Contract Flailing

[beppington]

I like the idea of a flail mower, and in fact I bought a Caroni and I'm happy with it for my personal usage. But I don't understand how you can make any kind of generalization that flail mowers somehow automatically have sharper blades than rotary mowers. I mean doesn't that depend on how one grinds the steel as opposed to what type of machine the steel is mounted on?

I suppose that's true. I'm going on 1) the Caroni's knives which are quite sharp, when new anyway, and 2) the blunt rotary cutter blades I've seen. I didn't know anybody bothered sharpening rotary cutter blades. Also, the flail mower knives I've seen are made from thinner steel than rotary cutter blades, so if the owner of either unit never sharpens the blades, naturally the flail blades/ knives would be sharper since they're thinner. Oh, also ... ... I suspect that flail mower owners are likely to sharpen their knives from time to time, since flails are closer to being a finish mower than rotary cutters, whereas I haven't really heard of rotary cutter owners sharpening theirs. There was at least one discussion on this site about it, but I don't think many people actually bother.

 

[clemsonfor]

About flail mowers in general,

When we had our Ford Jubilee with the 7 foot John Deere finish flail mower with a three row rotor we had no issues other than cleaning the radiator screen and knocking down overgrown 10 foot high pasture brush.

I can and will tell you I did not fail Business 101 in pursuit of my accounting degree.

Anyone dealing with contract mowing with a municipality is already behind the eight ball because of possible competition, bonding issues, umbrella liability costs, operator training time, hourly wages per operator, transit times between locations, required road sign postings warning the driver that mowing is occuring, required operator training to comply with state insurance issues, possible and evident vandalism, and overhead costs.

Comparing contract mowing to a package delivery service is an extremely poor comparison.

If you are saddled with bidding a per day cost of mowing this involves
governmental accounting dealing with a revenue stream that is shrinking and is suffering uneven revenue disbursments from the local or state treasury
which depends on quarterly payment from sales, fuel and income taxes as well as any available federal grant money which include many more issues not just the type of mower or the knive used including the actual municipality having limited funds to pay or pursue the task of mowing the right of way.


If the original poster is contract mowing with individuals the normal state of affairs involves a per acre charge annually which is what I must assume he is referring to as he has not stated otherwise.

Unless im to stupid to understand your senario, even it does not make sense to use a flail. It dont matter if your bidding per day or job, time is money. If we put your scenario togeather with a guy who does it for a living and his experience i can figure this out. It still will be cheaper with rotery cutters.

If said municipality can only afford 30 days of 5 guys mowing or 150 man days or 1200 man hours of mowing. They bid this out on a per hour basis with some standards of say has to meet X number of miles or something as a minimum. Anyway you have to buy a more expensive mower if using flail, per FWJ recomendations use a larger tractor say 20% larger so it costs more. Your breakeven point is going to be higher than the guy using rotery mowers and smaller tractors and he will still be able to cover more ground per hour than you thus bid cheaper as he is doing the work faster and can get on to the next job.

 

[JoeinTX]

Dear God, Leon, I don't understand your infatuation with the flail. Let's count the red flags, eh?

1-"I want you to succeed, and I
do not want you to fail period.

If you can handle a 6 foot or larger flailmower
of the rear mounted flail mower you apparently
have no need for a boom mounted rotary mower
or a wing mower per specs.

The idea is to have creature comforts like an
upgraded seat and a fender radio if you are
using a prime mover without a cabin as you will
be much more able to mow for longer periods
without any discomfort from leg cramps and
sore thighs as the upgraded seat will have
much more lower body support and reduce
poor circulation in the lower legs....."


HUH.....?


2-"The nice thing about a good flail mower or rear mounted
snow caster is that you wil loose no trade in value as you
can use it on the new upgraded tractor..."

Again...............HUH?

3-"A flail mower will allow you to go over the area a
second time if needed to shred the material again where
a rotary cutter will simply bat the material around to no end..."

I guess there's a law in your state that prevents rotary cutters from recovering already cut ground? I recover cut ground ALL OF THE TIME with a rotary and they do exactly that. They lift, disturb, re-cut, and pulverize material into finer and finer amounts with each pass. Do they turn it into sawdust? No. They aren't tillers.

4-"To avoid issues with hidden junk he has a landscape rake mounted on the front or under the body to catch anything before it can cause any damage to the tractor..."

A landscape rake? Mounted to the.....loader? Frame? Of the tractor, right? So, to get a flail to really work well, I need to fabricate a specialized mount on my tractor for a flimsy rake to catch all of the "rough" stuff before it can find it's way into the flail and damage it? Correct?

You, Leon, are either drunk or insane. Maybe both.

You've offered a series of poor suggestions, flimsy excuses, extra modifications that cost extra money and time, and some pretty poor grammar...........to try to make a flail seem "okay" next to rotary for the vast majority of owners' needs.

Your post above is now, in all sincere honesty, the single dumbest bit of drivel I've ever seen on this site. Including newbs. You should be ashamed.

