Dealer Reveals Why He Refuses To Carry Gravely Mowers | Stihl & Echo Hurting

[Music] oh [Music] check out that ninja over there with the steel hedge trimmers doing a little shrubbery work at the local costco good morning good afternoon good evening ninjas wherever the heck you may be in this world now look where i'm at picnic what are you doing at costco well i'm in the parking lot here uh as you can see i am in mama ninja's car so uh my dealer and i had to record to show you ninjas and really give some ninja points to my dealer listen my dealer is just an absolute awesome awesome dealer awesome guys man they anyway he was it passing through i guess he had some other business but he brought me personally something that i got from him ordered anyway i hope you ninjas enjoyed the uh meeting and the exchange you know we're gonna do that we're gonna do the exchange you know might look a little suspicious to some but you know yeah it is what it is anyway hope you ninjas are doing good it is thirsty thursday so this video might go down for a freaky friday because you know all kinds of freaky things going around when you meet up in the parking lot of costco hey check out this guy with the uh steel sg20 sprayer that's cool the sprayers are pretty good sprayers there he is look at him all waving looks like he's got a walker on here good old walker good old walker michael's awesome man loyalty at its finest michael what's up buddy going on how are you sir what'd you get for me what'd you bring what oh my gosh look at those man is it windy or is it windy oh it's windy wow hold on hold on pose for the thumbnail put the leg up you know yeah saxophone buddy these are awesome thank you wow so the kid is not in now tell us about the kid what is this new because you were telling me all along tweels on the 52s will stick out so the tweels on the 52 will stick out okay you have to buy a stud kit that it's extension studs so you basically you mount the wheel backwards so on a tweel there's going to be stickers on the inside that tell you what the interior side is so on a 52 this now becomes the exterior side but you can see the offset here just by the distance of my finger it's about a fingers depth on this side but if you flip it around it's a significantly deeper offset so it's longer studs to compensate for that offset so the wheel can suck and that's new because that wasn't like that before because yeah no as far as i'm aware this is this is something that's new as people want to mount these on 52s yeah because traditionally everybody's mounted on the other way and you do have some overhangs so you lose the trim width on your deck yeah and i've always wanted it on the 52 and one of the reasons i haven't and never cared to buy them was i don't want my tires to stick out because i think it would create a problem honestly as i'm when i'm mowing and trying to go around certain little tight spots and stuff and uh when i came across and a couple people pointed it out and i looked it up and that's why i ended up sending you that yeah you sent me that part now the part number and uh you were able to even i couldn't find it in the program the program it wasn't in there so yeah yeah so now you know so anyway hey while i have you i know you gotta go and i gotta go give me your thoughts and opinion on tools versus regular tires real quick so tweels versus regular tires obviously the huge plus side to it is you're never going to have a flat again okay it's a one-time investment these should last basically 2000 hours of use you should you should be able to get more or less the life of the mower out of a set of tweels and or if you're turning your equipment at lesser hours take them out put your pneumatics back on when you sell your mower and just put these onto the next so you can get maybe several mowers life out of one set depending how long you keep the mowers and whatnot so the downfall to the set of tweels is going to be a lot of times they don't sling the mud out of the grooves as well as a pneumatic tire would that is one one thing some people have said why would that be a downfall just to me that doesn't really well they clog up so they could if the treads clog up and don't sling the mud out then the tires can become slick you lose the track see it okay so okay um that's really that's really it as far as call of a negative standpoint um i haven't really even noticed that on my 61 honestly but but so it has to do with you'd have to be in much missions and mud yeah yeah depending on where you're at in the country turf type that kind of thing okay um but other than that there's really not much of a downfall to twill i will say um in conversations i've had with guys um personally i wouldn't recommend the caster tweels just leave your leave your mower with a regular run flat on the front caster and do these for drive tires so don't put wheels in front don't put wheels in the front why they've had issues with the spokes braking supposed the bouncing that yeah the tires they bounce as they bounce more there's a lot more movement on the front end of your mouth ninjas popping wheelies yeah so these tires you're pretty much problem free caster tires it's just not worth the investment if you got regular run flat those tires last for a long time and are problem free anyway do you think why the front would be bouncing more would have anything to do with the weight also because they have to be lighter than the front yeah the front end the regular front end's lighter weight obviously uh where all the weight of the machine spreads more to these tires yep and then just general you're going over turf you're going to have more movement on that front and then you will the back end gotcha um so i believe i believe michelin has corrected that i know the first generation of those tweels they had a lot of issues with that i believe the current ones don't have that breakage issue i think these were just a little more brittle too than they were now now they're a lot more pliable yes yes like they were a stiffer plastic now they're very pliable so that that may have self-corrected itself from an investment standpoint you're just not it's not worth it you're not gonna get your money back two you also have to think from a cut standpoint the more flex you have on the front that deck's gonna dip and move more if it's a solid run flat tire it's gonna be a little more steady or stable so if you're in that area of cutting softer turf or you have a lot of movement on your