Mowing fairways can appear easy.
But it is actually a complex task, especially for championship courses that want attractive striping patterns for televised or popular spectator events.
“To get the level of detail that we’re looking for and, you know, to really reach that expert level that take hours upon hours of being on that equipment,” said Brian Boll, director of golf course and grounds at Interlachen Country Club in Edina.
Boll has found a way to make it easier. He and his workers have been testing Toro’s autonomous mowers over the past two years, and he finds the mowers controlled by smartphones deliver consistent patterns and allow for more productivity from workers, who can do other tasks while the mowers are running.
The autonomous vehicles are a pillar of Toro’s strategic plan under CEO Rick Olson of more autonomous, electric and hybrid vehicles. Toro now offers electric products ranging in size from residential mowers, snowblowers and handheld tools to zero-turn mowers that are the workhorse of golf and grounds crews.
The success of these products is not only part of the Bloomington-based company’s profitability plan. Electric and hybrid vehicle production is a good part of the company’s long-term sustainability plan. The goal: 20% of motorized product sales. Its recently released sustainability impact report for 2023 shows that these sales were only 6.7% of total motorized sales last year.
The strategy has set Toro apart from its peers, said Pete Johnson, investment manager at St. Paul-based advisory firm Mairs & Power, which has been a longtime Toro shareholder.
“The autonomous mower, the battery-powered mower, the hybrid mower, they’ve typically been about three years ahead of the competition,” Johnson said of Toro. “But it’s really service and support where they have won.”