Please, Leon, stop while you're behind.....

 

[jake98]

If you run this conversation over for a second pass, you can probably chop it into finer pieces..

 

[LoneCowboy]

I commercially mow with multiple tractors
and just like everyone else except a few rich cities around here EVERYONE runs rotary cutters. (private, big guys, little guys, city, county, state, school districts, everyone)

cost to purchase
unknown conditions (we mow most places twice, in a year)
rocks, trash, etc

You need the very biggest and baddest rotary cutter in whatever brand you like. Not the HD homeowner, not the commercial model, you need whatever they call "extreme duty"

in Woods it's a BB7200XX (6' extreme duty rotary cutter), about 5 grand.

In Bushhog I believe it's a 406 (could be wrong, don't run bushhogs), I bet the cost to purchase is similar.

You can pay upfront, or you can pay over time, but you will pay.

It's all about acres per hour and thus cost per hour. Nobody cares what your equipment is, they just want it cut and they want it cut for X price.

 

[IslandTractor]

While I agreed with FWJ regarding the economics of flail vs rotary cutters in contract mowing, Leonz makes a very valid point on safety. If the individuals ordering and putting mowing contracts out for bid placed a higher value on safety the flails would be competitive. Rotary mowers are rarely seen near inhabited areas in Europe. If the cheapest bid/method is acceptable then flails lose. Regulations have a lot to do with it. we have lots of open space where rotary mowers are fine but it seems only a fear of lawsuits controls rotary use near dwellings and traffic in the USA. I know TBNers generally rail against Gummit regulation but they do set the standards and determine what the level playing field is for mowing contractors safety standards.

Here is an analogous situation: With fewer safety regulations, Mexican truckers could easily outbid DOT regulated US truckers. Same principle.

 

[beppington]

Here's my comparison:

Cutting speed: Rotary
Cost to buy equipment: Rotary
Cost to maintain the equipment: Rotary
Cost to operate: Rotary
Durability of the equipment: Rotary
Safety: Flail
Quality of cut: Flail

So, the rotary wins 5 to 2 in these categories, & the 2 categories the flail wins don't appear to be high priority for these contractors' customers.

^ EDITED

 

[Farmwithjunk]

Here's my comparison:

Cutting speed: Rotary
Cost to buy equipment: Rotary
Cost to maintain the equipment: Rotary
Durability of the equipment: Rotary
Safety: Flail
Quality of cut: Flail

So, the rotary wins 4 to 2 in these categories, & the 2 categories the flail wins don't appear to be high priority for these contractors' customers.

Forgot one KEY area.....Cost to OPERATE equipment: Rotary wins that one by a landslide


Quality of cut: Have you ever followed behind a flail that has seen SEVERE damage to knives after 10 minutes of cutting? That's roughly the time frame where we had to staop and spend HOURS changing knives. Again, MOST commenting in this thread have no concept of the mowing conditions MOST highway ROW mowers operate under.

But I do see one area where flails would hold a definate advantage.....That would be income for bankruptcy attornies representing mowing contractors.... It's not as much that they do or don't do a decent job.....It goes further.....It's as simple as the FACT there is no place for them in this line of work if you want to stay in business.

 

[beppington]

Forgot one KEY area.....Cost to OPERATE equipment: Rotary wins that one by a landslide

Agreed, & I edited my post.

Quality of cut: Have you ever followed behind a flail that has seen SEVERE damage to knives after 10 minutes of cutting? That's roughly the time frame where we had to staop and spend HOURS changing knives. Again, MOST commenting in this thread have no concept of the mowing conditions MOST highway ROW mowers operate under.

I think that could be covered in the "Cost to maintain the equipment" and/or "Durability of the equipment" categories. But maybe a "Downtime" category could be added.

But I do see one area where flails would hold a definate advantage.....That would be income for bankruptcy attornies representing mowing contractors.... It's not as much that they do or don't do a decent job.....It goes further.....It's as simple as the FACT there is no place for them in this line of work if you want to stay in business.

Man, you seem to hate flails to the extent leonz loves them :laughing: Did a flail mower steal your girlfriend one time?

 

[Farmwithjunk]

Gentlemen.....and Leonz..... I have this tendency to see things as they really are. Reality is my reality. "What could be" is something little kids and poets dwell on. (I'm 63 years old, and you don't see much of this post rhyming....) As of this moment, I haven't bid any mowing jobs for the State of Utopia. In the world of commercial mowing, the reality is, low bidder gets the work. #2 bidder might as well be #5000. It's like NASCAR legend Dale Earnhardt used to say, "2nd place is just the first loser".