properties you may run into some cut quality issues with wheels on the front now tell me um a lot of people will try to argue and or or try to say hey man these things are freaking expensive are they worth the money besides some of the uh things you just mentioned so what i'll say is a set of tweels like this is somewhere in the neighborhood of twelve hundred dollars okay if you look at a standard set of pneumatic tires is that sardine rupture is that for any size deck basically 52 61. for this 24 by 12 tire that's basically that 52 to 72 inch deck guys is this size tire okay the smaller tire for a standard x is i want to say it's somewhere in the between a thousand eleven hundred for the second no no sorry eight hundred those are eight hundred ish for the set okay um if you take this size tire in a pneumatic and i'll tell you tire prices are going through the roof right now we've been ordering whatever we can get to stock in um if you guys are thinking you may need tires this season i'll tell you do it sooner than later uh there what i'm reading online is a lot of tires are made in brazil there's a shortage of the raw materials that go into making rubber and then the factories are having covet outbreaks so they're having to shut down tire factories and other stuff so this will transpire cost automotive and everything any sort of rubber producing thing you hear that ninjas we're running low on rubber so long story short here let's say you have to buy two new drive tires this size for your mower how much are regular tires call it 300 for the set for two by the time you buy two and this is a good four ply tire not a chinese two two-ply soft cheap amazon tire if you bought the right four or six ply tire that you should have on your mower that's gonna last you you're gonna spend somewhere that everybody'll call it 300 for the set versus 1200 so it's a four to one ratio how much down time do you lose with a flat if your tire pressure's off do you have uneven cut quality some of those features or issues that pop up and then how many sets of tires do you go through over the life of your mower so essentially it may not be a cost savings from an actual acquisition standpoint because you could buy three or four sets of tires but that's over the life of your mower but how much time do you spend going to the dealer the mower down fixing a flat and lost revenue in those cases versus just one and done and like i said save your pneumatics yep and i will say save your pneumatics anyway because in the winter time you're going to want to pull these tires off and put the regular pneumatics back on okay a lot of weight sitting on a twill a long time will cause some flat spot on the bottom so either jack the mower up leave it in the air put a block under something like that or take these off and put the pneumatics on over the winter time good point good point um i was going to ask you one more thing by installing these does it change anything with deck height do i need to adjust anything does anybody you should not have to the dimensions of this tire are a direct fit replacement okay to the tire that's on there so on the 52 inch the tire is a is a 23 10 and a half versus a 24 12. on the 52 inch you will need to recheck your deck and read and and maybe a slight adjustment 61 and 72s you won't have to do anything so on the 52 i'm at 52 you will need to double check once you get these on because this tire height is one inch taller than a factory spec tire ah good good good point i'm glad i asked because uh you know nobody's ever told me on the 61 i would have to do anything but 52 see different okay man awesome well thank you uh unless you have anything else you want to conclude any any new uh so just just from general standpoint i hope everybody has a great year stuff's really kicking off the weather here is bipolar to say that yes it's cold and hot yes and then like hurricane rains it's crazy um sometimes business business is strong i will say i'm at the point i may be completely sold out of product by the end of this month get out of here dudes yes so i i've had a conversation with two different distributors couple manufacturers so far this week and i'll just say if you know you're gonna need something and anticipate it in the year get it on order now because it's gonna be hand to mouth getting product and that's pretty much every brand now through the end of the year come fall i'm already placing orders for aerators that i know i'm going to need in september because they've warned us they will not be able to make enough or supply enough to come fall same thing's happening with backpack blowers weed eaters um so many of you may have noticed steel and echo are pretty much out of blowers and weed eaters and you they don't they can't tell you when they're gonna get or what they're gonna get or how many chainsaws are on four month back order currently what uh so just anything you know you're gonna need for fall i'm pre-ordering that stuff now and i expect you guys to kind of do and plan the same with your dealer invest in it now i don't care if it sits in your garage but you'll have it if you wait till you need it you will not be able to get it that's crazy man major heads up this year so you're running out of mowers wow you hear this yeah so so i know um what brand is uh struggling right now is it still the same as what we discussed last time it's kind of it's kind of flipping around everybody's so right right has been very strong and very well mitigating inventory with our distributor and us um like i know for me even at right at this point i can't even have a mower ship to me unless it's sold because that's how low the inventory levels are waiting you have to actually sell it first before they ship it to you i would need somebody to say for sure i'm ordering this mower i want this mower whether it's finance pre-approved or i have a deposit on it and that's when i can get a mower shipped to me if i don't have it in stock so as dealer inventory depletes it's almost impossible to replenish unless it's pre-sold because that's how slow the shipments are coming in to the warehouse the same is kind of applying to other brands so i've got stuff on order for example ferris um they're everybody's running into either it's component issues or labor issues or whatever and it's just extending delivery times so i'll get some mowers this month but uh i mean i've got 20 mowers in stock and i normally have 120 for that one brand and at this point if i order