As the Spring heat melts the winter snow and permeates through the frosted turf surrounding your home or businesses, landscaping fleets gear up to begin making yards beautiful again. Depending on the size of the job, residential or commercial, a unique set of equipment is brought to each site. These pieces of landscaping equipment can cost anywhere from $500 to $100,000 and can be easily left behind. These mini-earth movers should always have eyes on them, to prevent job delays and replacement costs. Luckily, there’s a solution to track landscaping equipment, the trailers that haul them, and the trucks that tow them.
Types of Landscaping Companies
There are a variety of landscaping branches that focus on different aspects of property revitalization. Some companies offer their services a la carte for residential purposes, while commercial landscaping divisions can include architects that plan out beautiful floral compositions for other businesses. There are even firms that offer design-builder services that package both creation and maintenance together to help save customers money. Let’s investigate 5 unique niches that can benefit from using equipment tracking technology in the field.
Yard Maintenance Companies
You’ll find these smaller landscaping companies more often than the rest. Their trailers are often hitched to a branded company vehicle or a small family-owned truck. These lawn care crews can often be found roaming the suburbs from early Spring through late Summer, with a variety of equipment in tow. They specialize in preventative lawn maintenance, irrigation, tree-trimming, leaf-blowing, and other cosmetic revitalization.
Landscape Contractors
These licensed contractors are most likely registered with the state and have a proven devotion to building new landscapes or maintaining/upgrading old ones. There’s a good chance they have a degree that encompasses construction and plant science as well. They specialize in installing elements of the project map the architect has created the final draft of the design. To abridge the main aspects of their job, they’re responsible for the design, installation, and maintenance of landscaping projects, with an emphasis on final touches.
Landscape Architects
Architects in the landscaping business are yard sculptors required to have at least a bachelor’s degree in landscape architecture from an accredited university to use the title legally. When putting their creativity and education to use, they are able to not just design landscapes but to conserve land. Through a combo of site analysis, planting design, land planning, and project inventory they set the groundwork and draw up the blueprints for contractors or designers.
Landscape Designers
In some states, designers can be hindered by state laws that suppress their abilities to legally finish parts of a project. In California, for example, designers can only present drawings for residential concepts, they are legally prevented from drawing up construction plans that an architect can create. While they can offer advice to their clients, they’re not allowed to sign off on landscape installation. Most of their responsibilities lie in plan drafting for clients, drawing up final designs, and assisting in the management of landscaping.
Design-Build Landscaping
Helping customers from start to finish, Landscape Design and Build firms offer an all-in-one package that covers the design, construction, installation, and finishing touches. Working with one company can ensure projects have a consistent vision throughout. This prevents mix-ups and overcrowded lots due to different teams working on different phases of the project. They typically have accessibility to nurseries and materials providers, which facilitates project completion while also giving clients a unique variety of attributes for their property.
Before conceptualizing, research the different types of landscapers to understand the breadth of your project. This will help to narrow down your options and accurately estimate job costs by choosing a perfectly sized landscaping company to bring your ideas to fruition. Smaller jobs can be expertly handled by a smaller, seasoned company, while corporate job evaluators should consider larger landscaping businesses. Regardless of the size of the job, your hired horticulturalists will most likely bring similar equipment to the field and those tools can be easily lost, forgotten, or stolen when not properly monitored.
Corralling Commonly Used Landscaping Equipment
As projects expand, other contractors arrive on jobsite along with their tools. Everything a division needs to complete their portion of the project comes out of the trailers and gets prepped for use. Some of the tools that landscapers commonly use include:
Powered Landscaping Tools
- Chippers: $1000 – $6,000
- Commercial lawn mowers: $1,500 – $4,000
- Portable generators: $1,000 – $3,000
- Leaf blowers: $350 – $3,000
- Compactors: $100 – $2,000
- Plate compactor: $400 – $1,600
- Tillers: $100 – $1,000
- Chainsaws: $150 – $900
- Aerators: $200 – $600
- Edging tools, walk-behind mowers, and trimmers: $150 – $500
- Air compressors: $250 – $3,500
- Sprayers / Spreaders: $30 – $75
Landscaping Hand Tools
- Spades / Shovels: $15 – $60
- Mattocks and picks: $25 – $85
- Pruning shears: $35 – $60
- Hedge clippers: $45 – $60
- Leaf and gravel rakes: $25 – $100
- Lawn levelers and rollers: $80 – $200
- Tampers: $50 – $100
- Measuring wheel: $50 – $150
- Sighting level: $150 – $600
- Hand Augers: $100 – $200
- Stake drivers: $100 – $350
- Scuffle hoes: $35 – $75
- Wheelbarrows: $80 – $350
The more bodies navigating the property means an increased chance that your landscaping tools are moved, used, or stolen. By equipping your powered and non-powered accessories, you’ll be able to track their usage as well as their location. Whether they’re stranded on the work site, or traveling in a trailer, you’ll be able to pull their coordinates via our mobile or desktop dashboard with the tap of a button. But what about the vehicles that tow them? Titan GPS has a solution to track your trucks, vans, or SUVs that haul equipment from destination to destination with ease.
Protecting Popular Landscaping Vehicles and Trailers
Drivers for landscaping companies are responsible for getting vehicles and team members to the site safely while also looking after the equipment towed in the trailer behind. When tasked with maintaining inventory and preventing expensive accidents, drivers can use an extra set of eyes on their landscaping necessities. Like any business, there are preferred brands and models for vehicles and equipment that owners and operators trust to get the job done right. Let’s take a quick look at the best vehicles and trailers for groundskeeping companies.
Best Landscaping and Grounds Maintenance Utility Vehicles
Crew Cab Landscaper Trucks ($30,000 – $60,000)
Box Trucks ($10,000 – $50,000)
Dump Trucks ($25,000 – $75,000)
Dovetail Landscape Trucks ($30,000 – $90,000)
Pickup Trucks ($50,000 – $80,000)
Stake Trucks ($60,000 – $100,000)
Best Utility and Landscape Trailers
Utility Trailers and Carts ($1,000 – $5,000)
Deckover Trailers ($5,000 – $10,000)
Dump Trailers ($5,000 to $20,000)
Flatdeck Trailers ($5,000 – $50,000)
When considering the cost of your high-quality equipment and relevancy to daily life in your field, it becomes clear that losing these assets is going to hold up business. Recurring equipment replacement parts pale in comparison to the implementation of a GPS tracking system that benefits more than one piece of your business’s puzzle. With a wide variety of helpful software applications, Titan GPS helps fleets track and report on power tools of all types.
Never Lose Track of Landscaping Equipment Again
By using landscaping equipment trackers on expensive tools and GPS hardware for monitoring vehicles, Titan GPS users can consistently tail their assets when they’re at home, on site, or in transit. Our accompanying field service management software, FieldDocs, gives field operators the ability to complete digital forms, log work hours, collect job completion signatures, and more. Both backend office users working on desktop and field techs on their mobile devices can connect through Titan GPS to save time on paper processes and complete monotonous tasks more quickly than ever. To learn more about how Titan GPS can improve your landscaping business, schedule a demo with us today.
