Swisher Inc Outdoor Power Equipment BEHIND THE SCENES Tour

we're here in missouri at the swisher inc facility because we were invited to do not only a behind-the-scenes tour of the manufacturing facility here but also their factory outlet right down the street the guy's not familiar with swisher they manufacture commercial outdoor power equipment right here in the united states of america i gotta be honest the guy did bring a trailer and mike could leave with a new piece of equipment nope probably two great [Music] all right let's go meet these folks i'm really excited to see how these machines are put together they manufacture everything right here all the way down to the powder coating as i understand it so we're going to meet up with scott real quick and he's going to actually walk us through the whole facility side the manufacturing side of the facility and then here in a little bit we're going to go over to the swisher factory outlet and actually see the completed products here in a little bit our powder coat system here at swisher the parts go through powder coat and when they come out of powder coat they're all on this same assembly line that's running at a certain speed and we present the parts through the powder coat as we want the assemblers to work on them so they're coming off in the right order and everything right order and they're presented in an ergonomic fashion so that they can work on them easily very cool and you do all the powder coating right here in house well i can hear the oven cooking a powder coat is not paint it's plastic it's plastic powder and very fine plastic pellets it's sprayed onto the part the part has a slight negative charge it's grounded this whole line is rounded the paint has a slight positive charge when it comes out of the gun and that causes that powder to stick to the part it stays stuck to the part as it goes through the oven the oven gels the plastic and it just completely encapsulate encapsulates the metal can i take a closer look at one of these so these are fresh right out of the oven and they look fantastic there's a mower deck right there i think they actually stopped the assembly line here for us which is really cool they're gonna go get this feller and i think he's actually going to do some powder coating right now for us does that sound cool you guys want to see that yeah yeah i've never seen this done i make all this stuff right here in house this is 11 gauge steel right here this is a powder reclaim booth so when i spray here these filters suck in the excess and it's recycled in the system and reused because a lot of material used in this is very expensive and then this is more of a spray to waste booth and they do some different colors in here and then that's swept up and taken care of in the correct fashion but here's that assembly line kind of reminds me of like old-school dry cleaners kind of thing yeah terry how's it going yeah he's our master painter yeah master painter cool how long have you been doing this oh my goodness oh my goodness do you have this down to an art then don't you i bet if i sprayed one i'd miss 30 percent all the nooks and crannies they're getting fixed up and ready here this is going to be really interesting this fella's working on the underside there and then how long do they sit in the oven after they come out of the has to be around 400 degrees for 10 minutes so we base this line speed on the length of the oven so that it's in there long enough to be at that temperature okay [Music] and over here is our assembly line we have two assembly lines one is the main line that the trolley system is on and then this is called line two this is for like box items smaller items okay and we assemble them box them create them put them right in the warehouse this is a giant giant blazer cutting out parts you said five by ten foot sheets five by ten foot sheets four thousand watts wow look how clean all those cuts are is that cool that just blows my mind it's like really really precise and it starts over here these sheets here i reckon picks it up brings it over here and drops her down and this is where you do all the bleep looping set it up oh okay so programming is actually back here yeah i have no idea how to run any of that stuff there is keys though so that's good yeah you guys are all about saving time and production i can see that and reducing scrap yeah because this nest and it can cut any shape without tools or set up time it saves 20 to 25 to scrap versus the older machines so right now these sheets are changing that one's completed it's going to swap these out the bottom one just shot into the laser it's a lot faster than i imagined watch out [Music] that kind of scrapes it off on these teeth back here runs it through there and just sets it down nice and then these sheets end up over here then they're just slightly tapped in every so often so they come in here and break all these out and waste goes away but you can see there's very very little lace in all these different mower parts in here the concert i don't know i am completely mine bottle here's some mower decks over here look how thick these are these are 3 16 of an inch heavy duty steel and this is before they're bent up and welded here and then over here is their weld shop the majority of their stuff is all hand welded right here very cool they're obviously not in today but i imagine this is very very busy typically and they do have one robot laser back here we call it a wally laser huh that you want to show us there he is so that's cool they jig everything up in here and this guy just i mean i don't know how fast he is but i imagine you're pretty