a mower today the next delivery date is august that's how far back in line that's why i'm saying plan ahead or plan with your dealer on what they have on order what they have in coming wow and be flexible be willing to be flexible in an engine option or a deck size or what or a model whatever it may be you may have to buy a brand that you normally wouldn't buy because you can actually get something i will say toro seems to have picked it up in the last couple weeks i'm getting a few a week what brand are you because every dealer is different i know that some dealers are specifically dedicated to a certain brand but i know you carry several brands what brand do you sell the most and why do you think that is ferris is our highest volume ferrous is it because of your area i mean a lot of it's just the area it's it's a popular we've grown it into a very popular brand um wright is is a very strong brand for us walker is a very strong brand for us so it's really comes down to what we support so obviously there's strong skag markets atlanta is where we're at is a huge xmark market but that's what's been grown and homegrown by the distributor in the area for 20 plus years built up it's a strong market hey somebody asked a ninja asked me to ask you thinking about karen gravely would you ever no why wow that was a big no no real quick real fast so they've come to me before they've asked about it um quite honestly i'm not very impressed with the product uh and if i look at the portfolio as a whole because that's what i have to look at as a dealer um 70 of gravely sales and the same numbers apply actually to hustler so gravely sales are a zt hd and below basically a heavy-duty homeowner spec mower and lower is the majority of their product portfolio so i'm a commercial dealer for the most part and i'm looking at 30 percent of sales fall into the pro turns i don't really care for their stand on mower and i've already got wright and ferris which is a much much better product in our opinion so i really wouldn't want to carry the stand on their walk behinds don't sell so gravely as a as a brand overall is very heavily weighted towards consumer prosumer not really the commercial cutter there are some markets where it is a very heavy commercial brand the northeast it's very strong up there but in the atlanta market i'll tell you it's basically that zt hd and below and then for everybody as a whole kawasaki the fr engines are the hardest engines for the manufacturers to get which that's the engine that's on the majority of that lower end product so you're not even going to have us product supply anyway so part of being a dealer is balancing what brands you want to carry what brands you want to support and i'm much more of the opinion i'd rather have fewer brands that i can specialize in and do high volume with but if i can't i don't want to become that dealer that's like walmart you go in and well i have everything just pick what you want and the problem is when you do that as a dealer one i can't have enough parts in stock i can't order inventory everything i don't get the best pricing on the product either because i can't inventory or stock enough for each brand to make it worth my while uh or worth it for the manufacturer to give me their best bracket so if i can deal with i basically deal with four lines and those four lines i'm in the best brackets i can be at with all the manufacturers and then i can support the customers the best if i start adding more to it it gets really hard to support that and we trimmed some stuff out in the last uh year really that just didn't make sense for us to continue forward with um we still get parts and we'll still support the customers on it but i'm not putting any more into the market uh because it became kind of burdensome to have to support it well there you have it ninjas i had a guy ask you and i said you know i think we might have touched on it a while back but i couldn't really remember what your exact answer was i just remember you said no but yeah thank you for elaborating on that yeah buddy thank you for bringing these in i appreciate you i guess you were passing through you had some other business and saves me on some shipping another fleet customer repair to drop some off pick this up turn a few things around a little walker but you see loyalty man this guy delivers these to me to save me on the shipping because what's shipping on these if somebody was to order it i mean you'd have to put these either on a pallet and send truckline um so you're going to be a hundred dollars plus on freight just because of weight and dimensions and size and then that's not counting if if you don't have a commercial address to ship to then you got to put this with liftgate and residential service and that alone is another 100 bucks oh my gosh so it's going to start adding up 200 bucks easy so yeah see what i'm talking about buddy thank you i hope i'm glad business is good even though it does suck when you can't order things and you know you don't you don't have stuff in stock and you got to fight and you know waiting on things but that that's a good problem i guess also to have keep powering through keep powering through thank you brother i appreciate you thank you thanks for yeah thank you for delivering these for me and i cannot wait to put them on and how long do you think on that kit real quick oh you said they're on back order dad i mean but it's just studs and i'm sure they have to make a retainer piece so a couple weeks i'm gonna guess a week or two a week or two cool so i'm debating should i wait or should i not you know how it is when you get something new just wait yeah probably because then you'll be pulling it all apart twice right thanks michael appreciate you thank you for your knowledge man a lot of people i remember in our last video together have commented i don't know if you've caught it or not but you're very knowledgeable man you're very educated in this you are deeply connected uh you care and you you're knowledgeable and i think a lot of dealers in my personal opinion lack on that man and i think what sets you apart from the rest so appreciate it means a lot pal appreciate you man have a good one

Channel: SG NINJAS

Views: 179,464

Keywords: dealer reveals the truth, mower brand struggling, the most, deals behind the scene, saving green lawn care, saving green, sg ninjas, gravely mowers, gravely mower

Id: Pct7Dm-jlto

Length: 18min 41sec (1121 seconds)

Published: Sat May 08 2021