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Two new trailed Major Swift roller mowers are pushing Cropper Grounds Maintenance to higher productivity and improved commercial efficiency in Staffordshire, England.
As a full-service grounds maintenance and management company, based in Stoke-on-Trent, Cropper Grounds Maintenance Ltd., is a family-owned business and was established in 2001. Building on its initial focus of providing a reliable and ‘very’ high-quality service to its customer base, the enterprise has excelled considerably and today, employs over 90 staff members. Their role is delivering a wide range of grounds maintenance services within a 50 mile radius of home. Its main customer base includes over 400 schools, 1000 football pitches, housing associations, police facilities, NHS facilities, plus numerous other organisations and commercial facilities such as Wedgewood’s in the Potteries.
Managing Director, Shaun Edwards stated, “Our services include grass cutting, sports field maintenance, tree surgery, playground management and a whole host more. We take pride in ensuring our customers are totally satisfied with the services we provide and many of our existing customers have been with us since the early days.”
Quality and reliability underscore Major reputation
With such a high number of schools and sports facilities within their customer remit, wide areas of grassland maintenance accounts for a high proportion of their daily work demands. Since they started their business, Cropper Grounds Maintenance have gained considerable experience in which machines work best and which machines are best value-for-money.
Added Shaun, “When we first started our company, one of the original mowers we acquired was a Major rotary roller mower. It was a really good bit of kit and it lasted forever, with minimal maintenance. Since then we’ve tried various other ‘market-leading’ brands, but most of them have high maintenance costs and downtimes. With us having a high number of customers, downtime is something we must avoid because we have a lot of acreage to cover in a strict time period. Recently, we took delivery of two new 6m Major trailed mowers, through our local dealer GGM Groundscare. We chose these because of our previous experience with Major mowers, and we wanted to minimise maintenance and maximise productivity. These new mowers are working ten hours a day and their productivity means we are saving at least an hour a day over previous equipment. That is huge when it comes to commercial efficiency.”
Cylinder mower finish without high maintenance costs
The new Major mowers that Cropper Grounds Maintenance acquired are the Major Swift Winged Roller Mower (trailed), MJ71-600 models that have nine rotors, with 18 blades. They are gear-driven and therefore one big benefit is that they don’t have the belt drive, which can often become a maintenance issue.
Folding wings brings down the transport width of just 2.6m, ideal for road work when travelling from one customer to the next. Front and rear rollers across the full mowing width, means that the striped finish is similar to that of a cylinder mower, but with dramatically reduced maintenance costs.
Constructed using High-performance Strenx™ 700 MC structural steel, the mowers are galvanised, are lighter than many competitive machines, but considerably stronger, which means longer life and greater productivity. Performance figures if operating at 7mph, forward speed, means the potential output from the Major Swift MJ71-600 is in excess of 16 acres an hour.
“Wet weather conditions don’t hold us up”
Commented Shaun, “These Major mowers make it easy to adjust the cutting height according to our client requirements, and apart from a daily check-over by the operator and a weekly maintenance check by our workshop, there’s not a lot else we need to do with them. We’ve found that even in the recent wet weather conditions we’ve all experienced, it doesn’t hold us up at all because the Major Swift just gets on with its job and leaves a really great finish. I just can’t fault it.”
“Our company goal from day one was to ensure we gave our customers the ultimate quality and reliability in everything we do. The Major Swift mower has been one of those investments that has enabled us to meet and surpass those ideals and will help us to become even more successful in the future.”