Sponsored by
TurfOps Weekly | Issue #32
There Are Many More Ways to Work in Turf Than Typically Get Talked About
We spend a lot of time talking about how to attract more people into the turf industry.
But are we doing a good enough job explaining what we're actually inviting them into?
Ask someone to picture a career in turf and they might think of a golf course superintendent, assistant superintendent, sports field manager or groundskeeper. Those are important careers, for certain. They're also a small fraction of the work happening across this industry.
Start looking around and the list gets big quickly.
How about careers involving equipment, irrigation, water management, construction, research, plant science, sales, service, robotics, software, training, communications and dozens of other specialties? There are people designing and building the equipment turf professionals use, developing the products they apply, installing the systems they depend on and teaching others how all of it works.
What if we've been thinking about turf careers too much like a ladder when they're really more of an entire ecosystem.
Maybe attracting more people isn't only about convincing them to pursue the traditional paths. Maybe it's also about showing someone who loves machines, technology, water, construction, science, business or problem-solving that there's a place for them here.
Because the turf industry is a whole lot bigger than it sometimes looks.
Read a much more in-depth story for a closer look at just how many career paths exist across the turf industry, and why we may need to rethink how we talk about them.
The Turf Career Path Isn’t Really a Path at All
Free Download
Equipment Worth Watching
Six Autonomous Mowers, Six Different Ideas About the Job
Autonomous mowing is beginning to look less like a single equipment category and more like a collection of different answers to the same operational problem.
The six machines I looked at from Bobcat, Toro, RC Mowers, Kress, Scythe Robotics and Mean Green all remove an operator from at least part of the mowing process. But look closer at how the companies describe them and some interesting differences emerge. These aren't six companies building exactly the same machine.
Bobcat's ZT6200 may be the most recognizable bridge from a conventional zero-turn. It's a 61-inch, 30-horsepower gas mower capable of manual, remote or autonomous operation. Bobcat emphasizes large, relatively open properties such as campuses and municipal acreage. The operator establishes the perimeter, identifies known obstacles and lets the mower handle the repetitive cutting while the crew moves to other work.
Toro approaches the problem from a similar commercial-workflow perspective with its 60-inch PROLINE AMI. The company specifically points toward commercial properties larger than an acre, including HOA grounds, sports fields and college and corporate campuses. Its pitch isn't really about eliminating the mowing crew. It's about changing what that crew does. Map the property once, then let the mower cover open turf while people trim, edge and handle detail work.
RC Mowers takes that labor multiplication concept further with its A-60. One operator can supervise as many as three machines, according to the company. The 60-inch gas-powered mower is promoted heavily toward contractors, municipalities and sports facilities, where repeatable mowing plans and large open spaces create an opportunity to spread one person's attention across several machines. For sports turf specifically, RC emphasizes freeing employees for repairs, preparation and other field work between games and practices.
Kress has taken a different route with Voyager. The all-electric machine uses a comparatively narrow 40-inch deck, offers up to seven acres of coverage per charge and is designed to travel with a commercial mowing crew. Kress's envisioned workflow is unusually explicit: turn a two-person mowing crew into two one-person crews, with Voyager doing the mowing while the remaining employee performs other work. At roughly $60,000, Kress is effectively asking contractors to compare the machine's cost with the annual cost of putting an employee on a mower.
Scythe Robotics' M.52 is perhaps the furthest departure from the traditional mower. It's an all-electric, purpose-built autonomous machine with a 52-inch deck and claimed productivity of roughly 1.5 to 2 acres per hour. Scythe surrounds the machine with operational support including property and route planning, training and fleet management.
Mean Green's Vanquish Autonomous returns to a familiar equipment concept: a commercial electric stand-on zero-turn that can operate either manually or autonomously. With a 60-inch deck, up to eight hours of runtime and a starting price around $60,000, its dual-mode design may be its most interesting characteristic. The machine doesn't have to be autonomous every time it leaves the trailer.
All together, these six machines suggest that autonomous mowing isn't setting up around one formula.
Some manufacturers are essentially automating familiar commercial mowers. Others are designing machines around autonomy from the beginning. Some envision one autonomous mower working alongside a crew. Others envision one employee overseeing several machines. Electric and gasoline platforms coexist, as do purchase, financing and leasing models.
For golf courses, sports facilities, municipalities, campuses and commercial contractors, that may be the more useful way to evaluate this emerging equipment category. The question isn't really whether an autonomous mower can cut grass. It's what particular piece of the mowing operation you actually want it to take over.
Sponsor
See What's Moving Before Wall Street Wakes Up
Most of us hear about a stock move after it happens — an earnings report, an AI contract, a sector suddenly running — and by the time the news reaches us, the opportunity is gone.
We created Elite Trade Club to fix that.
Each trading day, our team publishes a pre-market briefing built for active traders: stocks surging or collapsing before the open, key earnings that could move markets, under-the-radar companies gaining institutional attention, and the macro events worth watching today.
Fast, practical, straight to the point.
That's why 450,000+ traders rely on us every morning. Get the daily briefing free — no cost, no catch.
By clicking, you’ll receive this and other Elite Trade Media LLC financial newsletters, which may include advertiser offers. Publications · Privacy · Unsubscribe anytime.
In Case You Missed It
The $0.50 Sticker That Could Change How You Manage Your Fleet
Why better fleet management may start with making equipment information easier to capture
A mower comes back to the shop with a small problem. The operator noticed it, meant to tell someone, and then the morning got busy. By lunch, that useful piece of equipment information may already be forgotten.
What if capturing it were as simple as scanning a sticker?
In this article, we look at how QR codes can reduce the friction between noticing something and recording it. The real opportunity isn't the QR code itself. It's the operational history that begins to develop when equipment issues, maintenance activity, and everyday observations become easier to capture instead of easier to forget.
Worth a look: Intern 2027 at Shelter Harbor Golf Club which is a Hurdzan-Fry design that features an 18-hole, par-71 championship course, a 9-hole par-3 course and a 20-acre practice facility.
Worth a listen/watch: Turf Today with Sam Moynihan, Director of Agronomy at Detroit Golf Club.
Worth a read: LEADERSHIP ON THE LINKS SUMMIT, presented by Bloom Golf Partners
On the Workbench
A Few Things I’m Thinking About
A few subjects on the TurfOps workbench continue to develop.
I’m still thinking about electricity, particularly the infrastructure behind the equipment. As autonomous machines, electric mowers, handheld equipment and charging systems become more common, the conversation can’t only be about batteries and runtime. At some point, facilities have to ask whether their electrical systems can actually support the equipment they may want to operate five or ten years from now.
I’m also continuing to work on a deeper look at reel maintenance for the TurfOps Technical Library. There’s a lot to unpack around grinding, backlapping, setup, quality of cut and the maintenance decisions that happen between major service intervals. The more I dig into it, the more this feels like a subject worth treating as a system rather than a debate over any single maintenance practice.
And I recently had a conversation that may offer a useful look at where autonomous mowing is heading in golf. A multi-course operation in South Carolina is taking autonomous fairway and rough mowing seriously, not simply as something to experiment with, but as part of a broader approach to operating its courses.
We hear a lot about what autonomous equipment might eventually do. I want to spend more time documenting what happens when an operation decides to actually build it into the way the work gets done.
Thanks for spending part of your week with TurfOps Weekly!
Have a subject you’re curious about? Or an article idea? Or how about an experience to share?
Send your thoughts.
Check it out…