fast ain't you got one piece left on here pretty precise i actually do really enjoy the fact though that they got fellers out here on the floor actually hand welding these it's kind of old school but you know you're getting hands-on eyes on quality and all these welds that's really cool so how many welding stations do you have total here we have 24 boots how much steel do you think they weld and pounds that's a hard question that's a hard question thousands a day thousands of thousands of pounds a day we were just chatting about some of this stuff and you call them fixtures right welding fixtures so the kind of blueprints or plans and a lot of these parts go all the way back to the 60s so it has a part number on it oh there is a lot of them so you buy a swisher product they're going to be able to service it or get you parts it's not something that you just buy and some other folks say good luck or they don't sell the parts after a handful of years this shelf goes way way back in fact you even mentioned earlier you reverse engineered a part for a guy yes just so he can keep his machine going yes it was so old he didn't have a drawing for it that's crazy very cool if all these parts could talk think about all the feathers that built and welded you name it so this is a 12 foot 200 ton break metal comes in over here i'll show you in a little bit comes through here well i think it gets cut then it comes over here gets bent these are bent decks that haven't been welded yet and this is a really cool design everything gets folded over and from my perspective kind of limits the amount of welding you got to do which makes it stronger and then goes back through that chain all the way forward through powder coating assembly and then eventually back out the same door they came in through so that's pretty cool so you can do a lot of these decks same day come in raw steel they come out in a crate they could be right there yeah so here's a giant turret punch he's going to show us how it works in here so what do we got going on in here these are all the tools of the different style punches it takes to make a deck and it also does forming on the deck you put ribs in stiff in certain areas whatever you're probably designing so this just simply rotates punches rotates rotates and cnc puts the correct punch up in the front underneath the punching mechanism and then it punches the sheet there the head up here moves the sheet around oh yeah sure enough i see like a corkscrew 300 down there or something how quickly can i punch out a deck you do the rough cut decks on here and one about every two minutes oh my goodness two minutes it'll punch out one of those that's a lot faster than me and an old torch and chisel and yeah got to have some big machinery to make these lawnmowers wow here's more of the parts room and i'm assuming you get blades belts small metal pieces here yeah all of that so if you've got a swisher device they've got covered here there's terry hey how's it going terry i like your hat a lot yo i've got to get me another one i got to get on there and get me another one order because you know what we'll take every day hat you know i didn't even know you guys were coming today oh and this is is my everyday hat can we get terry another hat absolutely jessica will get you a hat okay oh that'd be cool yeah no problem thanks bearing so this here is the quality control section bill's the boss and bill just picks stuff random off the line and whole machines engines everything they'll check it from top to bottom and it doesn't matter what kind of machine it is zero turn hole behind them whatever be dipped it's like a 19 foot zip tie so here's where some of their steel comes in and i don't know what to call this the american bundle cutter 9000 but basically this will cut instead of one at a time it'll cut a big bundle of pipe or tube or whatever you can see there and cut four at once and depending on the size you can cut an awful lot through here there's a bin over here i can show you look at that cut all those saves a lot of time so when we're saying they make everything right here in missouri they even bring in lumber and build all of their own crates to put their product in to ship out all of it so these here are the welded decks come back from welding and they even use cranes here but crane this up get them on the hooks they go around they go through this bath it's a three-stage bath boop and then they shoot down to the powder coat booth room operators stand there the paint area oven it's not a tank it actually sprays it it sprays sprays from all three sides top everything four sides that's cool need one of those for the boys more finished parts here stacked up look at all this kawasaki goodness 24 horse and 14 and a half horse and there's also some briggs options and honda options depending on what kind of unit you pick up these are all engines as well here's something i made here again another quality control thing this is uh basically the engine side of the chassis side of a deck separate so they run this right onto the line attach it to the deck and that's just to test the deck right so it's kind of just something they could throw on there and make sure the decks are coming to the end of assembly correctly so we're actually right across the street from the manufacturing facility which is really cool but they call this sfo or swisher factory outlet they got a bunch of stuff in here and elton and becky are going to give us a tour we got some stuff in the back and then we got some stuff up front here and i think we're going to hear a little bit about the history too so how you doing just fine how