Standup desks have been popular in offices for years as workers looked for new ways to reduce fatigue and back issues from sitting for long periods. The concept of standing at work instead of sitting allows for the body weight to be shared by the back and legs and promotes more movement throughout the day.
At the National Diesel Dirt and Turf Expo in Sydney, we spotted a stand on mower at the Toro stand and decided to stop and talk with Elise Willemsen, Business Manager – Residential Landscape Contractor at Toro Australia, about the expo and the benefits of standing on a lawn mower instead of sitting.
“We’ve got a really good range of stand behind mowers or stand on mowers. A lot of contractors like to use that because you take the weight through your legs and your knees rather than taking the impact for your back,” explains Willemsen.
“It’s not as popular in this country as it is in the US. You’ll find many contractors in the US will have one. It’s fast. It’s agile. It’s better on slopes but also, it’s better on the body if you’re on a mower all day.”
We also asked Willemsen about the popularity of the expo and what type of visitors they expected to see over the three days.
“We’ve been at the show since the start, since the very start,” explained Willemsen. “Semco, who is obviously a big part of the show is actually our dealer. We support them and have supported them every year at the show. We have our own stand here and have some other stuff on the Semco stand as well.”
“It’s always a bit of a combination of visitors at this show. You get a lot of people who come from properties. So they’re homeowners and other they’ll be small, or what we would call as large acreage homeowners. And they will come in and have a look at our zero-turns for the home.”
“Conversely, we do also then see a lot of contractors so we’re quite large in the contractor market. As an example today, you’ll see a lot of councils and the like coming through. And mostly, they’ll either come in to see us because we’ve got a relationship with them, or they are coming to see a new product. We’ve got a couple of new products here that are either just about to be released or newly released. So they’ll come in to have a look at those as well.”
Zero emissions mowers and equipment were on display at the show so we asked Willemsen about the electric products in the Toro range.
“So we’ve got we’ve got a battery mini digger over there we’ve had that out for a couple of years now.” said Willemsen. “We are also just launching our ride on electric machines as well. So we’ll have a we’ll have a what is more of a contractor style zero-turn. And then next year we’ll have a homeowner zero-turn as well. And a stand on machine as well.”
