly feedback with which Reesink
Turfcare, the UK distributor of Toro, is familiar. The heavy-duty,
four-wheel-drive triple LT3340 mower is one of Toro’s hardest working grounds
mowers, with Nigel Lovatt, Reesink regional manager, saying it is a machine
councils and contractors appreciate for its durability, strength and
performance.
With all that in
mind, Chris confirms that there was no reason not to go with Toro
