East
Devon District Council has recently invested in a third Toro Groundsmaster 360
after its previous two models purchased in 2015, have proved to be a huge
success with the Council’s groundscare department.
Dan
Haydon, from the groundscare department, says that there were a lot of boxes
for these machines to tick with reliability at the fore and the Groundsmaster
360 has ticked them all.
“We have
so many different kinds of grounds to maintain, from communal gardens and
children’s play areas to sports pitches and cemeteries,” says Dan. “Having a
robust, reliable machine that can adapt is vital and the Groundsmaster 360 does
just that.
“Our
machines need to be in use every day for eight and a half hours from spring
until November; it’s a big task. With the two GM360s we’ve been using for four
years, we’ve never had a problem, so it wasn’t a hard decision to purchase
another one.”
The
Council had been using triple cylinder mowers before purchasing the new GM360
rotary mowers. Due to government cuts, the frequency of cutting areas had to be
reduced and its previous mowers weren’t able to keep the grass short for long
enough, which is why the department opted to trial the GM360 zero-turn mower.
The
quad-steer all-wheel drive steering of the GM360 provides maximum productivity
even in undulating terrain. Able to climb hills without slipping and make 180
degree turns without tearing turf, Dan couldn’t be happier with the machine.
“Whatever
the weather or type of terrain – it performs across the board. We’ve seen a
real improvement, and so have our other teams. We currently have eight teams
across Devon, three of which have Toro machines, but now everyone is noticing
the difference with Toro and there is definite potential in the future for Toro
to pushed out across all the teams.”
