Super z 72 on 9 hole golf course?

Our Small Town Golf Course wore out their old Toro mower they used for mowing the roughs. Like many small Town courses in Wisconsin it barely makes a profit.
As crazy as it sounds to us ordinary folk they are looking at a Jacobsen wide-area mower with wings that mows 14 feet at a time and cost $60,000. These big machines seem to have a 4000 to 5000 hr life span. ( probably double that of a super z)... and I realize there's time and fuel savings possibly but good Lord that's a lot of money.
Am I crazy to try to steer them towards a super Z at $12k...or....what better?

OK I did some fast math and the supper Z has to cut 2.33 to equal one pass with the big mower. So for every hour on the big mower you will put 2.33 hours on the Super Z. If the Super Z gets 2000 hours you will have to replace it more often with will end up costing $56,000.00 as compared to the $60,000.00 cost of the big mower. Over the time that it is owned the man hours and gas saved will be much more than $4,000.00. The big mower will be a better deal. Now with my fast math I did not take into affect speed of mowers but it still should be a better buy with the big mower.

I actually ran into one of the workers last night over beers at the Local Tavern. He said the big machine cut their mowing time by one third. That didn't surprise me a whole lot because when I watched them mow they didn't seem to have a ton of ground speed and they had to be very tentative in and around trees with all those wings hanging out. I think the super z would run a ground speed quite a bit better than their old toro....so possibly would narrow the gap. I was also thinking the Super-z would be so much fun we might be able to get a couple member volunteers to do it for free.... while the big complicated machine would probably need a very experienced driver.
But I guess we'll never know how the two compare because they never got a demo on a zero turn and they have in fact ordered the big Jacobson.
Right now I'm wondering if the smart thing wouldn't have been to buy two hustlers... get the fleet discount and sell them before the 2-year warranty runs out.... and keep cycling them that way.

kraky said:

Our Small Town Golf Course wore out their old Toro mower they used for mowing the roughs. Like many small Town courses in Wisconsin it barely makes a profit.
As crazy as it sounds to us ordinary folk they are looking at a Jacobsen wide-area mower with wings that mows 14 feet at a time and cost $60,000. These big machines seem to have a 4000 to 5000 hr life span. ( probably double that of a super z)... and I realize there's time and fuel savings possibly but good Lord that's a lot of money.
Am I crazy to try to steer them towards a super Z at $12k...or....what better?

Click to expand...

i am on the board of our small town 9 hole course, your right its almost impossible these days to stay in the black. Last year we had a fire on our Toro WAM which totaled it out, we collected $6,000 from insurance. In our opinion it is just too labor intensive to use a 72" mower for the roughs we looked around and bought a 3 year old (1,100 Hr.) John Deere 1600 wide area mower for $20,000 minus the insurance. In essence we are into a nice "WAM" for $14,000 this unit come from a parks department from a mid size community that trades like clockwork every three years, great service records and we were able to talk with the superintendent about the mower. Watching our greens keeper maneuver around trees is interesting as he can get around nearly as good as a front mount rear steer 72" mower, maybe better. It has been a very wet year our rough is as green as can be and very full, we would have been in trouble with out the wide area mower. I know its a chunk of change but maybe an assessment would be in line to purchase such a important piece of equipment.

Thanks for the replies.....been doing some pencil-pushing based on the time savings I heard they ordered the big machine.... from what I'm hearing it's about 12 hours per Mowing and figuring 45 mowings per year..... the fuel and labor savings are indeed impressive....just like you guys figured. AND the big machine ages less fast because the hours don't pile up as quickly.... about the only way it's even close is if we could get a volunteer to sit on the Zero Turn for free!

What about the Super 104?

I saw a YouTube review on that thing and the owner said it was kind of bad on side Hills.... I can imagine that big deck trying to pull you down pretty quick...we have hills n mounds out there.