are you good album eric glad to finally meet today yeah thanks for having us this has been a tremendous amount of fun so far so we just spent a bunch of time in the manufacturing facility and i gotta ask can you give us something about the history it looks like you guys have been around for ever you know we've been around since 1945 the country the company was actually started by a man named max wisher and uh you know he started the business right after you know he was a young man started right after world war ii and a real inventor real entrepreneur and one of the things that we're really proud of that not many people know is he actually was the first inventor of a zero turn mower very first very first one very very happy to prove it uh we actually have one of the early early models they were called ride king or big mo through the years but uh but now you can see what's happening with that but yeah we've been around since the 1940s mid 1940s and going through you know a lot of different iterations but we've always manufactured product in missouri and uh still doing it today and uh you know still making the zero turn mowers doing the logs splitters doing the tow behind the mower categories we've brought into other categories like security safety tornado shelters things like that and you know i'm really pleased to say that our people are just you know i think the greatest people that i could possibly work with i feel lucky every day to have a chance to work with them and you know no place i'd rather be and we're doing very very well as a company and you know we're gaining market share and doing well and just have a wonderful crew so we're i feel very fortunate it's good to hear good here especially today i met a few folks over there i think dan's been here 30 plus years there's other folks been here a couple decades becky said she's been here 13 years i think i wonder when they're going to retire but nobody ever retires that says a lot about a company and culture when folks want to work and they care and they stay i heard about your inventory gal crawling on your machines looking for little pieces of she's relentless she is relentless and the things aren't done if you mess up her area or work in her area and don't put things back or don't do them perfectly it's not a pleasant experience for the person so she's just really dedicated and she does a great job for us that's very cool and um you know as i told you earlier i'm the only new person really here i've been with the company now almost 11 years and i'm kind of the newbie i'm the only newbie member of management and everybody else has been here you know far longer than i have just the people here do an outstanding job that's spectacular so he watches vice grip garage i just started talking through email and he told me about his company american-made products started in missouri still in missouri and basically everything he just said and i got to come see this firsthand and and he invited us down and it's been a lot of fun so we appreciate it and you've got some equipment we're going to go look at yeah absolutely and we're going to look at this the first zero turn what was it right king it was ryan king or big mo and again another clan of fame uh this is actually a great great trivia uh elvis presley actually bought one for his mother believe it or not and that's cool sent max swisher the inventor a check and didn't have any idea who else presley was so he just went to the bank and cashed it and the rest the rest is history but uh yeah we'd love to find that original mower that went to elvis's mother that's really cool that's really awesome well we'll hand them back and thanks again for having us we really appreciate it thank you so much really look forward to having you guys come down here and looking forward to showing you you know the product that all the people work so darn hard on cool let's go check it out all right what's this here yeah this is a real honor for the company and again it shows uh that we really do try to work on having just a really great place to work on a great culture for our people we were honored this year to win this it's a vote in uh type situation we have nothing to do with it trying to promote it or anything but it's done by the local newspaper the star journal in kansas city so we're going to have some fun i did a little homework on this and i'm going to try to sell it right back to these folks you could tell me how good i did for what i missed this is the swisher 66 commercial pro heavy duty machine here let's start in the back nestled between the heavy duty steel frame powder coated in-house is this impressive 24 horsepower 726 cc v-twin kawasaki motor electric start by the way rear and front hitch we've got integrated storage cold snack holder we've also got obviously the legendary 66 inch mower deck here 11 gauge steel this one here has three blades the gator mulch blades g6 i believe correct i'm just nailing this my favorite part [Music] standing on this all steel deck by the way is these ergonomic 9000s right here forget those clumsy high maintenance lap bars these guys run the whole machine right here and i heard a rumor at full throttle the soundtrack to top gun plays not sure but instead of shaking and rattling up here guys arms could be nice and relaxed less fatigue easy to operate and the cherry on the top if you want to wheel this around your house you got a three-year warranty you want to buy it what's the price oh i don't know adjustable deck height with the quick release on the in case you need to jump a car i don't know what that is how does that work so if i come up to i can adjust my