Five years ago, Andrew Hoffman, owner of Hoffman’s Lawn & Fertilization, got tired of using a push spreader and a spray reel on lawns in his hometown of Delaware, Ohio.

Two years earlier, he moved his business from Ohio from Salt Lake City. “In Salt Lake City, you could get away with a hose reel and a push spreader with smaller lots,” he says.

After he moved back to Ohio, the larger sizes of residential lots had him scrambling for a way to cover more ground.

Hoffman purchased a PermaGreen spreader/sprayer and hasn’t turned back. The company, which brought in $2.2 million dollars in lawn care, maintenance and pest control in 2019, uses PermaGreen and Exmark spreader/sprayers.

“They’re amazing, can’t go any other way,” Hoffman says. “The average hose is 300 to 350 feet, and anything beyond that you’re bringing a backpack and cutting into your man-hours.”

Hoffman currently services lawns up to 5 acres. “The biggest benefit to the spreader/sprayer is simply having the ability to spread granular, spot spray and do a blanket application at the same time instead of having to do each separately,” he explains.

The spreader/sprayers have changed his business dramatically. “We didn’t advertise weed control until we got that machine,” he says. “I didn’t feel we could do a good job in lawn care without it.”

The first year with the spreader/sprayer, the company made $10,000 in lawn care. Today, the company has 1,200 lawn care accounts — $390,000 in lawn care revenue and rising.

“This year, all I want to be pushing is lawn care — for us, it gives us the fewest complaints from a service perspective,” he says. The company conducted an audit of its complaint and question frequencies and found that for every 30 maintenance visits, there was one complaint. Compare that to one complaint per 80 visits for lawn care and one per 1,000 visits for pest control.

For LCOs looking to purchase a spreader/sprayer, he recommends they do their homework to find the best machine and investigate whether there are good service options for the equipment. To repair his equipment, Hoffman takes his Exmarks to the dealer, but he says it often turns into a joint repair between the dealer and his mechanics because oftentimes, dealers don’t have enough experience working on spreader/sprayers.

To cut back on the repair visits, Hoffman advises operators to winterize and empty the water, flush the nozzles and fill the lines with antifreeze. For daily maintenance, he recommends cleaning the filters and the machine every day, especially the lines, paddle and hopper.

Manufacturer’s view

Matt Smith, sales manager at Steel Green, says that the lawn care operators he speaks with tend to be concerned about the time savings and man-hours they could potentially save. “They like to ask questions about top-end speed and the approximate amount of time when going back to fill up the truck,” he says.

Smith says that depending on the size of the spray tips and the sizes of the tank, with typical spreader-sprayers, operators can cover two to four acres before having to fill their tanks. Having a speedometer, a pressure gauge and properly calibrating a spray tip size on a spreader/sprayer allow the operator to control the amount of product he is applying and ensure his company isn’t over- or undercharging customers for the amount of fertilizer it’s using.