Much is made of the saftey issue. Do you know what the most common cause of injuries while mowing highway ROW's is? It's vehicles colliding with tractors/trucks/employees. (To the tune of roughly 75:1 ratio compared with flying debris. ) While flying debris gets ALL the attention, there's still a VERY low incidence of that happening relative to the number of mowing rigs in service across the country. In 3-1/2 years since my firm has been mowing highway ROW's, we have yet to have the first incidence of a motorist being hit. (While we HAVE had 3 tractors hit by cars while the tractors were mowing IN THE FLIPPIN' MEDIAN) The number of collisions is relative to the amount of hours spent "in the line of fire". Use flails....Mowing time expands 2 to 4 times what would be expected while using rotaries. (Smaller mowers/slower ground speeds) Hence, more time in "the line of fire". And that's not counting the hours spent parked along side the roadways repairing damage to flail mowers vs rotaries. Flails typically require more mowers operating at much lower ground speeds. So the saftey issue ends up being a virtual wash.... Those of us who've actually done this sort of work with BOTH types of mowers realize this part of the equasion. The industrial engineers who write bid specs for county/state/federal highway mowing contracts realize this too... There is your reason why they don't specify EITHER type of mower....Injuries per mile of highway mowed show NEITHER has an advantage when all is said and done. Use rotary mowers and we're off the roadway faster, hence less likelyhood of accident. MORE chance of actually making a buck for my troubles. There is MY "reality".

The cold hard reality is, the ONLY true safe way to mow highway ROW's would be to close the roads to vehicular traffic while they were being mowed. Any idea of how likely THAT is to happen?

So here we are, back to the point where several proponents of flail mowers seem to be PURPOSELY misrepresenting the FACTS (or at the very least, IGNORING FACTS) in order to promote their own agenda.

Ignoring reality, even if only for the purpose of debate, is still not reality.

For anyone who is offended by my tendency to call a spade a spade, sorry, but that's just the way it is. You probably won't need to go far to find people on TBN who've noticed I don't/won't sugar coat things.

Oh yeah.....I ALMOST have all the Caffine Free Diet Pepsi washed off my monitor after I read Leonz little snippet about rotaries promoting the rat population. That there is funny stuff, I don't care who you are!!!

 

[beppington]

My county owns & operates at least 2 tractors with 7' or 8' Mott (I think) flail mowers on them. I've seen them several times. Next time they're in my area I'll get a pic of them.

They prob only operate them since it's county & not low bid. Although in my very liberal county I wouldn't be surprised if engineers or bid spec authors required the use of flails. Hey, it's only money, & not even their money.

 

[Farmwithjunk]

Man, you seem to hate flails to the extent leonz loves them :laughing: Did a flail mower steal your girlfriend one time?

No to the "girlfriend" in literal terms....They did however "steal" several hundred hours of productivity (and my OTHER "girlfriend".....M.O.N.E.Y.) while I kept giving them second, third, fourth, and fifth chances.

Actually, I don't "hate flails", I simply know their limitations in relationship to their worth in the ROW mowing business/contract mowing. They're just fine for people mowing pastures, lawns, ect, where time and money aren't so critical.

 

[TroySD]

So whats the consensus here ?!?! Flair or Rotary? :anyone:

LOL

 

[Farmwithjunk]

My county owns & operates at least 2 tractors with 7' or 8' Mott (I think) flail mowers on them. I've seen them several times. Next time they're in my area I'll get a pic of them.

They prob only operate them since it's county & not low bid. Although in my very liberal county I wouldn't be surprised if engineers or bid spec authors required the use of flails. Hey, it's only money, & not even their money.

Jefferson County Kentucky (ie Louisville) is the next county to where I live. Their school board (Jefferson County Board of Education) once used flails to mow school campus'.

A little background on JCBOE and their thoughts on fiscal responsibility.....JCBOE is in the final stages of hiring a new director. During that process, it was made public they have over 100 HOURLY employees making over $100,000 per year. (Not to mention another 75 salaried employees) Their ratio of 100 thou employees is reported to be the highest in the nation.

Last surplus equipment auction they held, all their flails were on the block. They were replaced by various sizes of rotaries. The auctioneer explained that the JCBOE sold the flails because "they were too expensive to operate". Consider the source......

It's not just me that feels this way.....

 

[955Lincoln]

So whats the consensus here ?!?! Flair or Rotary? :anyone:

LOL

Looked for a kicking dead horse emoticon but no findy.

Where is Dargo when you need him :laughing:

 

[TroySD]

Looked for a kicking dead horse emoticon but no findy.

Where is Dargo when you need him :laughing:

Funniest thread I've read all day. :thumbsup:

FWJ what else can we get you riled up about...surely Leonz loves something else this much huh? I haven't seen a reply from him...probably too busy hugging his Flail

 

[Farmwithjunk]

Funniest thread I've read all day. :thumbsup:

FWJ what else can we get you riled up about...surely Leonz loves something else this much huh? I haven't seen a reply from him...probably too busy hugging his Flail

Riled up? Surely you jest! If I was riled up, the mods woulda moved in on us by now. I'm actually enjoying this battle of wits with an unarmed man.

Like I said, I don't sugar coat things, and you won't need a microscope to find people who'll tell you that.

If I was a manufacturer of flail mowers, I'd chip in and send Leonz a FREE mower. (Under the condition he quit speaking about them on a public forum! )