deck to whatever height i want to continuously mow at through my adjustable here right however if i come upon an obstacle tree trunk something i don't want the deck all the way down i can jam this all the way down slam your paw in there jump over here step on her yeah see i'll be dipped so like a rock or a curb without everything so you can basically just off-road this thing very cool yeah right here i've got your emergency brake system so it will have to be safety features okay it does have to be both handles up to start both hands down to move to move however if i need to freewheel it i'm just in the garage i just need to bump it out of the way just one just one that's your hydro bypass that's your height oh it's you've disconnected your transmission so it will move now so you can do that but in order to start i do have to have both sides of those two so your hands are totally out of the way that is really smart so so you gotta hold the key and push the button right guy can't monkey around with this rig you got to be safe i like that here's that front hitch system really smart pull up to you got to move some equipment around or a little trailer we're just talking that aluminium trailer i have is going to be plenty fine back here on this hitch all around stuff like that too so nobody gallons of trees up and and landscaping and things like that so we put the you know trying to protect some protection all the way around yeah the anti-scalp plus this here that's really smart so you can see the finished product of the deck we saw these basically as a sheet get folded welded powder coated assembled those are actually molded them when these are molded because it takes so much abuse and this stuff nothing will really stick to it so we tried to do decals at first and we just weren't happy with it so we figured out a way with a maker that had those actually molded them wow the seat slides the back tilts the armrests are adjustable plus it has weight adjustment it's a sprung seat pretty incredible they've pretty much thought of everything i can't think of anything else you'd want on this machine to be honest okay so again we've got the kawasaki power plant on this this is our four wheeled rough cut model okay 44 inch width cutting deck pretty well didn't do up to three inches in diameter scott was saying if you could pull it over it it's going to cut it pretty much accurate pretty well pretty well i saw some impressive videos of this thing knocking down limbs and just mulching them up does have the tool-less offset adjustment pivot it behind in two stages and when you're storing it in your garage since becky's talking about the hitch if you fold this piece around this hitch will completely pivot in on itself so the hitch is not in your way when you're storing in your garage holds up for compact nice garage yeah so when you're taking corrections yeah these are huge tires [Music] those tires are really good for the you get into kind of wet soft ground i was looking at this this is pretty neat so you put this on your tow rig huh and that's your what do we got on that okay so we've got your key start is electric start here's your clutch and your throttle so it's hook it up throw that on your tow rig and away you go ghostbuster machine oh yeah the ectoplasm catcher yes yes and you got a nice shield and guard around the engine and everything here battery try to protect all of our wiring and batteries the batteries the fuel everything's protected so i mean this thing is really made to pull through some stuff this is really neat here to adjust the height basically these come in and just connect in the middle so they kind of i don't know scissor cantilever something like that all you gotta do is crank this and up and down you go and then you store that back so you're pulling it through stuff this is one heavy duty machine right here batteries right down in here and you got the thumb screws right here get down into that guy and we saw these decks as well folded but not welded yet so that's the finished product what they look like there when they're done so here we have the finish cut mower you want to walk us through this one this does have the adjustable offset hitch so i can put it behind my tow vehicle or my riding mower offset it double my cutting width get my yard done twice as fast really cool so this pops out comes in over here there yeah it's that easy yep so that's what basically it's not at either position oh you can kick it out on this side too yep sure this has a floating deck design it looks like some kind deck height adjustment is in three spots you got one on the back corner of each deck and one in the center this also has the 14 and a half horsepower kawasaki engine on it we did want to stay with the theme there do have the protected battery cover your key start is on the front this is electric start too sure is oh blade engage is your yellow handle okay yep you just pull it all right yep this is the same 11 gauge steel deck here three blades three blades got the g6 plates on this as well so this is going to create kind of that golf course glass looking line air these are air filters that's a lot lighter than one would think actually oh you think you could drive this thing maybe yeah maybe should we let them try we're on low throttle there [Music] can you go around me [Music] oh you like it easy to run cool [Music] do you want to take it for a rip crash oh it is really comfortable it it's very comfortable comfortable there's more stuff in the front but they're going to show us some more product to have back here we should start with these these look really cool so this is our 24 inch walk