ProMow Test

When Doug Short, owner and CEO of ProMow, told me he thought his reel mower systems were more efficient and used less fuel than rotary mowers, I was both interested and a little skeptical. As an engineer, I like to see data to back up such claims.

Well, I finally got my opportunity. Doug invited me to participate in a test he and the company manager were going to perform.

In the test we compared the fuel usage of a lawn tractor running its four-foot-wide rotary deck against the same tractor pulling a 12-foot-wide ProMow reel system (with the rotary deck disengaged.) The results of the test was well beyond what I expected.

Going the same distance (approximately the length of two soccer fields each way) the ProMow unit required only two-thirds of a cup of gasoline while the tractor cutting with its rotary blade used a full cup of fuel.

In other words, the same tractor cut three times as much as grass (12-feet compared to four-feet) in two-thirds the amount of fuel. The savings cannot only be measured in fuel consumption, but in emissions as well. Because mowing time is cut by 66-percent, then there is two-thirds less time the tractor is polluting the air. Put another way, the ProMow reel system mowed 4.5 times as much grass on the same amount of fuel with the tractor in question _ basically a garden tractor.

This was a limited test and results could vary, but the ProMow reel system offers the promise of significant savings in fuel, emissions and mowing time.

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