behind rough cut this will still do up to a 2 inch in diameter as far as brush goes so saplings blackberry brambles multiflora rose a lot of that stuff it'll do thistles look at the tiger right there's our left and right chevron tire this does have a five-speed transmission in it self-propelled it is self-propelled we do have five knocked out because it is way too much you do have the reverse and the four forward gears so it'll drag you through pretty much anything i like it all electric it has a dedicated one 22 ton 20 true 22 ton electric log splitter what is happening this is wild you literally just plug it in plug it in i my mind is bottled right now i'm not wow still a hydraulic system yep so it is a true 22 ton that is really smart actually what do we got here this is our road buster driveway grader says it does work off of a remote from a tow vehicle generally people are using this behind a side by side okay or a utv type application run it up and down their driveway i could put some added weight in my trays yeah cinder blocks or whatever get my teeth down brake drums batteries absolutely got it so this is a gravel box but you've got chisel teeth or forks or up here as well yeah i can set my teeth how deep i want to scrape and yeah smooth out the gravel on the backside as we go oh yeah i think i've seen i think i saw these plates you did being made yeah big walk behind unit here this is our interchangeable versa system so right you've got the honda powered motor assembly tractor part of this with the interchangeable right now this has a 31 inch rubber cut deck on it okay okay can you follow up and change that with the finish cut deck no you could take you could take that off and just hook that up that is smart oh i see the picture though sure enough all right so basically you you buy the one we'll call it a tractor and then you just get the different assemblies for it got your adjustable deck height got your safety features does this go on it too i can also interchange it for a problem that's a one-stop shop kind of item right there yes it is all season very cool yep oh here's some history what year is this guy as near as we can tell this is probably late 40s early 50s it's got a tagumza it does have a tecumseh on it this is a working model this is one of the original it runs huh it does wow yes that is cool i'm gonna make some noise for just a minute [Music] that is cool this was a two-speed so for high or low gear oh no kidding oh i see that neat technology for the day wow and then just a little chain with the spring for resistance oh very cool there's another one in the other building it looked like a push bar late 50s or something very cool original zero turn mower in order to go backwards you've turned the wheel all the way back down swisher and then max fisher invented the first zero turn mower so swisher also makes these these uh safety shelters or you can call them a bunker or a safe house safe house safe room safe house tornado shelter that's what we want with emergency security preparedness very covers all different aspects i like the sliding door rather than the hinge that makes sense very nice and then i think i saw on your website you can get seats and gun racks and shelves and all sorts of stuff all sorts of accessories we've got to set up right here right now and use this thing to take the bolts out and go through here oh wow or you can put that panel in there yeah just not against the wall that's what those are i thought they were for loading but they're venting but they're shielded vents exactly this latch is nice latch on latch and a lock has a medical lock that banks you know just it's the best lock you can buy oh and you pin it out another one of these in the other area with all this stuff in it well they do maybe i should go look at that one we should send you the video a texas tech where it was tested they were taking uh 20 foot two by fours and shooting them at it over 200 miles an hour ours is the only above ground non-concrete shelter the two by fours oh we can see it right here it's blowing the two by fours up so here's another one they got with a few more options in it so we've got the benches we've got some shelving we got a rack so here's the deal elton and i got chatting and we have a lot of the same backgrounds we're both from the midwest we enjoy each other's values you know it's just it's a good match and i'm actually going to be partnering up with these guys and they're sending me home with the 66 inch zero turn a rough cut and a finish mower so we're going to be loading this stuff up super grateful and you guys are going to be seeing it a lot we're going to take this home put it through the paces right away of course also we've got the finish mower we'll be hooking that on right away as well and also that rough cut that you saw back there so we'll be putting these pieces up on the trailer here and getting them loaded down that's going to do it for this episode though but stay tuned we're gonna put all the straight away to work as soon as we get back to tennessee it's gonna be a lot of fun thanks to swisher inc awesome folks i can't say enough about them make sure to check those guys out and thank you guys for watching appreciate it very much we'll see you next time [Music] you

Channel: Vice Grip Lodge

Views: 306,816

Rating: 4.9676533 out of 5

Keywords: VGG, vise grip garage, vice grip garage, bts, behind the scenes, home, house, repair, cooking, show, outdoor, power, equipment, small engine, log splitter, mower, zero turn, lawn mower

Id: tWhscviI4zw

Length: 35min 25sec (2125 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 12 2021